Expensive Books Inspire P2P Textbook Downloads 511
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 hated buying textbooks.. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)
The scam of requiring a new textbook every three years with the page numbers being the biggest change almost makes the music industry look like nice people.
Re:I hated buying textbooks.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Tricks of the Trade:
If the teacher hands out a syllabus with homework: take photos of every single homework problem. I had a good high res camera. Much faster than scanning. When it came time to do homework I just printed out the problem and did it. I got a $5 2 edition old book to actually use as reference.
Learn if the teacher actually hands out problems from the book, if not, get an edition 2-3 old.
Get an 'international' edition. Yes, those poor Chinese/Indians get cheap Microsoft products AND cheap books. Be careful, it won't be hard cover.
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.
Re:It's about time (Score:1, Interesting)
Most profs at my school (at least in the comp eng program) are nice about it and generally won't require a new textbook or any textbook at all (noticed this especially after the first year and a half of school) to perform the coursework, instead relying on assignments and course notes. I buy maybe at most 2 actual textbooks a term (out of a full course-load of 5 courses).
Also, our school has quite a lot of restrictions against professors using their own textbooks for courses, so that might have something to do with it.
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt he even made a profit on it, he seemed more interested in providing us a fairly inexpensive valuable learning tool. Too bad other professors couldn't be bothered.
Re:I support this (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Books too? (Score:0, Interesting)
But seriously, if there is one thing that you should get for free after insane amounts of tuition, it should be the materials you need to attend those classes you already paid for.
Rip Rip Rip those books to PDF.
Re:About time! (Score:5, Interesting)
Kindle is not an accurate use for digital distribution. It's a big ole marketing hype. Kindle is akin to 1 step of a complete staircase.
Content control is not the solution, and the device is a piece of garbage. DRM and other problems [teleread.org]left and right. People just like that it's cheaper than normal books. This not being kindle's fault but the publisher's own.
Wait until people create a double sided OLED bendable/foldable reader....then you're good. I'm sure its being developed as we speak, probably by MIT or CMU.
Once book prices go reasonable online (say 2-5 bucks a book at maximum), then things will sell like hotcakes and piracy will drop. For now, even e-books for some books [amazon.com] are ridiculously priced.
Internet/computers have created their own market for pricings. Until pricing gets to a volume level instead of scarcity level, things will continue to be purchased illegitimately. I'm not going to trade a night of going out to the bars just to buy a textbook...but I will download it free [thepiratebay.org] instead.
Re:Exactly. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention a huge part of the learning process is making mistakes when they don't cost very much. That is part of how I learn at least. By grading us both on homework and tests you are telling us its better to make sure you know how to game the system than it is to actually UNDERSTAND the material.
There is no excuse for the cost of textbooks (Score:1, Interesting)
I found many books for courses on bittorrent and grabbed them, therefore textbooks have been free for me starting from the beginning of this year. I've actually used one book for one course, but that doesn't make up for the thousands of dollars practically robbed from me. Now publishers are upset that people are using technology to cut corners. It's not like they don't already have an advantage: physical textbooks are superior to anything I have to read on a computer, but I can't justify wasting (my parents') money on textbooks I simply don't use. It's not like sources aren't recycled among competing texts, and the damn information is incredibly easily to acquire on the internet for free and legitimately.
It's not impossible to make affordable texts. They weren't impossible in the days of our older professors who enjoy reminding us about the good ol' days of textbook affordability. How am I supposed to boycott companies without committing some kind of crime, Libertarians?
Re:I hated buying textbooks.. (Score:2, Interesting)
It turns out I really never did have to open up that book, any relevant information was contained in the professor's power point slides which were posted online. However, I didn't read the 14-day return policy on the books.
Fuck.
Time for the OSS Community to act (Score:4, Interesting)
We know about the http://www.opentextbook.org/ [opentextbook.org] initiative. I can't see anything on their site about how they validate the textbooks. It's easy enough with books that are published by existing publishers, but what if you want to write an open textbook?
