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558 Comments
- MScrip, on 07/26/2008, -24/+443Good for them. You'd think college campuses would embrace the use of digital technology like e-books.
Instead, kids are forced to pirate their textbooks in order to get them in the format they want. I hate books. It's the same reason I love digital photos... they go right into my computer. Down with paper. - jbenson2, on 07/26/2008, -4/+413Scanning a 1,300 page text book! That sounds like a lot of work.
- Sornos, on 07/26/2008, -4/+307Good Lord this is beautiful. As a Biology student this is worthy of worship. I would send this guy money if I could.
TPB link here:
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4140501/Organic_Chemis ... - Kingoftherings, on 07/27/2008, -8/+301I usually prefer having a physical copy of a book, I hate reading off my computer screen for long lengths of time, but I do agree in that books shouldn't be so expensive.
- twiztidsinz, on 07/27/2008, -1/+2281). 10 people pitch in $10..
2). destroy a $100 book..
3). ???
4). they all get a book (profit) - inactive, on 07/27/2008, -0/+215Im glad college students are finally starting to rebel against the atrocity that is the price of text books, I dont understand how these companies charge twenty year olds 200 dollars a book, and these major universities allow it, its totally ridiculous
- brokencode, on 07/27/2008, -1/+209That kid is my hero!
"A note to all publishers of books for college level classes:
Myself and all other students are tired of getting raped by you sorry bastards, rearranging chapters every 2yrs while adding nothing meaningful, just so you can sell more of your *****.
We agree that you need to be paid fair money for your work, rather than rape us like a cut-rate bitch. Since you don't see it that way, we are going to put it into terms you can understand. No more money for you. Your ***** is gonna be free now, to anyone who wants it in a digital format.
You are not being fair to students, so we are not going to be fair to you. How you like that dick up your ass? Feels nice, doesn't it... " - groverblue, on 07/27/2008, -3/+198RANDALL STROSS is a ***** idiot. The motivation for scanning the pages is twisted into a craving for digital format. It's about the fact that books are 100-200$ a pop, a complete rip-off. so the OP scans it so others dont have to spend that much; a "***** you" to the greedy *****. this has nothing to do with format preference or technology.
- danielazarc, on 11/17/2009, -3/+158This is much better than me paying nearly a hundred dollars for new books I'm forced to buy, and leaving me with getting five dollars for selling it back to the student store. This sort of thing should be common everywhere, not fought.
- mardraum, on 07/27/2008, -0/+152@JoeB4ever: yeah, you're losing out on the five bucks you'd get from selling it back.
- h4mx0r, on 07/27/2008, -1/+151It's for the Greater Good.
- jinxation, on 07/27/2008, -0/+145Cut all the pages from the spine, insert them in a recently made copier, double sided source, most these days have universal scan functions, and a pdf of the book would be on your computer in about 30 minutes. Not too hard at all, actually.
- LeadHead, on 07/26/2008, -4/+145To any company that has it's wares or products on the piratebay: You're too late, nothing is better than free.
Sorry.
pro free information. - btschul, on 07/27/2008, -4/+125Good for them. I can't wait until the day when you can get an entire college education on the Pirate Bay.
- Chainheart, on 07/27/2008, -1/+119...The Greater Good...
- Falldog, on 07/27/2008, -4/+115 My last year of college I bought a guitar instead of textbooks. While I still don't use it too much it was definitely the smarter purchase.
- CrushThemTorg, on 07/27/2008, -4/+99Think how much money they could have saved on distribution and materials if they had done this years ago. Now it's totally out of their hands ... poor bastards.
- inactive, on 07/27/2008, -1/+85Now they are gonna start putting DRM into books.
You can only read a page 5 times, and it all has to be at the same desk. - JoeB4ever, on 07/27/2008, -1/+82Problem is there's SOOOO many text books. Odds are the text book you actually need isn't available. I do like the idea of not having to bring my notebook AND a huge book with me to class.
