Pirating Music to Pirating Textbooks

Unfortunately not everyone is rich like you and can afford every single damn textbook. If you cant afford them you have no other choice than to pirate them or however you can achieve them.

Hello,

I think you are missing the point, Lilxkid24. Justin may have had to take out a loan and/or forego several conveniences such as a cellular phone, Internet connectivity, cable TV, gaming consoles and computer software in order to purchase his books. For him, it was worth some temporary privation now in order to get his education off to a good start; think of it as kind of a long term investment in a future career.

I prefer to buy new textbooks, too, but there is nothing wrong with buying used ones if you cannot afford them. Stealing textbooks, however, is unjustifiable.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

When education becomes affordable, then there will be no reason for people to have to steal text books. I suppose though that according to Aryeh, we the impoverished should just learn to accept our condition, and go into debt for the rest of our lives. Most poor people are barely able to afford eating and paying rent, let alone get an education.
Buying used is a far more superior environmental solution to today’s ever shrinking forests.

Hello,

Not at all, Shadowmyth. I am merely saying that there are always alternatives to taking something for which you do not have rights. When I was in college, I had to purchase textbooks, too, and they were expensive, especially on what little I made back then. However, I did sacrifice a few things so that I could afford them, because my education was more important to me than, say, having cable TV and I’d rather wear a sweater inside a room during winter than pay extra to heat the apartment, et cetera.

I do happen to agree with Justin that textbooks are grossly overpriced, but I also know there are ways to purchase books at more reasonable prices then what is offered through the school bookstore. One of the advantages of the Internet is access to price comparison shopping engines, which makes it a lot easier to find and purchase expensive textbooks at more reasonable prices.

Everybody should have the right to an education, regardless of their background or how much money they make. It represents a special challenge for people who are impoverished, but that doesn’t preclude looking for scholarships or grants or even just working temp jobs for a few months in order to save up for tuition and expenses. Community colleges, for example, are a great way for to get half of the requirements for a bachelors degree done inexpensively, and you still get the same degree as if you were at university for four years.

Higher education often does seem stacked against those who cannot afford it, however, it is a system like any other, and there are cracks in it that can be exploited if you can find them.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Justin, you are absolutely correct and you understand the value of an education and the concept of an investment. If people spent more time understanding that and less time and energy trying to “game the system” they would be far ahead in the long run……but, hey, these people will probably be working for you someday.

You can annotate pdfs without printing them out and accomplish the same thing. Not advocating piracy, but an electronic form of these books at a reduced cost would be welcome!

As a recent physics undergraduate i understand both sides of the issue here, lets not forget the most valuable recourse students have: their friends/classmates! I would share a book with a friend or ask to use a friend’s book! Most basic facts or data I need for a class can be found on the internet, and i don’t mean just finding a pirated copy of a book.

To address one of the main arguments: future value. You might need a textbook for the next class you take, but as for a textbook providing lasting value, forget it.

Taking the Organic Chemistry example. If your studies continue in Chemistry or a related field, by the time you graduate you’ll know everything you need from that text and won’t need to refer back to the text or your notes. If you don’t continue in a field that uses Chemistry, you also won’t need your text after college.

Ask anyone 10 years out of college how often they opened an undergraduate textbook in the last 5 years and you’re unlikely to get an answer greater than zero.

I agree with Tommy that there should be cheaper electronic versions of the textbooks available, but it makes it kind of hard to follow the discussion in class if they want you to tun to page 254.

Such electronic texts have been offered before, but had a nasty little thing called DRM that was set to disable access to the book after some predetermined number of years.

If you are like me, the textbooks for subjects related to your major course of study, should not be something that you sell back. Despite what RJ says, there are times that you can’t quite recall some important little detail that you know was mentioned in that old textbook. Having lost a few of my more useful textbooks over the years, looking at buying a replacement makes me wish I had kept the old ones. Sure some subjects will continue to advance, and nothing beats an up to date reference, but those are also the fields that are advancing faster than the textbooks anyways. There are cases where you have to deal with how the subject matter was treated in the older context.

I work in the field of computer programming, and it just amazes me of how much the speed of CPU and memory have increased over the years, yet despite being able to work with larger and larger documents, the actual speed of work output has not significantly increased due to bloat and other changes in programming environments. I can take an old-school program, make minor modifications so it will run on the modern hardware, and it will run circles around the modern equivalent. It would seem that modern programmers could learn a few things by reading how the problems were solved on the older slow and memory constrained hardware.

Exo

I bought used if it was a good copy, and compared prices on the internet (and this was 10 years ago)
If it was a class outside my interest and major, I’d sell it back. If you don’t have enough money for books, you likely qualify for financial aid, you may receive grants or loans. What’s really stupid is people who get the aid and spend it on other stuff, and say they can’t afford books, or people who don’t qualify, so obviously do have the money, but spending it on a flashy car or something, and saying they can’t afford books.

If you are using pirated books, you are STEALING, and what’s more, you may be getting a copy with errors or changes to it that will screw you up.

let’s look at it from another perspective. I’m sure many of the naysayers here would be the first to point fingers at any corporation they thought was gouging.

Well, that is exactly what the education establishment is doing. When I was in college some 30 years ago I saw the beginnings of it and now that my daughter has just graduated from college I can testify to the escalation of it.

The “it” being the changing of text books for the exact same course every year. Even when being taught by the same professor!

The reason? The educational establishment tries to perpetuate itself and fund itself. One of the ways it funds itself is by having professors writing books. So there seems to be a bit of an unspoken paradigm (calling it a conspiracy would be going too far) to do this because “some deserving professor who wrote a book could undoubtedly use the money, just like I can when I write a book.”

So another way to look at this is the market providing the proper adjustment. Notice I didn’t say which market, black markets are almost always adjustments to unreasonableness. For instance, just look at the history of prohibition not to mention the current war on drugs.

I spent a year studying chemistry and physics in France, and they used no textbooks at all, aside from asigning an occuasional problem set from textbooks available in the library. The entire curriculum was from lecture notes.
No one had to buy a single book.
But heaven help you if your attention wandered, or you missed a day. You really needed your support network of fellow students to ensure the completeness of your notes. Of course today, the notes would probably be available on-line.
Was the education of the same quality and caliber as in the U.S.?
I don’t believe so. Although textbooks were available in the library, it was difficult to explore additional information and subjects on your own. Having everyone on the same level playing field is not always the best thing. It breeds mediocrity.

I think that if these companies really want to make a change and stop pirating, then they should make these textbooks affordable. This is why American’s are known around the world as being ignorant….because in the big picture, we are. This is because so many of us are not educated because we can’t afford it. If companies don’t want to be stolen from, then they shouldn’t steal from us by overpricing books that they know is vital for us to educate ourselves. They are exploiting a weakness of ours to become filthy rich. In a sense, it’s a robin hood scenario. We are robbing the rich to give to the poor (ourselves). It’s not like we are stealign for fun. We are doing it to better ourselves in life and to obtain something which is vital for us to become successful in this world. If they want honesty and people to abide good morals, then they should do so themsleves. What goes around comes around. Sorry, just my two cents.