One of the things that makes a textbook an acceptable reference in research is that it is peer-reviewed. That peer-review has the benefit of checking for errors as well as giving some assurance that the content is correct. I'd hate to buy a maths book that messed up how to do a derivative.
We need the peer-review if these books are ever going to be taken seriously. This is a not a radical idea. It is, in many ways, a return to the past when academic ideas where exchanged freely.
What I would suggest is that those of us with Ph.D.'s in our fields set up some sort of agreement to review each other's "open source" texts under a few conditions (negotiable, of course).
One of those should be that if I'm going to review the textbook for free that the textbook itself should be available in a usable form for free or nearly free Download the pdf for free or for some very small amount to help offset hosting costs. There is no reason an electronic copy of a textbook should cost $90.
A second condition, courtesy, would be to mention the reviewers.
A third would be to include some blurb in the text about the whole open textbook thing and why the textbook was published at so little cost, etc. In other words, spread the word.
Printing costs money, and that is understandable. Lulu, and other services, offer on-demand printing. The OWASP project offer their materials via Lulu at cost, and free for electronic download.
I know there are many Slashdot readers who have Ph.D.'s in their fields. I also know that there are many who will be offended by my mentioning the Ph.D. or other doctoral degree as a qualification, but if we want these texts to be taken seriously in universities, then they need to follow the criteria that universities use when assessing textbooks. Sorry. If it is going to be taken seriously, then at least the "lead" author needs to have the degree or be someone very, very famous in the field (such as Bruce Schneier).
I'm going to contact the Open Textbook people, but I'd like to see who here in the Slashdot community would be willing to put in some time to see something like this work. Here's a chance to fight back in a way that is legal, ethical, and just may work.
There are plenty of people on Slashdot who are more than adequately qualified to write university-grade textbooks on various subjects.
I'm sure some people are going to flame me for this. It was not my intent to offend anyone. I am an adjunct professor, so I am somewhat familiar with how textbooks are evaluated and selected.
I think we can make a difference here, just like the OSS community have made a difference in software.
I find it amusing that the CAPTCHA for this post is "computes".
Re:About time! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:2, Interesting)
Then why don't you write the chapter, and publish it in PDF on (your|a) website?
From TFA (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm changing editions every semester instead of once per year, three-four editions per year. Sounds like some publishers are really not understanding the nature of their problem. They have a vastly smaller market than the movie and music industries. Pushing out that many editions - with the coreespondingly smaller print runs screwing over their diminishing economies of scale... Now factor in ever increasing distribution (fuel) costs. I predict profitable times for the first textbook publishing house to come up with a better way of handling the matter.
If the publishing houses will not come up with a better approach, then how long before some schools without textbook authors on faculty start digging up old public domain texts for basic math, langauges, etc (the stuff that really is as complete now as it was in the 1800s)?
Perhaps, the publishers need to take a hard look at their actual profit per dead tree copy and see what they would have to sell their texts for to make the same amount of profit if the replaced their entire distribution and production network (printing presses, warehouses, trucks, etc) with an authentication server and PDFs of their texts. If can drop their price far enough (say under $15 per copy), how much trouble would piracy be then?
For that matter, let the school handle it directly -eliminate the entire individual sale and just tack the price of the license(yes license!) for the text into the tuition charge for the class. Remove the point of weakness the pirates have attacked (the separate purchase of the textbook). Of course, if the publishers insist on a very high price for their text, they will find less folks taking the class that requires it...
Re:Piracy? Or Completely Legal! (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:5, Interesting)
You're lucky, then.
I had one professor that was too lazy to keep changing the book every year. He just wrote up some crappy software that was required to be able to do the coursework, then threatened an instant fail for anyone caught violating the software license by selling it along with the textbook. The only place to get a legal copy of the software was along with a new (very expensive) textbook.
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:5, Interesting)
Writers of very popular course books will get some return, but for most of us writing specialist texts this isn't the case.
