We Rent Movies, So Why Not Textbooks? 398
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by
Soulskill
from the or-food dept.
from the or-food dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Using Netflix as a business model, Osman Rashid and Aayush Phumbhra founded Chegg, shorthand for 'chicken and egg,' to gather books from sellers at the end of a semester and renting — or sometimes selling — them to other students at the start of a new one. Chegg began renting books in 2007, before it owned any, so when an order came in, its employees would surf the Web to find a cheap copy. They would buy the book using Rashid's American Express card and have it shipped to the student. Eventually, Chegg automated the system. 'People thought we were crazy,' Rashid said. Now, as Chegg prepares for its third academic year in the textbook rental business, the business is growing rapidly. Jim Safka, a former chief executive of Match.com and Ask.com who was recently recruited to run Chegg, said the company's revenue in 2008 was more than $10 million, and this year, Chegg surpassed that in January alone."
Editions (Score:5, Insightful)
Editions.
Does this really save that much money? (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting idea, but I'm skeptical as to how well they can keep costs low enough to be a truly economical alternative to buying.
Arguably, we already do. (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Student pay ridiculous prices for half-useful photo-laden authoritative textbooks, only to sell them back to the publisher-run book resale cartels for 10% of the price they paid.
2. With the current trend of Big Copyright, every written work must have an owner/copyright holder. Therefore, you do not own the books you have copies of.
I own my experience of the book, or the movie, and put forward that those experiences, being mine, grant me ownership of the work as my experience as much as the money I paid for the 400 pages of paper and ink.
We will look back to the beginning of the 21st Century and laugh at this Information Prohibition.
kulakovich
Re:Already been done, and for free (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why the latest edition? (Score:3, Insightful)
On occasion, you'll hear stories of the professor who wrote the book doing sleazy stuff to the classes he teaches to bulk his royalties; but the pressure is mostly from the publisher side.
Re:Arguably, we already do. (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean just like we look now at drug/substance prohibition? The way we learned our lesson that it's never going to work no matter how hard we try because the very idea represents a total failure to comprehend the situation? The way it's a hypocritical position which has done a great deal of harm in the name of justice? I'm glad nothing like that goes on today... Oh.
Makes a nice proof that new ! old (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a business model that will be specifically forbidden with electronic books. And enforced by encryption or proprietary formats (which are, in a practical sense, the same thing), which in turn are protected by the DMCA.
To an economist, or public policy maker, that makes the new technology stand out like a sore thumb as not an improvement on the old.
This is an example that has been lost in other media as the new format offers many benefits over the old - the ability to have a movie at home at ALL, the ability to copy music easily and with no lost fidelity. But about all that electronic books give you over the old is a reduction in volume and weight (search capability, much overrated - books always had indexes and tables-of-contents, and besides, you're supposed to be learning the whole textbook).
The new media have only a few generations of history, most of it with shifting technologies - copying music at all was not possible for the general public until the cassette recorder in 1968.
But with electronic books, book rental couldn't exist, used book stores couldn't exist, and believe me, they'll be gunning for libraries themselves.
The dramatic contrast with centuries of tradition about how society does business with books might finally get it through politician's heads that enabling new, more restrictive copyrights is robbing the public.
Then switch to Free textbooks (Score:3, Insightful)
Typically, the publisher will stop selling the old edition
In other words, the old "Disney vault" trick. Is there a reason why professors haven't led the way in switching to textbooks published as free [freedomdefined.org] cultural [creativecommons.org] works [educause.edu]?
Re:You mean racketeering (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole textbook market is a scam to rip off students. The vendors keep churning the book versions simply just to keep saturation low (why do we need 17 editions of an algebra book?).
At one point, I had purchased a marketing book only to find that a new version had come out right at the beginning of the semester. The prof apologized for the problem and handed out an addendum for the students with the early edition. The only changes were to the end-of-chapter quiz questions. And most of those questions remained the same - just with the question numbering changed slightly.
They weren't even trying to be creative with the fact that they were screwing the students. Everyone knew this to be the case and accepted it. I think that I was the only person who was upset by this obvious racket.
Is this what we should expect for everything from now on? If schools really cared about anything but profits, then we'd have a mandatory open-source textbook market where academia would be free to create and modify textbooks. These textbooks would cost nothing. Certainly, there would still be a need for private market textbooks (on arcane and/or rapidly changing subjects) but I can see a substantial portion of textbook requirements displaced by an open system.
