What To Do About Students Pirating Textbooks

kuwisdelu said:

Of course. All morality is relative.



Technically?

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It's wrong 100%...I don't know why I used technically. #DontJudge (-:

kuwisdelu said:

If you only need a couple chapters, I wonder if you could just pirate those chapters and call it Fair Use.

I've certainly known professors who've photocopied a chapter or two and emailed them to the class.

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No and no in most cases, legally. The old approach of just distributing photocopies has been stomped on pretty hard under copyright law. But they can put a copy in the library and let the students use it as they wish.

chompers said:

Back when I was I college, we would photocopy books chapter by chapter if we couldn't afford the entire textbook. That was acceptable. What's the difference, I wonder?

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Because you were unlikely to get caught and fined. The universities are increasingly very likely to get caught and fined. There have been sweeps for pirated texts and software that have cost universities many millions of dollars.

veinglory said:

No and no in most cases, legally. The old approach of just distributing photocopies has been stomped on pretty hard under copyright law. But they can put a copy in the library and let the students use it as they wish.

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So it's okay as long as the students have to go to the library and photocopy it themselves.

Copyright law is weird and woefully outdated.

kuwisdelu said:

So it's okay as long as the students have to go to the library and photocopy it themselves.

Copyright law is weird and woefully outdated.

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No...I think it meant that it was okay for the students to use it IN the library.

So basically for some reason the arguments for piracy are accepted for textbooks, when they are actually identical to the arguments for other books that are generally rejected in these parts (I don't have the money, the book costs too much, the publishers are mean and/or corrupt).

I suspect the main reason is that few people on this forum write these books and many have needed to use them. A.k.a self interest makes even things we general oppose suddenly seem total acceptable.

KTC said:

No...I think it meant that it was okay for the students to use it IN the library.

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But libraries have photocopiers that students are allowed to use.

veinglory said:

So basically for some reason the arguments for piracy are accepted for textbooks, when they are actually identical to the arguments for other books that are generally rejected in these parts (I don't have the money, the book costs too much, the publishers are mean and/or corrupt).

I suspect the main reason is that few people on this forum write these books and many have needed to use them. A.k.a self interest makes even things we general oppose suddenly seem total acceptable.

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What I think is weird is that lots of arguments seem to come down to "illegal = wrong" and sometimes two actions that have equal effect are viewed by some as morally different simply because one is illegal and the other isn't, which suggests to me that many problems are with the law itself.

Incidentally, my thoughts remain the same whether we're talking about textbooks or fiction.

ETA: Actually that's not entirely true. I do think some information should be free, but I also think that the work put into compiling it should be rewarded.

kuwisdelu said:

But libraries have photocopiers that students are allowed to use.

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Try photocopying a whole textbook sometime. Now try the same with a digital one with DRM removed.

Major difference.

robjvargas said:

Try photocopying a whole textbook sometime. Now try the same with a digital one with DRM removed.

Major difference.

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So morality and legality should be based on convenience?

And we were also discussing examples where only a few chapters were required.

CrastersBabies said:

Whoah, wait, I sure hope nobody illegally downloads my book someday. That's bad.

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I think a good number of writers these days understand that if they make their book in a digital format, some illegal downloads are inevitable.

kuwisdelu said:

So morality and legality should be based on convenience?

And we were also discussing examples where only a few chapters were required.

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It's the whole basis of the case against Napster.

The first issue the court dealt with was “fair use.” Fair use is a defense to infringement codified at 17 U.S.C. § 107, which states that otherwise infringing activities are permitted if pursued, “[F]or purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching … scholarship, or research.” In order to determine whether the defense is met in a particular case, the statute directs Courts to consider the following four factors:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In Napster’s case, their platform allowed for “repeated and exploitative” copying, which met the meaning of the first factor, even though no sales were taking place. In addition, songs were found to be “close to the core” of the types of creative works intended to be protected by copyright, and entire songs were downloaded, setting the second and third factors against Napster. Finally, the effect of the downloads was found to harm possible album sales, which was the final nail in the coffin of Napster’s argument in favor of a fair use defense.

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An intellectual property attorney would better be able to compare this, but the breaking DRM is a copyright violation, first off, and I think sharing whole chapters falls under the part I bolded above.

And since I think those are fair arguments against open access to copyright, then yeah, it applies to both morality *and* legality.

Ha

A cousin was taking a standard lower division class where the textbook was written by the professor, not available anywhere else, not available used, and cost $200.

Define making a profit.

If you are taking a basic class like history or biology, and the professor can't find a standard textbook that you can buy used, he's not doing his job. The school didn't seem to care.

chompers said:

If the professor did profit off of them, it would be unethical.

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Also, if we are comparing the textbook industry to the music industry, then selling textbooks by chapter would likely be much more harmful to the industry than piracy...

kuwisdelu said:

But libraries have photocopiers that students are allowed to use.

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There are legal and illegal uses of those copiers. The student takes responsibility for what they do with the equipment. But they should not mistake what is common at that institution for what is legal. An entire chapter would generally not be even close to falling within fair use. And whether something is done in a library, in the home, in Kinkos, by the student, teacher or passing homeless person has no impact on that. Universities just depended on not being prosecuted or threatened with prosecution--and then it started happening.

robjvargas said:

It's the whole basis of the case against Napster.