So wouldn't it be better if specialists in the same field, perhaps from different universities, set up a public read limited write wiki site where articles on various topics of interest, sample problems, and other course and research related materials could be created and maintained by the community to the benefit of everyone including the students? The materials would be complete and up to date, or at least they could be, and the distribution costs would be minimal.
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:5, Interesting)
Nowadays, most profs aren't allowed (by either law, Board of Regents ethics codes, or by school policy) to require their own authored textbooks for taking their own classes.
OTOH, this hasn't stopped a "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" racket where two profs teaching the same subject in different schools or states will each require the other's authored textbook (at some pretty hefty prices) as part of the coursework.
(IIRC, it depends on locality, and some may have a limit on what they can charge otherwise for the things).
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:3, Interesting)
Professors tend to have gone to school when textbooks were much more reasonable in cost. One of my physics professors was shocked when we told him that the book he had picked was $110. He said that he had paid ~$10 for books when he was in college.
It turns out that the publishers just send a lot of books to the professors without telling them how much they cost. The naive ones don't check and the students get screwed.
It seems to me that the only justification for such high prices is the limited print runs that textbooks get compared to mass-marked fiction. If we went to all-digital distribution, costs should be able to be slashed and the "change one sentence and it's a new edition" thing goes away.
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:4, Interesting)
That's an interesting point, and the answer is I don't know. I suppose the job of the publisher or maybe the editors in that regard is to identify the need for the book, decide on the contents, to identify suitable authors and to make sure the whole book makes narrative sense. They then ask the authors to contribute their chapters. The authors and their parent institutions then get their names and perhaps more importantly their points of view published and read.
Of course there was nothing to stop me writing my chapters on my own and self publishing them, but there would be no guarantee they would ever be read, and quite simply without being asked it would never have occurred to me to do it.
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:4, Interesting)
Mainly because the sale price of the used book if no colleges are using them quickly drops $1 or so. Someone might have this used book, they check to see the going price, its only $1, they shelve it and forget about it forever.
I wonder if there is a business to be made on that kinda stuff. Posting a list of all the books you have then letting you know when the going price for that book goes up or there is someone wanting the book who can't find it.
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I hated buying textbooks.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:3, Interesting)
There are actually Creative Commons projects focused on providing free textbook materials on lots of subjects. If you contributed to such a project, the project coordinators would take on the role of the publisher, without gouging their clients.
Thanks I'll look into it, and then try to persuade my boss that it's a worthwhile use of my time.
Re:About time! (Score:3, Interesting)
Bravo! You are spot on. It's time to force professors and universities to turn to open source information sources, especially so for public domain knowledge.
Unfortunately for the publishers, copyright does not apply to material that is duplicated for educational and research purposes, and such textbook torrents are 100% legal. Hoist up the countersuits. Prepare the public relations broadsides.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107 [copyright.gov]
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.
Which parts of the Newtonian physics principles will the textbook publishers try to claim is copyrighted? Prepare to slash those sections out with the tips of your swords, figuratively and literally. It's Booty Time!
Re:About time! (Score:3, Interesting)
Publishing will go digital, kicking and screaming, but they'll go
Thus will end the history of Mankind. A thousand or ten thousand years from now, there will be no books, no written history of any kind. A hundred years from the day print books go away, history will be in the hands of those who control the bits and bytes. And, history will be changed with a simple PERL script.
And, when something happens, a supervirus, a massive EMP pulse, whatever, then access to the data, and possibly the data itself will be gone.
The publishers are the dirty thieves (Score:3, Interesting)
My professor almost lost his head when we told him how much we paid (over $60) for the textbook he wrote. He was getting something like $5 for each.
Expensive texts don't make sense anymore (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in the day, expensive texts made sense. Why? Because the publisher received a typed manuscript with equations, etc *written* in. They then had to take that, reformat, etc, etc, etc and finally set the machines up and print the thing. A very time intensive expensive process.
That being said, the world has changed. What publishers get today is pretty much a finished work. And because we've entered the wonderful world of computers, they just need to input the file and push the start button. It's now a considerable cheaper process. But, yet the price of texts has increases very much disproportionally.