Re:Justify, or I transfer. (Score:2, Insightful)
Not if the program of study [wikipedia.org] you're looking for isn't available at other schools, or the body which regulates the profession you're looking to enter [peo.on.ca] (which also legally controls the use of the title of your profession) requires successful completion of a degree in an "accredited institution of learning," where accredited means is on a list that they maintain. That narrows your choices somewhat; add in the fact that moving to another school outside of your country includes the cost of moving, living away from home, and the fees required for international school (and don't forget a student visa!), and you've got yourself quite the bill. Which is on top of your already-mounting student debt.
Additionally, the notion of "transferring" between most schools is laughable, at best. It's difficult enough to transfer within your school without losing all or most of your credits (and consequentially, tens of thousands of dollars of your money); doing so between schools is pretty much a huge pain in the ass.
Not that I'm complaining about the system - I don't know much about it, let alone have enough experience within it to judge it - but it's not as simple to use a less expensive school.
My library has DVDs (Score:4, Insightful)
then why not also have public libraries of movies
The last time I checked Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, it had collections of movies on VHS and DVD for lending.
Music especially doesn't cost so much more to produce that a book
It's also much easier to copy ever since home taping. Unlike tape decks, photocopiers made by Xerox can't just copy an entire book by the user mounting the source and destination media and pushing Start.
Re:Editions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You almost have point... (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, I think the police couldn't care less. They're just as brainwashed as everyone else, but in a hypothetical situation, where an informed and rational adult consumes drugs responsibly, what would they care? What would anyone care?
What people are scared of is the abuse. And someone made them believe that every drug user will abuse the drug and become a liability to society. And THAT is the crux of the matter.
It's the same thing with a lot of other 'problems'. Guns come to mind or people with unusual sexual tendencies. Somehow, the first thing people think about is 'Oh God, what if someone MAKES me participate? What if I become the VICTIM!!!11!!!'. It happened with homosexuals, it's happening now with pedophiles and private gun owners.
I mean most police officers don't do the job for the cash, as far as I'm informed, they don't make much money. Wouldn't you agree that they'd rather go after those who hurt and kill other people, rather than those who've been made into bogeymen?
Re:You mean racketeering (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't work that way. We can't just simply "force" a product to exist. If it doesn't exist already, then that typically means there isn't a happy medium between the cost of providing such a service and the cost to the users of the service. That's the way that free market works; if it can be done, and people want it, then it usually is done. If it doesn't exist, especially if it is a service in high demand, like free knowledge, then it means that, most probably, it can't exist without massive subsidies, or slave labour.
Re:You almost have point... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, because they're all the same, aren't they?
Re:You almost have point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and I think the parent poster's whole statement is a rather brave assumption. The kids I know can pretty easily decide whether they like a certain situation or not.
Personally, I think there is only a crime if there is a victim. A child knows when something is uncomfortable or/and painful, wouldn't you agree? So let's assume a child does have sexual contact with an adult, yet does not feel the situation was a bad one.
Under that hypothetical scenario, where is the victim? Is it important to make the child feel bad about the situation after the fact? Why? Because society deemed the act bad? Why did it do so? We know the Romans were pretty laid back about such things, so obviously that worked out for them, didn't it?
I was under the... uh... delusion that we try to protect the children from harm. This whole witch-hunt for supposed paedophiles feels a lot like pushing a situation into a preconceived mould that we deemed harmful and are therefore no longer willing to allow for those situations to be anything but.
And before you people explode and jump me like starved vultures a carcass, I have had contact with people who have had sexual relations with adults while they were kids and actually have fond memories of those encounters. There is thus evidence that such encounters can be positive. So how is it we're all so single-minded about this matter?
Keep em for reference! (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate these textbook posts! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You mean racketeering (Score:1, Insightful)
You can't extend IT to be representative of the whole world. Just because IT has some ingrained hatred for anyone with college experience doesn't mean college is worthless.
Re:Some colleges are renting textbooks as well. (Score:3, Insightful)
^^^^^ THIS.
The online material for textbooks is how the textbook publishers assassinated the second-hand market. The one-time-use codes for Mastering Chemistry/Mastering Calculus/Mastering Physics/whatever are the biggest racket these criminals could have added to their already-a-racket.
Textbooks are turning into extortion.
Re:You mean racketeering (Score:4, Insightful)
If it doesn't exist, especially if it is a service in high demand, like free knowledge, then it means that, most probably, it can't exist without massive subsidies
That might be true of an actual free market, but we don't have a free market. Not in textbooks, and not in a lot of things.
For one thing, the existence of copyright already makes this a market in which the government has intervened and set rules. Besides that, schools often require that students use a specific edition of a specific textbook, so students aren't free to shop around for a better textbook product.
