Art School's Expensive Art History Textbook Contains No Actual Art 371
Dr Herbert West writes "Students at Ontario College of Art and Design were forced to buy a $180 textbook filled with blank squares. Instead of images of paintings and sculpture throughout history (that presumably would fall under fair-use) the textbook for 'Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800' features placeholders with a link to an online image. A letter from the school's dean stated that had they decided to clear all the images for copyright to print, the book would have cost a whopping $800. The screengrabs are pretty hilarious, or depressing, depending on your point of view."
So (Score:5, Insightful)
They seem to believe that a url where you can see it online is as good as having it printed right in fromt of you. Were I one of those parents I would just hand then a piece of paper with a link to a picture of $180. Fair is fair.
Re:Global Visual Culture From Preshistory to 1800 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Global Visual Culture From Preshistory to 1800 (Score:5, Insightful)
Even a poor snapshot is better than a blank white square.
Deserved (Score:0, Insightful)
Honestly, they're art history students. I doubt they even know what money is, if they've even heard of it. I mean, if you're already charging for the world's most worthless education you're pretty much robbing someone, may as well grab all you can along the way.
Re:Global Visual Culture From Preshistory to 1800 (Score:5, Insightful)
Even a poor snapshot is better than a blank white square
You forgot one thing -
A book filled with poor snapshots will not make Slashdot
A book filled with blank white squares ... will
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
OCAD is a very well known and respected school in Ontario. The school itself is not a scam. Having a textbook custom created by a company (Prentice Hall) is very expensive.
And was it really necessary to have a custom-created Art History textbook?
Those two core Art History classes (covering pre-history to around the year 1400, and the second covering 1400 to 1945) are a requirement for literally everyone who studies Art, regardless of major or if they're pursuing a BA or BFA, painting, sculpture, or graphic design, etc. It's not like there weren't oodles of candidate textbooks for their curriculum to choose from.
The joke of this story is that the Art History department actually went along with Prentice Hall on this scam, instead of turning right around and looking elsewhere.
The photos of art are being licenced, not the art (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, I don't know... a printed image in a book has a pretty limited resolution. An on-line image can offer a lot more...
Including a hyperlink or button to open a high-res version of an image on a reliable site (no Geocities or john doe's website, that might be down tomorrow, or replaced with advertising) could be acceptable on an e-Book, intended for consumption on a tablet with a high-def display, with an internet connection available at all times.
You could read the eBook, and view the image in the same browser without exiting the book or 'breaking' your reading session or stream of thought; so it's as good as if the image were in the book.
However, in a print work, for an art class a picture of the art in the book itself, is indispensable, should be considered mandatory.
It's a scam (Score:4, Insightful)
The book likely is authored by someone who works at the university. So they write the book with all the pictures. Publisher says "Pictures are real expensive we'll have to charge a ton." So they leave the pictures out, and require the students to buy the book anyhow.
You often find that the very worst textbooks are required by the teacher that wrote them (or they were written by the department head or so on).
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:College textbooks a scam? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Nobody's holding a gun to your head. However, what if, in order to graduate, you must pass the class? And in order to pass the class, you must buy the textbook? In that case, the distinction is quite small.
It's similar to saying, "You don't HAVE to obey the law." It's technically correct. You're a free-will being, and you can make your own choices. However, there will be consequences if you decide to go that route.
Re:Museums don't let you (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about it, if your text book has 750 pictures in it, and you have to wrap a dollar bill around each image for licensing, your book in now $750 above your cost to publish it. Ergo an $850 test book. Which just goes to show you that the world is now officially Bat Fuck Crazy. Since the kids have to go to the web anyway to see the images, just turn the book into a webpage, with WORKING LINKS, and force each student to pay $180 to access the website for a semester. After the end of the semester, as a gift, they can have one of these image free door stops as a thank you for having taken this ridiculous class... or they can save the trees and waste of all other human resources and forgo dead tree version.
So now we need to beat the author, the School Administration, and perhaps kill all the lawyers involved in passing the laws resulting in the absurdity. Then as a fitting finale, we can bring all the people responsible for this body of legal atrocities and who've put their profit ahead of the future education of our society and launch them to the moon without benefit of a space capsule. When their collective bodies hit the lunar surface we can rename the region Mare Stultitia et Avaritia, The Sea of Stupidity and Greed. We can take a picture of it. Put in a book at no cost and show our children this is what happens to scum sucking pigs. Its a dream, I know, but its a good dream.
Re:Museums don't let you (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure what the arrangements would look like for commercial use, but I'd guess they're usually expensive and very specific.
Yes, that's what their sign says. But it doesn't have the force of law. They can make it physically hard for you to take the photos, but if you manage to take a photo of a painting 100 years old, the copyright of the photo belongs to you 100%. You can do anything you want with it.