What I find deplorable, is that old texts like Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis (1976) costs $185 (hardcover) and $90 (softcover). Then there's Dudley's Elementary Number Theory (1978) which cost ~$120 when I bought it a couple years ago and Nering's Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory (amazon says 1976 but my copy says 1970) which costs $145. All three being some of the best books in there respective fields. But, the cost is prohibitive and quite frankly nonsensical. There's exactly zero reason why they should be so expensive when it is clear that they have since recouped the cost long ago.
I gotta say that if the publishers get significantly hurt because of downloading, they've done it to themselves. I won't be shedding any tears.
Teachers gaming the system (Score:3, Interesting)
In high school (early 1990s), I had a calculus teacher who was _required_ by the school system to count homework as part of the grade. So, he had a simple formula:
And, if you had at least an 80% on homework, he'd drop your lowest test score when computing your test average ... which I vaguely remember also affecting your eligibility for the homework score
Now, part of this was because of a teacher's union rule that teachers wouldn't take homework home to grade -- so he made sure he got to drop large amounts of homework to grade. And yet, even with that, some people still failed his class, because they were too lazy to even try.
He tried getting out of teaching the 'lab 99' classes (pre-pre-algebra, for those students who weren't expected to make it to geometry before they graduated), but our new principal said he wasn't qualified to teach calculus, and took away all of his higher level math classes, so he walked the year after I graduated.
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:1, Interesting)
or you could donate it to your local public library. may be persuade them to create a section for higher education or something of that sort. gather up a few people (10-15) in your town for start. this should give you about 60-70 books to start with. I would also suggest that you keep working with the library to maintain the quality of collection.
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:3, Interesting)
Academics often contribute to textbooks without being paid. I wrote a chapter for a textbook recently and am currently working on another, and I won't get any financial return for either
You might not get any financial return, but you will get popularity. Academic success is rated by the number of published papers, and referenced papers. Remember, 'publish or perish'.
BTW, if the site admin from the textbook torrents is reading, I found the following info interesting:
First, I swear to you that I will do everything in my power to prevent the server's logs from falling into the hands of those that might use them against you.
What he should do is remove the logs. Remove every log you have, and do not log absolutely anything! that way you wont have to provide information you do not have.
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:3, Interesting)
Thoughts (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Don't steal someone else's copyright. Just don't. I know it doesn't sound like much, but the way I see it, an author's book, for whatever reason they choose to write it, is their intellectual heart.
2. I realize that textbooks are expensive, but so are the materials, the labor, the permissions costs, the manufacture. Despite what the general public thinks, we're not trying to be unfair or bilk the unsuspecting students. It's what it costs and we need to make a profit like every other company out there. Students spend thousands of dollars on expensive clothes, vacations, ipods, iphones, and all those things they do instead of going to class. And actually, while we're on the subject of price, can we talk about the skyrocketing cost of education?!? Why the rage is focused on textbooks instead of how much large universities charge for housing, for food, for tuition... well, it is very interesting.
3. So can authors and publishers get rich off selling textbooks? Absolutely. But for every book that sells a million copies, there are dozens that fail. As publishers, we have to pour a huge amount of money into each new project and hope that it works - that we've estimated the market size correctly, that we have a good product. And as much as we hate to admit it, we fail a lot of the time. And then all that money is lost.
4. The publishing model is growing outdated, but until you can get your professors to choose books that are online only, or to embrace the digital age, we've hit a wall. Most won't even consider a book that they can't flip through. We already offer online only books at a fraction of the cost, and even in print at many different price points, all of which are designed to offer choices and flexibility - and cost savings. That the prof chooses not to take advantage of it is their choice.
5. The book adoption system is flawed because the professors choose the text and the students pay for it. The professors get free supplements, free desk copies, free support. If you want to lower the price of textbooks, tell your professors that you don't need the free stuff that comes with it. You don't want the CD, or the study guide, and your professor should stop being lazy and make their own power points so I don't have to hire someone to do it, someone to accuracy check it, someone to produce it, and someone to post it online. Tell them to write their own instructor's manual, and their own test bank problems with which to fail you.
