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."

Comments

and in the us the same book will be $200-$400 upda

[Joe_Dragon]

and in the us the same book will be $200-$400 updated 1-2 times a year.

Don't copy that floppy!

[bhlowe]

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.

Re:Don't copy that floppy!

[amiga3D]

I agree. On the other hand the response should be proportional. Uploading a textbook should have involved an officer serving a warrant. A raid and seizing equipment is more in line with a massive copyright ring. This over the top shit is really ridiculous and unwarranted. It's like someone caught jaywalking getting clubbed down, handcuffed, dragged away and thrown in the pokey. Enough with the over reactions already.

Re:Don't copy that floppy!

[AK Marc]

"educational use" is one of the fair use reasons, but applying US fair use to a Latvian action would be silly. Do they even have fair use in Latvia?

Re:Don't copy that floppy!

[bzipitidoo]

On the contrary, it may be perfectly legal, even in the US. Lists of phone numbers and addresses, voting records of public servants, and other facts or assemblies of facts cannot be copyrighted. Even interpretations of historic events could be quotes of material that is no longer under copyright. A purely factual history book could quite possibly contain no copyrightable information. If on the other hand mere recountings of history are copyrightable, one wonders whether the authors stepped on others' copyrights. The historic information came from somewhere.

But all that is a minor point. Likely the history book has recent thinking of scholars about the deeper meanings of the historic events covered. If not, and there wasn't any copyrightable material in the draft, we can be pretty sure that the publisher added some no matter how inaccurate or irrelevant, to cover this exact situation.

The important part of this matter is that knowledge of history should be freely available to all citizens. If they don't have a copyleft history book, they should make one.

Getting an education today is hard

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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...

Re: Do they even have fair use in Latvia?

[Kell Bengal]

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.

Re:and in the us the same book will be $200-$400 u

[noh8rz10]

in latvia, history teaches you!

Re:and in the us the same book will be $200-$400 u

[flayzernax]

And most likely full of spin, error, omission, or propaganda... lol

Re:and in the us the same book will be $200-$400 u

[ATMAvatar]

Why limit it to one? At premium prices, customers demand premium quality. US history books will have all four.

Re:and in the us the same book will be $200-$400 u

[cdrudge]

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.