Slashdot Mirror
Sell Someone Else's Book On Lulu!
Albert Schueller writes "Lulu is a place where authors can self-publish their books. It's a nice response to exorbitant college textbook prices. In an interesting twist, looks like you might be able to get away with selling other people's books on Lulu and reap a tidy profit. The Lulu offering Calculus Twirly Exponentials by Dave Stuart appears to be simply a high quality scan of the much more well-known, and expensive, Calculus: Early Transcendentals 6th ed. by James Stewart. Compare the preview images available for each at Lulu and Amazon respectively."
That sounds legal...
Is that they want $170 for a book on calculus.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Sounds like a good way to get sued.
1. Publish someone else's book on Lulu
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
4. Get sued!
My blog
Sounds like all in a day's work for your average middleman. Good job!
MAFIAA go after casual downloaders, destroying people for having downloaded a few songs which are usually freely available on the radio anyway. In the meantime, people are scanning and selling other people's books for profit - and getting away with it. Wasn't this exactly the sort of thing that copyright was supposed to prevent in the first place?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Dave Stuart, James Stewart... the family name sounds about the same, they must be brothers or something. Let it through! - Lulu
First, please allow me to complain that the first two links go to the same place. Second, from what I have access to here, there isn't a single identical page in either of the previews featured for either book. The fonts are different, the images are off-color, etc. Finally...
This book is designed to be the perfect replacement for the popular calculus textbook "Calculus: Early Transcendentals" by James Stewart. Despite the humorous name, it is actually a serious attempt at creating a cheap substitute to that book. The contents match up chapter by chapter so that you can use this book as an alternative if your calc course has that book as a requirement. We also aim to provide exercises, including some solved exercises, which are just as good as in the original. This book is much cheaper than Stewart's Calculus, so if you are studying calc on a budget, why not give us a try and see if we can live up to your expectations? We promise you won't be disappointed. This is the first volume, corresponding to chapters 1-9 of the 6th edition of Stewart.
Any similarity here is entirely intentional as the 'stolen' work is intended as a drop-in replacement. Sure they copied the book word-for-word, but it seems they intended to do that. TFS implies tom-foolery, whereas instead we have what amounts to a protest over the cost of the original book...
A little off topic I guess, but how did college professors get around the ethical challenge of selling their own books to their class as a requirement and charging whatever they felt like for it?
~S
I've refreshed to make sure it's not a temporary bug with Lulu that has been fixed. It happens every time.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Just a semantic nitpick. These guys are distributing someone else's works not selling them, world of difference.
I can go to a book store and sell tons of books that I didn't write and make money legitimately.
This story is more analogous of making a bunch of reproductions, rebinding them with a phony name and selling them.
On page 12 of the Lulu scan, the author discusses the relation of his book to "Calculus: Early Transcendentals" and explains that he is attempting to provide an alternate which exactly follows the topics and formats of the original so that students can us it as a less-costly substitute. I didn't go beyond that so maybe it's a scan, but the author does address the issue.
I'm not really outraged by the person who posted the book on Lulu for profit. I'm outraged by the fact that anyone would pay good money for a pirated textbook...especially when you can get it here. This is unacceptable, people! Learn to Internet!
>>>we have what amounts to a protest over the cost of the original book...
Bullshit. It's theft of another person's labor. Equivalent to if you spend a year of your life as an engineer, but you only get half the pay. The other half gets distributed among thieves claiming credit for your work, even though they didn't do a damn thing. They are parasites... nothing more.
No, the parasites are the ones who change the edition of the book every 6-12 months, making the used book market nonexistant and allowing for inflation like this (usually in the realm of kickbacks to teachers/schools to "encourage" them to cycle out the editions on command).
$225 list price for a goddamned math book? Apparently selling textbooks allows for some really high quality drugs.
Having said that, note that the article submitter's name first comes up on Google as a Math Professor in Washington State who teaches Calculus 3. Even more amusing is the fact that Whitman's Math Department uses Lulu to sell their own line of College math books.
Let me interject real quick with the statement that I do not intend to suggest any shenanigans -- I just thought it was really unusual. In a good way. I've never heard of a college designing, testing, and printing their own textbooks -- and at vastly better prices ($9 instead of $225) to boot! And that's assuming you don't just want to download the PDF for your iPad or whatnot.
The preview doesn't seem to let you go further than page 12, so I can't say for sure, but that explanation appears to be a smoke screen to hide the fact that it is in fact a copy of Calculus: Early Transcendentals. The copyright page is definitely taken from the original textbook and the table of contents appears to be as well.