6. I know a lot of people think that professors will donate their time and energy to produce books that are free of charge. And some profs might. It also probably varies by discipline. But for the great majority, professors are like everyone else. They're worried about getting tenure, about establishing a good academic reputation, about paying their mortgage and sending their kids to college. There's a trade off for every project they undertake, and usually, with books, the motivation is monetary. Altruism is not terribly high on most people's priority lists, I'm sorry to say.
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:4, Interesting)
All course material was free and easily accessable on a modified version of ms exchange, which I can still access 1 year after leaving university. I used to recieve around 1000 pages of module information for every module and while every lecturer had a recommended reading list after the 1st year in University I noticed the free course material often went into greater depth and was better explained than the books I was paying £50 for. I am excluding information gained from classes when I say "course material".
Thats the Univeristy of Plymouth for anyone who's looking to study Electrical/Electronic/Computing/Communications Engineering. The lecturers there teach because they honestly have a passion for the subject and try to imprint it onto their students.
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:4, Interesting)
While the first sale doctrine may protect the sale, it doesn't oblige the professor to pretend it didn't happen. He's free to give the buyer any grade he wants or no grade at all, or at least it'll be a civil case based on any agreements between you and the institution and the institution and the professor. At least in the US I think the institution would cover their ass and say you got a grade as required, it's the professor's grade and that decision is final. I don't think there's any way you could force an institution to issue a grade, no matter how much you've deserved it...
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:1, Interesting)
I always look for PDF version. (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice of them to charge $120 for a book that has virtually no useful content but is required to get the assignments out of and then refuse to buy back the books because they are out-dated supposedly.
I've taken to looking for PDF versions of all my text books and tech books both because of price and because I want to be able to carry massive amounts of useful books around on a laptop or a e-book so I have them when I need them. Even the books I actually buy I try to find a torrent for because I don't want to pay twice for the same book just because I also want it as a PDF.
I think all publishers should make a PDF version available for free to people who own a legit hard copy of a book. It'd make me more likely to buy the hard copy and would be extremely useful to me.
All Hail Dover (Score:4, Interesting)
Dover [doverpublications.com] publishes textbooks that are old, but still useful, for a far more reasonable price than they charge for new textbooks.
Re:Photographic and tactile memory (Score:2, Interesting)
For YEARS I've wondered if the various intel agencies have paid the major copier shops like Kinkos to embed data scanning chips to just "get interesting things". Imagine if Kinkos were a front CIA operation. It would be of GREAT utility to them... looking legit, with payroll, real estate and a steady stream of unwitting clients.... would be a great fishnet
Slightly different idea...would you be interested? (Score:3, Interesting)
A few years ago I had an idea about this and Ive been waiting to see if it ever happened. Basically I thought maybe a consortium of universities around the world could organise a kind of "offical" wiki for say scientific work(doesnt matter what subject... lets say physics)
I've had the same idea, also for physics! However I could never get my colleagues interested enough in it to form a critical mass. Unlike the other efforts on the web I want a citizendium like approach: only qualified people can contribute to the Wiki. However, inspired by an idea from citizendium I've been toying with something slightly different.
Instead of profs writing the entries I was thinking of setting an assignment for the students to write parts of the text. The requirement being that the result would be released under a suitable CC license and edited by myself or others (it would be in a wiki). This is good for several reasons:
So is this something you students would be happy doing? What do you think of it? Any suggestions for a Wiki to use? Ideally it would have PDF export and the ability to restrict access to certain pages. Is anyone already doing this? I know that Eduzendium exists but this is more about writing encyclopedia articles which is less useful/applicable to physics.
Re:Dirty thieves (Score:3, Interesting)
What if the professor required sexual favors for a passing grade? I mean, it would obviously be grounds for dismal, but don't you think that's actionable? Isn't this in fact extortion?