Re:Global Visual Culture From Preshistory to 1800 (Score:5, Insightful)
Its worse, even the original publisher will now have to pay for the authorized use of controlled content items otherwise in the public domain. Uses will conflict, law suits will fly like flocks of birds on the wing and ultimately every thought, every word, every idea will be locked down tighter than Lady Guinevere's chastity belt. You so much as hum more than 3 notes in public and a duly appointed officer of the court will pull you up so hard and so fast, you'll need to check to if your feet are still in the shoes. The stupid is accelerating people. It was fine a hundred years ago when your stupid only meant you'd have to learn to walk without the toe on your left foot anymore... damn farm machinery. Your neighbor couldn't even hear you scream curses, nobody was disturbed. Things worked just fine in spite of the stupid, because the percentage of stupid per unit mass was low.
Flash forward a century and now I can pay some imbecile to go to Washington, to have another imbecile pass a law that will require people have to drive with their children glued to the roof. And they'll do it, sure as Gawd made little green apples these crazy fucks will try to pass this law, and if I throw enough money around it'll pass, and the Supreme Court will find it Constitutional. We now live in a time where you can make people do anything if you just throw money around. You can remove consciousness from future generations by making it pay per view. You can put all our rights in little jars and show them in a museum. You can even turn flesh and blood people into "Human Resource Assets". Makes you want to throw up just a little, doesn't it? I don't know any more where to get off this bus, but I want off. Either someone please steer this thing in a sane direction or let me off at the next stop thanks.
Re:Global Visual Culture From Preshistory to 1800 (Score:5, Insightful)
Although, of course it devalues the textbook as well (IMO)... for no pictures or diagrams, the book should be less than $50 a pop.
Are you mad! An art appreciation book with no pictures... here let me frame this in a context you might better grasp. You go to an adult bookstore. You see a hot little DVD, the clerk says "Oh, great choice, this is so hot, that'll be $180." You say $180! How can this possibly be! Is it that good?" He assures you it is, so you put down your money, and go home, pop it in the player and every time someone is about to consummate the boom chicka wow wow, the image is replaced with the URL pointing you to a site where you can see people engaging in sexual acts. Now, tell me, how are you feeling? How much is that DVD worth? Would you say that DVD is now worth only $50? Would "Devalue" even be the first word that popped into your head?
This is education as rape. This is copyright gone bug fuck. This is student abuse in no uncertain terms and a dark cloud that threatens to extinguish education as we know it. What this is not is the devaluation of a text book. This is the devaluation of future society.
Re:Getting caught has nothing to do with it (Score:5, Insightful)
It can't be a breach of contract. I didn't agree to anything when I paid them money for the ticket. I certainly didn't agree to have conditions imposed on me after the sale. (I can't see a ticket until I pay money for it...) That's like, "by opening this package, you agree to the terms of the license enclosed". No, no I don't! Especially if I can't see the license until I pay money.
Also, how are they really going to enforce "no commercial use"? Let's say I take a picture with their permission under the no commercial use. I then turn around and give (not sell) the copyright to that picture to someone else. They can then use that picture commercially because there is no agreement forcing me to force any future copyright owner to agree to the conditions.
I'm sure the same argument would apply in national parks and similar, except that they are generally run by people with access to guns and prisons and such. Still, if I'm in country B, and I then return to my original country A, there isn't much the authorities in country B can do to stop me selling my pictures or using them for advertising or whatever.
Re:Museums don't let you (Score:5, Insightful)
Or better yet, download all the images off bittorrent for free, put them on a CD with html, and give it to them free. Or even better, print the book with these pictures and just give it away free to all who enroll in class. In completely unrelated news, some other miscellaneous university fine or fee just went up $20-30.
Or just use an older textbook... the class in question is an art history class ending at 1800, with nothing more recent. I'm pretty sure, given that I've taken such classes as electives in the past, that there are other textbooks exist which don't cost anyhere near that much, and which cover the period in question. Of course, then the class wouldn't be using the textbook which was written by their prof, and they wouldn't make money off it! Had a lot of that when I was at university....
Re:Museums don't let you (Score:4, Insightful)
Which just goes to show you that the world is now officially Bat Fuck Crazy.
Have some perspective: we've stopped talking about mutually assured thermonuclear destruction as if it were the most natural thing ever. We're starting to end the prohibition of pot, and haven't tried nationally to ban alcohol in decades. The west has not had anything quite at the level of the crusades in quite some time.
One idiotic committee at one shitty school who made a very stupid decision about copyright doesn't mean the world is heading to legal hell in a briefcase. That said, I do think the idea of lynching some lawyers to set an example has some merit.
Re:Museums don't let you (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's not lose sight of what happened here. The barrier to education wasn't a barrier or a no-flashes policiy in a museum; it was a school, for recommending/requiring a useless book (which even if it had been done correctly, would have still been overpriced). If this school has a single student enrolled next semester, then our own low standards are the real barrier.