Given that the vendors of textbooks are completely dependent on schools to require specific textbooks, the schools absolutely can "force" a product to exist. Whatever requirements they put on textbooks in order to use them, those are the requirements that publishers will meet. They're already forcing a sort of product to exist as it is.
Now it's possible for them to set requirements so unreasonable that no one will be able to meet them, but there's no evidence that open source textbooks are impossible.
Re:You mean racketeering (Score:2, Insightful)
For IT work, I'd hire someone who spent 2 years exploring their chosen field at home or at a lower level job and can explain topics in detail, rather than a graduate of a 4 year institution with their warm fuzzy diploma and no clue of how to really do the work.
This is a classic bias comparison - you're comparing two groups, but also starting out by defining that one is better than the other. You can't then conclude that one is therefore better than the other - that's a circular argument.
E.g., I might as well say "I'd hire someone who has never had any education and can explain everything in detail, than someone who's been to University, done a PhD, spent years working in the industry, and has no clue how to do their work"!
You can't generalise from your bias anecdote, and then making a generalisation. Anecdotes aren't evidence, and correlation isn't causation.
Re:You mean racketeering (Score:3, Insightful)
"Most, but not all, instructors are teaching because they can't hack it in the real world of their chosen field."
That depends very much on the field. I'm sure there are some where that is the case. In many, many fields the guys teaching are taking a couple hours of the day out from "doing it" in order to teach.
Re:You mean racketeering (Score:3, Insightful)
"Open source" isn't such a good idea, because you'd like a little more reliability in your text books than, for instance Wikipedia.
*facepalm*
Open source != Wiki.
Just because anyone can submit a patch to the Linux kernel, doesn't mean it has to be accepted. Just because anyone can fork the Linux kernel, doesn't make the new one official.
All this would mean is a creative commons license, so that no one entity can have a monopoly on all future versions of a given textbook, and so that people can fork when needed -- for example, a professor might want their own edition...
It in no way means that a given edition would be editable by anyone, or would be any less trustworthy than if it were under a different license. There's no particular reason you can't have a respected author and editor release just as reliable a text under Creative Commons as they would under "All Rights Reserved."
Re:You almost have point... (Score:3, Insightful)
I bet some of them....most in fact, think they're doing a useful if thankless job of protecting society. Most of the ones I've known were pretty good people. The exceptions tend to stand out because of how much power they can wield abusively. They are, however, exceptions. To vilify an entire group of people because of the handful that are rotten is ridiculous.
No, there is one good reason why they are all painted with such a very broad brush.
A minority of them, probably a very small minority, are corrupt and do wield their power abusively. Then all of the rest pretend like they don't know that this goes on and refuse to do anything about it. I think they call that the "blue wall of silence." Those who don't stand up and try to do something about their corrupt coworkers are also part of the problem, in fact I don't know which is worse.
Considering that police officers will fearlessly engage in high-speed chases, deal with armed attackers, and otherwise bravely face many dangerous and potentially life-threatening situations, I have a hard time believing that the "blue wall of silence" goes on because they don't have the courage. They're just not cowardly people. No, I think it's more like tacit approval.
When members of the public see this going on, what are they supposed to think? Is anyone really surprised that this makes all of them look bad? You combine that with the fact that lately it's becoming trendy for officers to intimidate people who have cameras and use them out in public (I refer to countries/places where doing so is legal) and they start looking like a bunch of thugs who have something to hide. It's really a shame, because their job, their duty, is actually a noble and respectable enterprise when it's done correctly.
Re:You mean racketeering (Score:3, Insightful)
From your post I get the impression you're probably a product of an American applied IT/CS program. Everything I've heard suggests to me that particular system is particularly broken.
My undergrad and grad studies were aimed at preparing me for a research career. All of my professors were active researchers, except for one who was mostly retired, but was a nobel laureate (shall we count him as a "can do?"). In grad school, one of the things they liked to do was have a course coordinator (also an active researcher) and individual lessons taught by experts. Many times we'd have a lesson start late, and when it did start the neurosurgeon/neurologist/interventional radiologist teaching it would show up in scrubs and have to stop once or twice to answer a page.
I know one guy who did a more industry-oriented IT/CS type degree. He had one instructor who frequently had to reschedule classes because he was being flown across the country to consult on short notice. Of course, both he and I were going to (different) public universities, not located in the US, so your mileage may vary.
Re:You mean racketeering (Score:4, Insightful)
Except if the requirements are such that no vendor can afford to meet them...
