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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.
I always wondered how the P2P/Napster thing would have turned out if it had been given a better, more descriptive name like: Library of Alexandria
You are stealing from the pockets of the professors who change the text book every semester making your used book worthless.
The problem isn't just that they are expensive, but that the publishers are trying to bilk the students. They include CD-ROMs they know are useless as an excuse to charge higher prices and they come out with a new "edition" every year that changes the page numbers and exercise numbers so that students can't rely on used textbooks.
They got too greedy and pushed too far and that is what will actually give people the motivation to push back.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
The big problem here is that the price of textbooks has increased at a far higher rate than inflation. Students are forced to buy whatever textbook their class uses, so the publisher can set whatever price they wish - the students still have to use the books. Essentially, the publishers are granted monopolies on books for specific groups of students.
To combat this, many students buy used books. Many school bookstores offer few or no new textbooks for some classes, because they make a lot of money buying textbooks back and reselling them for more money. Publishers claim this further drives up the price, because they don't get a cut of resales. This may be true, but they've created this situation by pricing new textbooks so much higher than what their market can reasonably afford.
What they are really talking about here with changing the problems is shutting down the used textbook market. If you can't use the book from last semester, the used book becomes nearly worthless.
No, really, why was the parent modded funny? It is true: textbook publishers routinely release "new editions" of books where only practice problems and page numbers have been changed, to try and force students to buy new books instead of used books. I've seen error that persist in edition after edition, or books where the problems themselves weren't even changed -- just the order and numbering of the problems. It is a disgrace, especially when professors go along with it (sometimes the professors are even collecting royalties from the books in question).
Palm trees and 8
I must admit it will be easier to send a pdf rather than an actual book when I outsource getting my degree overseas.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
So, what are you going to do? Get a pirated copy of your ethics book?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
A note on the 2nd trick. You have to be of greater than a certain intelligence. I used a Chem book 2-3 editions old for Chem I/II (It's freaking chemistry...). I couldn't use any of the "Turn to page XXXX" instructions. Homework never came from the book (there was no homework).
Worst case was they re arranged the chapters. Chapter 4: Reactions was now Chapter 14: Reactions. You have to be smart enough to know how to use a table of contents. I suggested this to my brother (freshmen last year) and it was lost on him. He broke down and ended up buying a book.
One more:
Buy from Half.com EARLY. Most large schools will post their required books before the end of the previous semester. Now is prime time to be shopping. You'll have them for the first day of school and know well ahead of time if they'll work.
Last resort:
For all my engineering books the Engineering Library kept 2 copies at all times that you could not check out. If you're waiting on a book or really want to kill time, you can live in the library to do your homework. If nothing else, just copy the problems out of it every few weeks and use your 'useless' copy as reference.
Finally, Engineers, keep your books. I wish I did. I can't name the times I've needed flow equations, thermo, controls, etc. Sure most of it is on wiki, but it's not in the format that you learned it. Unless you go straight into marketing or something, you're probably going to use something at least once.
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.
I'm a physics/astronomy professor, and this is news to me. In fact, there is a state law (OK) that prevents us from receiving *any* financial incentive from textbook reps. In fact, it is even illegal for us to sell our evaluation copies. There are always unethical people on both sides of the street, I suppose.
I'm sorry, I know your job depends on the publishers being able to rip us off, but most of us don't have jobs. I've been able to land decent summer jobs because of my skills and major, but the majority of my friends are either unemployed or will not make enough money this summer to completely cover the cost of their books. This expense is added to the price of tuition, which some of my friends can barely afford. If the new American dream is to go to college, get a degree, and make lots of money, these publishers are pushing more and more people out of that dream.
I'm not exaggerating, by the way. A lot of people have trouble coming up with the money for textbooks. A single $100+ book would be manageable, but when it is a matter of 6 or 7 such books every few months, it becomes a problem. It flies in the face of copyright law (pre-DMCA), but I can see why people would turn to torrents to get their textbooks.
Palm trees and 8
America gets a bad enough rap with the state of our education system today. Don't make it worse by leaving our students behind the rest of the world! Where would we be if our students didn't understand the latest developments in trigonometry or first-semester calculus? The changes in Newtonian physics from year to year alone are enough to keep a team of textbook writers employed around the clock.
Breakfast served all day!
Though I agree with you in practice, I think you fail to recognise that the same phenomonon can exist in digital media...
When I watch a video using my computer, I can very quickly find a segment of video by adjusting a slider, and I find that I am usually suprisingly accurate.
When I read a long webpage (mostly slashdot comments), and return to it later, I KNOW without a doubt that more comments have been added because something seems further down on the scroll bar than I remember.
The physical association can be translated to digital, especially if some thought is given to it. For example, what about a reader that applies a slight hue to the pages; eg as you get further into a chapter the pages become more red... I would bet that you could scan very quickly to a page with minimal practice. Add some sound whenever you change pages so that the tone changes depending upon how far into the file you are, maybe even include a visual "stack" that will show the ratio of pages before to pages after your current page.
With enough forms of reference, you will be able to train your mind to locate data in a file just as quickly as you do in a physical book. Then of course there is the clickable index, search functionality, table of figures (with thumbnails), etc... all this adds up to a book that is far more of a reference tool than paper books.
I don't want to sit and read a novel on a computer, or most ebook readers... but textbooks could be VERY powerful if implemented correctly. I am quite certain that the only reason that they haven't all gone digital yet is that the college crowd also happens to be one of the largest populations of copywrite violators and they know that they will only sell one or two copies of the book!
If I were them I would license text ebooks to the teacher/school instead of selling them to the students. For example, they 'sell' the ebook to the school to freely distribute to it's students, however for each student enrolled in a class that requires that text they must be paid $x. It would be relatively easy to prevent teachers from illegally using the text (offer a reward to students who report it) there is little incentive for the school/teacher to violate the license as they will simply pass the cost to the student as a fee, and finally the returns can be just as good as the license would only be good for that single class session.
It's only a matter of time... traditional publishing will die off eventually, it may take a generation or two, but it will happen.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
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.
Don't you mean "Screw you poor student who later bought this book and didn't realize the problem until it's too late"?
No one is saying they shouldn't be paid. What most are saying is that the true market value of their work is much lower than what they sell their stuff for, mostly because they use highly unethical tactics to artificially increase their asking price such as
* Monopoly lock in (students have no choice but to buy their goods)
* Bribes to institutions and teachers
* New editions whose sole purpose is to make older editions incompatible so as to kill the second hand market.
Simply put, their business practices are unethical and dishonest.
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