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Expensive Books Inspire P2P Textbook Downloads
jyosim writes "A site called Textbook Torrents is among the many sites popping up offering free downloads of expensive textbooks using BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer networks. With the average cost of textbooks going up every year, and with some books costing more than $100, some experts say that piracy will only increase." Having just completed graduate school, I can attest that quite a few books are in that more-than-$100 range, and that they're heavy besides. But the big-name textbook publishers are much less interested than I am in open textbooks, even if MIT has demonstrated that open courseware is feasible, and Stanford and other schools have put quite a bit of material on iTunes.
The scam of requiring a new textbook every three years with the page numbers being the biggest change almost makes the music industry look like nice people.
Tricks of the Trade:
If the teacher hands out a syllabus with homework: take photos of every single homework problem. I had a good high res camera. Much faster than scanning. When it came time to do homework I just printed out the problem and did it. I got a $5 2 edition old book to actually use as reference.
Learn if the teacher actually hands out problems from the book, if not, get an edition 2-3 old.
Get an 'international' edition. Yes, those poor Chinese/Indians get cheap Microsoft products AND cheap books. Be careful, it won't be hard cover.
When returning books: Find the UPC of the "New" edition, slap it on your old edition and return it. Do it during the highest rush when the checkers in are just trying to get through everyone. I think I would net around $100 a semester buying $5 books and returning them for $30. Screw you book store.
I only had one professor that required us to buy a book that he had written and it was actually one of the best text books I bought. The book was paper back so it was light and not a pain to carry, it cost $20 and it was actually relevant to the course.
I doubt he even made a profit on it, he seemed more interested in providing us a fairly inexpensive valuable learning tool. Too bad other professors couldn't be bothered.
The majority of cost for me to go to a community college here in California is the books, and it is such a scam by the book companies, which also left me wondering "does the teacher get a kick back?"
Yes, teachers do get a kick back. One of my professors told our post grad class (during one of the much loved 'pub lectures') how they could stand to make $1000s from recommending the 'right' books.
The Mothership
Kindle is not an accurate use for digital distribution. It's a big ole marketing hype. Kindle is akin to 1 step of a complete staircase.
Content control is not the solution, and the device is a piece of garbage. DRM and other problems left and right. People just like that it's cheaper than normal books. This not being kindle's fault but the publisher's own.
Wait until people create a double sided OLED bendable/foldable reader....then you're good. I'm sure its being developed as we speak, probably by MIT or CMU.
Once book prices go reasonable online (say 2-5 bucks a book at maximum), then things will sell like hotcakes and piracy will drop. For now, even e-books for some books are ridiculously priced.
Internet/computers have created their own market for pricings. Until pricing gets to a volume level instead of scarcity level, things will continue to be purchased illegitimately. I'm not going to trade a night of going out to the bars just to buy a textbook...but I will download it free instead.
Or the instructor could just not collect/correct homework as well as grade on tests. One of my favorite profs in college did just that. He would assign problems, but would never collect them. He could tell if you did them by how you did on the tests/quizzes which were always based on the same concepts he stressed in the homework assignments. The best side affect was that he would answer ANY question you had on your homework. You didn't have to play games like you had to with other profs/TAs who would say, "well, I can't tell you that, but what if you ask me this?" and would wind up wasting your time and theirs. All in an effort to not give you a hint which would allow you to answer the question without "earning" said answer. Of course what happened instead is all the students would simply do their homework in giant groups or just google for the problem(surprisingly effective)
Not to mention a huge part of the learning process is making mistakes when they don't cost very much. That is part of how I learn at least. By grading us both on homework and tests you are telling us its better to make sure you know how to game the system than it is to actually UNDERSTAND the material.
Monstar L
Textbook torrents are specifically for the purpose of education!
Title 17 of the United States Code
107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use40
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
Yarrgh! Victory in sites, Captain. Yo ho ho!
Once this is easily demonstrated, music will be as easily demonstrated next. Knowledge Is Power!
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
You're lucky, then.
I had one professor that was too lazy to keep changing the book every year. He just wrote up some crappy software that was required to be able to do the coursework, then threatened an instant fail for anyone caught violating the software license by selling it along with the textbook. The only place to get a legal copy of the software was along with a new (very expensive) textbook.
Writers of very popular course books will get some return, but for most of us writing specialist texts this isn't the case.
So wouldn't it be better if specialists in the same field, perhaps from different universities, set up a public read limited write wiki site where articles on various topics of interest, sample problems, and other course and research related materials could be created and maintained by the community to the benefit of everyone including the students? The materials would be complete and up to date, or at least they could be, and the distribution costs would be minimal.
Nowadays, most profs aren't allowed (by either law, Board of Regents ethics codes, or by school policy) to require their own authored textbooks for taking their own classes.
OTOH, this hasn't stopped a "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" racket where two profs teaching the same subject in different schools or states will each require the other's authored textbook (at some pretty hefty prices) as part of the coursework.
(IIRC, it depends on locality, and some may have a limit on what they can charge otherwise for the things).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
My record was a published-on-site book by the professor, $276. Useless. We opened it ONCE in class, and maybe 4 times out of class. By the 2nd week i returned it to the book store claiming i got the wrong one, and 4 friends and i shared one. The prof drives a Cadillac. He doesn't need my money. I do. Tuition is $38,000/yr. He's one of those guys who thinks engineering should be expensive and hard to learn so there are less in the field, so they can charge more.