An intellectual property attorney would better be able to compare this, but the breaking DRM is a copyright violation, first off, and I think sharing whole chapters falls under the part I bolded above.

And since I think those are fair arguments against open access to copyright, then yeah, it applies to both morality *and* legality.

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Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't understand how that is saying morality and legality should be based on convenience.

By that logic, if pirating something hard enough, then it should be right and legal to pirate it.

kuwisdelu said:

Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't understand how that is saying morality and legality should be based on convenience.

By that logic, if pirating something hard enough, then it should be right and legal to pirate it.

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There are four parts to that standard. Applying only one doesn't address the others.

robjvargas said:

Trying to apply only one part of a four part standard to define the entirety doesn't lead to any kind of rational discussion.

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Then it wasn't the "whole basis," was it?

kuwisdelu said:

Then it wasn't the "whole basis," was it?

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I reworded my last response. A bit too snippy. But sure it is.

I know a little about this topic. I actually downloaded pirated books and movies for a while years ago. It was before I knew better.

I can tell you this: It doesn't matter if there are digital versions of a book for sale. There is a whole culture of people who make it their mission to scan the pages of books and even edit them to a point to correct mistakes.

I remember seeing the original Don Pendleton The Executioner series collection on a torrent site. These books were released back before computers were even on the scene...or thereabouts.

I was curious one day and visited a torrent site to see if any of my work was there. It was. I figured it was karma for my earlier transgressions.

The Pendleton example makes another point though. If a favorite book is not in digital format, then someone will scan it just to have it on their own device. That person is likely to feel good about sharing it with others because many earlier books are not available for eReaders.

I, for example, have searched and searched for Pendleton's Phoenix Force in digital format to buy, but can find it nowhere. I loved reading those books when I was younger.

Now, rather than have boxes of books in an apartment that doesn't have nearly enough room, I ONLY read digital.

There is no way to stop pirating. Even avoiding having digital versions does not work. So you may as well have the digital and hope to make some money off it.

It won't change until the laws change. And right now, the laws allow too many to get away with uploading such things.

Hapax Legomenon said:

I think a good number of writers these days understand that if they make their book in a digital format, some illegal downloads are inevitable.

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Yep. And it doesn't bother me. The biggest thing people overlook about piracy is that most of the time when someone pirates something, no one is losing a sale, because if they weren't pirating the thing they wouldn't buy it anyway. I'm not losing any sleep over it, personally.

edit: oh, and anyone who knows computers knows how to pirate stealthily / get around their ISP. "the law" is only going to catch the housewife who downloads a couple of songs, not the 20-year-old dude in his mom's basement who downloads a terabyte's worth of video games.

Actually, now that I think about it, there is one way to fix the issue.

Microsoft has solved it themselves for the most part.

Microsoft has somehow figured a way to have updates detect if unique copies of their software is installed in multiple places. I imagine through serial numbers and such. As a result, their system detects which computer the original copy was installed on and deactivates all other copies.

If eReaders/Digital Books were to develop a method such as that, it would reduce piracy. Not sure how it would work though...and it would do nothing to the copies that are scanned in. But it would potentially reduce the circulation of store bought copies.

pandaponies said:

oh, and anyone who knows computers knows how to pirate stealthily / get around their ISP. "the law" is only going to catch the housewife who downloads a couple of songs, not the 20-year-old dude in his mom's basement who downloads a terabyte's worth of video games.

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Actually, I think the law only goes after the uploaders at present. It is really hard to prosecute a downloader because so many websites can be set up to send things to your computer (spyware, malware, adware, etc). Hard to prove it was done intentionally in court.

However, uploading is a whole other thing.

^People "crack" the programs to where serial numbers aren't required. If you look at Pirate Bay there are cracked versions of almost every popular program.

Seriously, there is no "solution." Fortunately it's a tiny section of the population who actually knows how to do these things and, as I said, most of the people doing it wouldn't be buying the products anyway so sales numbers aren't massively affected.

edit: the same applies to uploading. Personally for privacy purposes I have a very powerful proxy that reroutes my entire internet connection and could, in theory, upload or download anything I want in total secrecy. These things are legal and will stay legal for human rights purposes, overseas workers in countries where the internet is censored, etc. The day they're outlawed is the day internet privacy is officially dead and the day I move to Scandinavia

chompers said:

I didn't say the professors couldn't make their own textbooks. I said having them profit from it would be unethical. I've seen lots of professors put together booklets to supplement the class. But they didn't profit from it. The cost of it was just for printing usually.

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I said one professor made his own book - and didn't charge anything (the copy shop charged for printing).

I've taken many other classes that were taught by professors who used a text they wrote (not compiled) as the or one of the required texts for the class. Obviously, they profited from these sales. Most of those books, the ones whose prices I at least vaguely recall, anyway, cost textbook prices, in the $150-250 range.

I don't think it was in the least unethical - I think it's a good thing to hire people to teach who are that expert in their field.