Just because he addressed it doesn't actually make it legal though. I hope there's some kind of follow-up on this story saying what, if any, repercussions there are.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
4. Get sued!
It's really:
4. Get sued for 3X Profit (copyright infringement bonus points).
Whoever set up that book is about to get whacked, legally speaking. They probably have been moving money into offshore accounts though....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They print out bound versions to order, the LATEST versions, on demand. They print on both sides of the paper, unlike printing from from pdf to your Walmart printer. They are not Amazon, stockpiling legacy books without the latest updates. Authors submit the latest fixes, and when someone orders, Lulu prints the new fresh versions as needed.
For your needs, stick to scouring garage sales and Goodwill for that $5 ratty book. Or spend all that time printing a sloppily scanned pdf on one side of the page using cheap ink on that will degrade within two years. But when you want the latest up to date version that's bound and printed with good quality, use Lulu.
In first year i was sitting on a bench at mac studying for a calc exam and this nosy old guy sat beside me and asked what i was studying. After a few minutes of talking about the course/book I noticed he started subtly defending it. Turns out the guy wrote the book and he never mentioned it the whole time.
Sidenote: Its actually a pretty good calc text. Cheaper would be nice. And the many editions seems like a money grab.
I've had this happen to me, with a copylefted textbook I wrote. I think the situation was simply that the guy who did it knew the book was freely available as a PDF, but didn't realize it was possible to buy a copy in print, so he just set it up on lulu so he could produce one copy for himself. Can't remember if he was complying with all the terms of the license or not. I contacted him about it, he explained what he was trying to do, and we straightened everything out. I think lulu had by default put him as the author, since the book was made on his account, but he wasn't intentionally trying to claim authorship of my work.
Anyway, this seems like the biggest non-story ever. Lulu is a print-on-demand publishing business. They're one of these online businesses that is able to make a profit because they have no human beings paid to interact with customers on a one-to-one basis. I use them for my books, and I'm fairly happy with them, although there have been a few hassles here and there. When you set up a book to be produced and sold by lulu, you upload a pdf and click through on a form that says you agree to a certain contract. The contract says that you have to be the copyright owner. Sounds like whoever put these scans online clicked through the contract, but is violating it. Nobody at lulu reads your book when you upload it. They're not a full-service publishing house with acquisition editors, copy editors, etc. Whoever posted the slashdot story could have just clicked on the "Report This Content to Lulu" link and told them it was a copyright violation, and presumably lulu would have dealt with the issue. But I guess it's more fun to have the story run on slashdot.
Find free books.
Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. Claiming copyrighted material as your own is a clear violation of our policies and we are pulling down this content from our site right now. If at any time you come across questionable material on our site, please do not hesitate to contact me at jcox@lulu.com.
Are you telling me that people can use technology to infringe copyrights?! Why haven't I heard about this before?! How is this even possible?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Either you are extremely obtuse, or you don't understand the purpose and meaning of the US Constitution.
If you are not a USAian, I suppose we should give you some slack. If you are, we should give you a lot of flack.
While it is true that James Stewart is not a USAian, and it is true that the specifics of the US Constitution are specific to the US context, the principles are universal.
If you give a person absolute rights over any intangible, you might as well grant that person a title of nobility along with power to supercede any Constitution your government may claim to be established under. Yeah, yeah, you're now thinking "nutcase!" etc.
How does a person prove beyond doubt that the forbidden thing is not in his/her head?
Absolute power over intangibles is tantamount to power over private thought.
Therefore, the US Constitution provides for limits on rights over what we know call "intellectual property", specifically, unspecified time limits. The Constitution specified time limits because other limits would be inherent in the context of the rights and responsibilities of a person getting a lease on a piece of the public commons, and trying to put more than that into the Constitution would have tread seriously on the rights reserved to the individual states.
I haven't read the Berne convention carefully enough, I suppose I should, but if it were to be interpreted to make copyright absolute and immutable, it would be a declaration of war against every country in the world. So they have to tread carefully.
If you don't understand that much, shut up before you hurt yourself. Go back and read the copyright laws and read up on the fundamental theories under which they are interpreted. Then re-read the post.
What the OP said was only that the copyright owner has no right to absolute control, and that copyright is not going to _prevent_ pirating. (I think that he implicitly acknowledged that this might be a real case of pirating, to the extent that "pirating" is a valid description of the activity of making illicit profit from another person's creation.)
