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Latvian Police Raid Teacher's Home for Uploading $4.00 Textbook
richlv writes "Latvian police recently raided the home of a history teacher and confiscated his computer. The crime? Scanning a history book and making it available on his website covering various topics on history. The raid was based on a complaint from the publisher (Google Translate to English), which has a near-monopoly on educational materials in Latvia, often linked with shady connections in the Ministry of Education."
and in the us the same book will be $200-$400 updated 1-2 times a year.
textbook publishers use all kinds of BS to keep there monopoly on educational materials in place.
Doesn't seem like fair use.. seems like blatant copyright infringement. As I learned in Boy Scouts, if you don't like the law, try to have it changed in an orderly manner, rather than disobey it. Failing that, if you're going to break the law, don't get caught.
He didn't get no edumacation.
Learn to love Alaska
The raid was based on a complaint from the publisher (Google Translate to English), which has a near-monopoly on educational materials in Latvia, often linked with shady connections in the Ministry of Education
Here's a free protip. Live in a former soviet bloc?
Are you lacking the skills to be anonymous?
Is there a monopoly on something?
Don't challenge it.
Finis.
Please help metamoderate.
File sharing is what you do with something you own.
Piracy is sharing files that you do not own.
Civil disobedience is peacefully breaking the law for reasons you feel are just.
Movies are about fiction (virtually always).
Some educator uploading material they do not own is piracy. It may also be civil disobedience.
Some 12 year old downloading Katy Perry is piracy. It probably is not civil disobedience.
All my life I've learned with "pirated" material: throughout school, my teachers copied all kinds of materials regardless of whether or not it was copyrighted - including my primary school teachers hand-copying entire pages of grammar or math books and giving away dittoed copies, photocopies of of all kinds... whatever was necessary to learn. Learning was considered "fair use" when I was young. Nobody in their right mind thought twice before copying something for education purposes.
Then when I started dabbling in computers, I started "pirating" software all by myself. I knew what I was doing was illegal, yet it didn't feel wrong. I learned C with an illegal copy of Turbo C. I learned CAD with an illegal copy of AutoCAD. I learned everything I know with an illegal copy of something.
Sure I shafted Borland, AutoDesk and all the others, but then I bet they made a whole lot of money afterwards, when I and all the others like me hit the job market and started using their products professionally - on seats paid by the companies I worked for to the tune of many thousands more than a single user seat.
I don't know how I would have gotten an education without pirated material. I don't know how kids today get an education if their teachers should fear jail when they use pirated material. What a sorry state society is in...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Ownership (all ownership) is the right to deny use. This is as true of intellectual property ownership as it is of tangible item ownership. And it's not a bad thing as many will knee jerk to scream. Ownership is a right to treat that which we earn as extensions of our body. If we have a right to deny the use of our bodies, then, by extension, we have a right to deny use of that which we own.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
this is practically the definition of willful copyright infringement.
I wont say the punishment was just, but it should have been expected.
He didn't get no edumacation.
He don't needed no foursed corntroll.
Yeah, I don't understand this either, it seems like the book publishers are screwed either way. "$100 for a textbook?! That's way too expensive, people should just copy it!" "$4 for a textbook!? That's really cheap, no one should care if we just copy it!"
Hi - not Latvian, but a professor (with some little IP education). Generally speaking, "educational use" is not held to mean "so long as it's for education, do whatever you want". Educational use typically means discussion and criticism - using excerpts and passages to demonstrate a particular point, or using an example from a text. If the teacher had used fractions of the book as part of his lessons, he would likely have been covered under fair use provisions in many nations (including the US and Australia, where I teach). Conversely, wholesale duplication of a text is rarely considered fair use in an educational context.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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He didn't get no edumacation.
What do you expect? He couldn't afford the textbooks!
If that is what you *really* think then you need to update your dictionary.
If you know perfectly well that piracy has more than one meaning, then stop trying to combat FUD with FUD. It does not serve your purpose well.
in latvia, history teaches you!
And most likely full of spin, error, omission, or propaganda... lol
It's more than four times the price of a $0.99 song. Throw the ebook at him!
Why limit it to one? At premium prices, customers demand premium quality. US history books will have all four.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
This story was covered in local TVs. Although I also hate all those copyright guys. But this time its more or less Ok. They warned that guy many times. When he didnt react they went to police.
textbook publishers use all kinds of BS to keep there monopoly on educational materials in place.
I'm not sure. When in Finland these teachers had the over-the-weekend marathon to create a math textbook and put it into Github, they commented that they might as well release it for free, as the profit they get from books is always so small anyway. And, in increasing amounts you can read high-quality material for free from the intertubez, further shaking the position of commercially published books.
textbook publishers use all kinds of BS to keep there monopoly on educational materials in place.
I'm not sure. When in Finland these teachers had the over-the-weekend marathon to create a math textbook and put it into Github, they commented that they might as well release it for free, as the profit they get from books is always so small anyway
Do note that author != publisher... [in the very most cases]
shit and legal threats
Ah the American dream :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
They can write all they want, it probably won't help. Good and cheap materials have been available for long time, but they can't be used in school.
Public school curricula are chosen by committees and government bodies who make sure that people are taught "properly", in conformance with government-approved ideology and content. This choice includes awarding textbook to a small cadre of publishers who produce government-conforming materials and are guaranteed monopolies. It works that way in the US and much of Western Europe.
The publishers didn't get their monopolies by nefarious business practices, they were handed their monopoly by school boards and voters.
So please point the finger where it needs to be pointed: at school boards and the voters who keep opposing school choice.
the textbook actually costs about 6 lats each part (11 dolalrs) there are 4 parts and 4 practical parts (5 dollars each)
for comarison average monthly salary in latvia is about 350 lats give or take.
So it would appear that if the teacher had provided access to the students to make their own copies, everything would have been kosher (or the latvian equivalent of kosher) except for the payment of a fee. It only says that personal copies may be made without permission. It does not state that those personal copies can be made "free of cost". Also, the preamble to the document says that the translation is provided merely as a courtesy and only the original Latvian text constitutes the actual law. I also did a text search for the word "fair", and found that it only exists in conjunction with two words:
"fair compensation" occurs 4 times"unfair earnings" occurs once
and "fair use" never occurs at all.
so it would appear that the concept of "fair use" is not at all addressed by the Latvian law in the format you pointed out to me, at least in the English translation of it.
Who actually holds the copyright? When my structural engineering prof wanted to make copies of a textbook for us (which the publisher hadn't reprinted in a decade because they said it wasn't worth it for them), he just called up the author who was a colleague of his. The publisher didn't have exclusive rights, so he got permission from the author to copy it, and had the copy center run off a few dozen copies for us.
most people aren't as stupid as you think they are
You're quite right. Most people actually turn out to be quite a bit dumber.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
and in the us the same book will be $200-$400 updated 1-2 times a year.
To me educational publishing is a sham, and you hit the nail on the head as to why: The insanely high prices breed a huge secondary market, so the publishers simply call each new printing a "new edition" and labels the old ones obsolete, which allows the book stores to pay next to nothing for the books used because "they're out of date!"
Who did what now?
When I was in college I took an Analysis of Algorithms course as part of my CS degree. The textbook was $100-something and it was on it's 16th edition or so. Several weeks into the semester, my copy of the book was accidentally destroyed. Searching for a used copy online, I found one of the first several editions for about $10. I took a chance that no that much changed. Aside from the pages yellowing with age, I never found any differences to the current edition. The current edition actually had a few minor typos that the earlier edition that I had didn't have.