- Gogara, on 07/27/2008, -1/+79At the urging of a professor a few semesters back, i purchased a book on matlab in e-book format. It was DRM'd to hell and back. I was one of, say, 30 students just in that class who had purchased the book in this manner. Within two weeks a virus wiped literally every laptop on campus. Every single person who bought the book was ***** out of luck.
Moral - DRM is unacceptable on anything, but when you put it on something that somebody NEEDS, rather that enjoys, and refuse to support it.... the publisher can burn in hell. - lordmike, on 07/27/2008, -0/+77And it would probably be the old edition, made obsolete by the addition of four graphs and a new font.
- xerigen, on 07/27/2008, -0/+76Major universities allow it? Usually they OWN a bookstore or two.
- Uzumaki82, on 07/27/2008, -1/+77I especially like how books on topics such as Maths that haven't changed in DECADES need frequent "updates" and new editions. ***** that.
- ry4nsm1th, on 07/27/2008, -2/+73I hope my textbooks for next semester will be up on Pirate Bay.
- bencanfield, on 07/27/2008, -0/+68There are already textbook torrent sites up and running, for a while now, too. Publishers could make so much money doing this themselves and I'd be damn happy with buying a $20-30 2 semester pass instead of buying and (possibly) returning a book which would end up costing me $30-120 (depending if the school bought it back).
Plus pressing ctrl+f to find something rather than speed-skimming would be godly. - mysteryberto, on 07/27/2008, -0/+66Don't forget the new chapter in the middle of the book that is worthless and not used by your teacher but messes up the page numbers.
- cnot3, on 07/27/2008, -0/+65Not to mention a new ***** edition comes out every year. So you can't use last year's book, even though more or less nothing has been changed. And then there's the professors that write their own textbooks and put a new one out every year. What a ***** racket.
- username7410, on 07/27/2008, -1/+66What a genius *****.
- rockstar1o9, on 07/27/2008, -0/+63The problem I had in college was with publishers who changed 2 or 3 pictures, maybe a few words here and there, and decided they need to publish an entire new edition of a textbook each year, making that $220 textbook completely unsellable to the bookstore once the class is over. This prevents students from recouping some of the exorbitant costs publishers charge, which many use towards textbooks for the following semester/quarter. A better solution would be a $10-$15 supplemental book with only those changes, instead of an entire new version of what is pretty much the same textbook.
- Meany123, on 07/27/2008, -0/+59This has NOTHING to do with the format, and everything to do with getting scammed every year by greedy publishers.
Every year, a new edition, which cosmetic changes here and there just to make sure you can't reuse the old book. Some books get up to edition 12 before they finally just re-organize it in a big way, slap on a different title, and bravo, brand new book, and another 12 editions coming right up. It's a ***** racket. It took me until my final years of college before I said ***** it and started to photocopy everything ;) - bxblox, on 07/27/2008, -1/+605. Notice shrinkwrap and seal on book reading "No return if unwrapped"
6. No profit. - SniperGX1, on 07/27/2008, -1/+60It would appear as though the NYTimes doesn't quite understand what Bit-Torrent is.
"It describes itself as an “anticopyright organization” and offers music, movies, television shows and software, as well as e-books like textbooks — not a single item of which, it boasts, has ever been removed at the request of a copyright owner."
TPB doesn't "offer" anything. They are a torrent tracker and thus hosts none of the information they are credited with hosting. - Newedge14, on 07/27/2008, -9/+65Hmm, 30 day return policy sounds mighty fine right now.
1. Buy Book
2. Scan
3. Return
4. Seed
5. ???
6. Profit!!!!!!!!! - rc3105, on 07/27/2008, -2/+54@JoeB4ever - yah, because nobody would EVER buy a used textbook with the spine cut off, especially if the pages were hole punched and placed in a nice binder
oh wait...