It is now the copyright owner's job to go after the guy selling what appears to be a copy, prove it's a copy in court, and get the court to take corrective/punitive action as necessary. The current copyright laws will, however, get in his way because of the so-called "artists' associations" efforts to establish effective absolute rights.
It's also the responsibility of passersby (such as we) to log into lulu if we have an account and tell them that there may be a problem here.
(Emphasis on _may_, as it turns out. There may not be a slam-dunk case of infringement here.)
But no amount of legitimate copyright law can prevent illegal/illicit/immoral copying until after the illegal activity has occured at least once, and that is precisely where those (not-) artists' associations are going way too far.
And the real irony here is that they are cutting off their (members') noses to spite their (members') faces.
Yeah, it's the right of the author/artist/inventor to be emphatic that he or she doesn't want any copying at all, but that kind of attitude taken too far tends to cut them off from their potential customers.
My opinion here, and I think I am not alone, is that we should allow the artists/authors/inventors a bit more than their legal right for moral reasons, but that still doesn't alter the fact that you can't sell a work no one knows about. That is their right to paint themselves, individually, into such a corner if they so desire, and it should be, for a realistically limited time.
Those (anti-) artists' associations (and the patent trolls, as well) should not be given any slack, because they are trying to enforce their regime on the whole market (which is now an international market). This is a huge, huge power grab, nothing more, nothing less.
Now, if you want to talk about natural rights, just remember that nothing is created/invented in a vacuum. No one has much
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
What irks me most about textbooks is the "editions" scam. Every year or two a "new" edition comes out which makes the "old" edition not usable in the current course. The scam is that there is very little difference between the "new" edition and the "old" edition; just enough to change page numbers and a few examples. The worst part is that there is no need for a new calculus book; how much has first year calculus changed in 12 months?
That's what the copyright law is really for - to protect publishers and distributors.
Too bad Lulu doesn't also integrate underpants theft .
The book offered on Lulu has the following mention:
Product Details
Copyright Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
Hmm?
Actually it is EXACTLY like file-sharing copies of Lady Gaga CDs (or whoever is the flavor of the month).
Except... People actually need math books and courses (as opposed to pop-music) and the information encoded in those books is basically free already.
Again, compared to music, author of the book didn't have to create music and lyrics and then arrange all that into a (according to amazon reviews) moderately useful book.
Author basically just re-sampled the existing music and lyrics taken from public domain.
He didn't have to reinvent math to create the book - just sit down and write what other people have already proven to be absolute truth in thousands of other books.
Perhaps the book really is $225 + shipping insightful, perhaps not (amazon and its buyers clearly don't think so).
BUT, as he feels that "the market can handle it" author has decided to have that price attached to the book.
And unlike with music, you can't really download a paper book for free, so whoever wants the book will have to pay that price, right?
Unless someone decides to copy the book in entirety and sell it "at cost" (or even "at loss" - guys who printed the copy also invested time in the whole process).
Cause that is EXACTLY what is going on here.
$11 + shipping for a 650-page book?
According to lulu.com's pricing calculator, they would have to print (and sell) AT LEAST 300 copies in order to start earning $0.41 per book sold.
Which would make them whole $123 richer - after they get back those $3,192.00 they invested in printing the books.
Compare those numbers to the number of amazon reviews and the number of used copies available, and it is rather obvious that they would have to outsell the entire available "used" stock to even start considering that they could be actually making money doing that.
Only people making money here are printers and the post office.
As for the author of the original book... That same old argument used for file sharing works here as well.
He is not losing customers - those people were not going to buy his book at the price he is asking for it anyway.
Again, just look at amazon. They are knocking down 24%, and it is going for 50% used.
Clearly the customers find that the original price tag is too high.
And just like with "shared" music or used books/CDs - 5%, 10%, 50% of "lost sales" out of zero sales is still zero.
Maybe he should get with the times and take a page from the "copiers'" book - and publish a black and white dirt-cheap version himself?
There would probably be almost no money in it - but he would be protecting his investment from "pirates" at no cost, while ensuring that the public still uses HIS books instead of someone else's.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
True, but they chafe something awful.
newspaper are underwear...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
This is the same textbook we use for calculus here at RIT!
With the $185 price tag, I was pretty much forced by default to download the pdf, since I needed that money for food and rent.
Propose a ridiculous answer, then suggest it is the common response?
How about this:
If the content is published without copyright, the license requirements should allow for physical replication, as the original digital version is protected and version controlled.