How is this adding something? Did you notice in my post where I said:
Now it's possible for them to set requirements so unreasonable that no one will be able to meet them
The point is the textbook industry as it currently exists is already the product of an unfree market. The current realities of the textbook market are caused by those un-freedoms. If someone has it in their head to try to fix the situation, it isn't too sensible to complain against them on the basis of interference in "the free market".
Or to put it another way, you can say that you want a Ferrari for free, but no one is obligated to provide it to you.
There are lots of problems with this comparison. First, we're talking about textbooks and not Ferraris. Ferraris aren't necessary for the education of our youth and the betterment of society. Second, it's not a question of whether anyone in particular is obligated to provide textbooks, but whether schools and students should be obligated to pay exorbitant fees to textbook publishers.
Finally, the expense of Ferraris isn't generated by artificial scarcity created by copyright law. Ferraris are expensive, at least in part, due to the materials and labor to create each one. However, once a textbook is created, it could be copied indefinitely by anyone at practically no expense, if not for copyright law. Seeing as copyrights are an artificial right granted by society for the sake of the betterment of society, publishers using the copyright to the detriment of our education system seems to me to be an abuse.
Anyway, all of that isn't really the point. The point is, open source textbooks would be a boon for education, and I haven't yet heard a reason why it's unworkable. Even if it stops being a valid commercial venture to some extent, that may just be an issue of technology making an industry obsolete-- buggy whips and all.
Re:Problem with that - Teacher's Editions (Score:3, Insightful)
If the teacher needs the answer handed to them they shouldn't be teaching the class. Forcing the teachers to read the textbook and solve the problems at least once will go a long way towards making sure there are no glaring errors in the text (or our teacher selection). And if the book is open source, then they can simply submit a patch and everybody benefits.
Re:You mean racketeering (Score:3, Insightful)
Most, but not all, instructors are teaching because they can't hack it in the real world of their chosen field.
I don't buy this for a second, especially not for science & engineering professors. First, have you looked at how hard it is to get a professorship somewhere recently? It's almost certainly a lot more competitive than your typical industry job. Second, you don't put yourself through a Ph.D. program unless you want to do research (or perhaps if you want to teach at a non-research institution), so most professors are in it because they want to research.
About the most you can say is (1) they are in a university because they can't cut it in an industry research lab (but that's not saying much, at least in CS, because the industry research labs are also very good and competitive), and/or (2) they are in a job that doesn't have a particular industry counterpart (outside of research labs), like theory people or pure math profs, or perhaps profs in liberal arts. (I don't know what, if anything, is available for, say, an English PhD outside of a professorship.)
Re:Problem with that - Teacher's Editions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You mean racketeering (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially as many textbooks are written by professors now, and often almost totally for academic recognition (well, it's not for the money).
Editing Wikipedia (and I imagine, Wikibooks) feels like using Subversion. Slow, awkward, and my changes get accidentally overwritten by the next guy. Maybe once wikis are based on a better source-control model than the "one definitive master" and global-locking we'll get better books.
Re:Problem with that - Teacher's Editions (Score:3, Insightful)
i'd say, leave the answers in there. If it's a math class they still have to show their work. If it isn't a math class, ding them for copying out of the book. Or, don't have questions in the book.
Let the teacher make questions. Have homework be something other than "answer 1-15 on page 142". i always hated busy work like that.
Or, we simply have the OS Textbook include a link to another document called The Answers.
Or... have a teacher's edition. There's no reason to NOT. Books aren't software and don't have to include the full functionality that a teacher edition just because you thought so. Full disclosure doesn't have to apply.
Re:Problem with that - Teacher's Editions (Score:2, Insightful)
If the teacher needs the answer handed to them they shouldn't be teaching the class.
You don't know what you are talking about. Teachers don't use answer sheets because they need the answers, but because of time management issues. Have you ever taught a class before? Or several classes on the same semester? Having to come up with non-trivial exercises, with answers already printed for discussion in a class?
You can't force teachers not just to read the book, but to proof read it, not unless you actually pay them for. And I know what you are going to say: no, that's not part of their jobs, nor they get paid for that.
This would be akin of me doing comprehensive regression and unit testing on 3rd party software libraries every time I use them in a software project. Obviously one does research to know what library to use, but that's research in terms of expected gains. You take a library or piece of code or whatever on reasonable premises that it is production quality. Same with books.
I know you want to paint this as a simple case that can be solved with the silver bullet that is open source. But it isn't. Know the subject of teaching (or any subject) before trying to find a solution for its problems. Try it sometime.