Life of a hard copy? As long as the information is relevant.
Life of a digital copy? As long as the information is relevant, with the added feature of perpetual evolution.
Scanning the table of contents tells me that, with the exception of the use of graphing calculators and computers, it covers the same material that my high school calculus book did 25 years ago or my mother's college calculus book did 50 years ago.
Why are students being forced to pay exorbitant prices for texts to teach content that hasn't materially changed in a few hundred years?
Has anyone actually bought the book and looked at the insides? Perhaps the folks at Lulu were lazy and swiped preview snapshots, but the contents of the actual book aren't directly plagiarized. Also the summary says "appears to be", as in "I didn't actually buy the book and validate my complaint."
I don't know, the evidence doesn't appear to be enough to support the accusation.
No sig for you!!
As much as I dislike the overly-zealous copyright predation by groups like the RIAA, it seems to me that there is a clear and distinct line drawn the second a person attempts to profit off of the work of another. I fully expect this person to get sued to hell and back, and for the publisher to get a large settlement for punitive damages. And I think that'd be entirely the right thing to do. That or throw the thieving bastard into jail, one of the two.
They want their Labor Theory of Value back.
previous argument was a ridiculous strawman.
/. effect? Or was this removed? I click the link, "The product you are looking for does not exist."
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
As a person who's breaking into the book market with my wife's new novel and seeking an eBook option, this is precisely the sort of crap that we're worried about, just all too easy through modern POD portals like Lulu.
As a person who's breaking into the book market with your wife's new novel and seeking an eBook option, this is precisely the sort of crap I'm relying on
Well you see the thing is that the reason why they're earning whatever money they get from royalties is because I, as a citizen of the United States of America, have agreed to temporarily relinquish my right to make copies of their work.
And here we thought it was because you were an honest person. Glad to see it takes a LAW to make people honest citizens.
...
You and I define fair price a lot differently I think.
That you define something different from others doesn' t mean anything, not unless you can demonstrate clearly that your new definition prevails logically or as de-facto. Otherwise, it's just another opinion, and opinions are not fact.
>>>we have what amounts to a protest over the cost of the original book...
Bullshit. It's theft of another person's labor. Equivalent to if you spend a year of your life as an engineer, but you only get half the pay. The other half gets distributed among thieves claiming credit for your work, even though they didn't do a damn thing. They are parasites... nothing more.
No, the parasites are the ones who change the edition of the book every 6-12 months, making the used book market nonexistant and allowing for inflation like this (usually in the realm of kickbacks to teachers/schools to "encourage" them to cycle out the editions on command).
Does this apply to the author being plagiarized and who is the one mentioned in TFA? I agree with you, but that argument is non-sequitur regarding the plagiarizing of Steward's work.
The infringing book appears to have been pulled.
I'm surprised it has yet been mentioned in this thread: time and again, the universities and publishers have conspired against the adoption of open source textbooks and other teaching materials. They'd rather have access to that sweet, sweet revenue gained by forcing kids to buy a new copy of the English 101 textbook every fall. In reality, how much does the English 101 course material change year-to-year? It's a perfect example of something that could be maintained online by a working group and distributed freely, and updated as needed . . . but since they're addicted to the revenue like crack, they can't get rid of the books, even though they're inferior in every way to an electronic text, and add an unnecessary expense to the already exhorbitant cost of higher education.
I'm not suggesting that this model fits all textbooks, but probably 80% of your typical undergrad courseload is fair game, for starters. It's all about the money.
...I wonder what the world's smallest violin would sound like in the concert hall of Dr. Stewart's $24 million mansion.
welcome our new textbook scanning overlords.
What's the matter? Can't face the truth?
Cat got your keyboard along with your balls so you just mod down when you have no real arguments?
Or is it just misguided jealousy cause you had to pay exorbitantly inflated prices for mediocre textbooks?
Or is it that you are one of those people that actually listen to Lady Gaga and you think that I've insulted your idol/sweetheart?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Ebook piracy shows no such thing. What is shows is that when your trying to sell something in a market where the cost to copy is nil, then your business model is broken. Artificial scarcity on the internet is simply impossible and at best all you can hope for is to get people to pay for convenience.
Obviously writers can't make money through concerts or t-shirts; but there will always be a market for those of us of enjoy real, physical books. There is also a market for public speakers, many of whom are writers. Does this mean that all writers will be able to make a living? No. However it's neither reasonable nor feasible to allow everyone to make a living doing what they enjoy.