I did that with all my college textbooks in the 80's-90's, never had any problem reselling them, usually at a profit. It makes it easy to spread book out for studying or carry around just the needed pages. Any time someone asked where they could get a binder edition like mine (nearly every class) I offered to binder theirs for $5. Takes about 30 seconds and I did quite a few. ;-) - Peko, on 07/27/2008, -0/+46On one hand, I can understand the $200 price tag. It's normally a relatively short run for a relatively large and "complicated book". Diagrams, example questions which are multiple redundant vetted, etc. etc.
However the price is artificially high because each year a "New Edition" comes out, with swapped example questions. This way the Prof can ensure that students have more obstacles in copying answers to homework questions, although I found that it was barely an obstacle to find a completed assignment the night before it was due. It also ensures that the used price of a textbook was dirt poor. And this is compounded with the fact that most textbooks have no real value for the student past the assigned year. (I kept a few, hoping they might be useful as reference and that was mostly wishful thinking)
There have also been allegations of kickbacks. Possibly quid pro quo where a prof chooses the textbook that his buddy worked on, in exchange for a similar contribution from that other prof in the future.
I see no reason not to keep the same edition of a textbook around for a long long long time. Calculus doesn't change. Physics doesnt change. And unless Plato does a re-write, I figure that The Republic is going to remain the same. - lusenok2, on 07/27/2008, -0/+45...and renumerated problems at the end of a chapter
- Pillage, on 07/27/2008, -3/+48am I ***** the man or being a cheap bastard when I steal paper from my school?
- Alphabet, on 07/27/2008, -2/+45why don't you torrent them?
- dwninjungleland, on 07/27/2008, -1/+43I'm using this textbook right now... can't believe I dropped 300 dollars on it a couple weeks ago.
Until today, I have never really had the need to use bittorrent. But as of today, I have been converted. - CYR1X, on 07/27/2008, -4/+46YES! This is exactly what I was hoping would happen before I go to college.
- dakbonsa, on 07/27/2008, -1/+43I had a professor who required us to use the textbook that he wrote....and he came up with new editions every other year
- quomen, on 07/27/2008, -2/+43Good luck pirating that diploma
- somestranger26, on 07/27/2008, -1/+40@Pillage
Both. - prisoner24601, on 07/27/2008, -1/+37I realize that for many publishers it's truly inconceivable that people have any legitimate reason to *insist* on digital formats. For me the reason is www.spreeder.com and if you haven't seen it, you really ought to check it out. It's a free on-line speed reading java applet that you can paste text into and it will flash onscreen in a way that lets you absorb it in an incredibly fast way. (Bonus: Use IE7's "save as Web Archive .mht file" to save it to your local hard drive to read stuff when you are disconnected from the internet.)
What publishers of ALL books don't grasp is that paper is not only less convenient (and unjustifiably expensive to print and truck around the planet) but for a generation that embraces current technology, a genuine impediment to reading, notating and referencing information that is a vital part of our lives.
Yet they REFUSE to provide eBooks no matter how much it costs society. Truly sad. - Ryan2845, on 07/27/2008, -2/+38There used to be many engineering textbooks on the eDonkey/eMule network back in it's heyday. Saved me several hundred dollars in college.
- solidcube, on 07/27/2008, -2/+37How did a virus wipe out every laptop on campus? Not to pick nits, but that sounds fishy to me.
- Heavypettingzoo, on 07/27/2008, -1/+35I know that feeling of getting dry-raped by the publishers. My stats prof wrote the textbook that we used in his class and it was the 6th edition of the book. A friend of mine happened to be a member at his yacht club and discovered that he had a new boat that was named "The 6th Edition". The book was about 500 pages and close to $200...on the first day someone yelled out in the lecture that the book was too expensive and that he should do something about it. He said something along the lines of "well we don't have a big distribution, only a few schools use this book, so the price must be set accordingly to cover costs." What a *****-head.
- inactive, on 07/27/2008, -0/+34From: DrHagood@university.edu
Subject: URGENT: UPDATE ON HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
Body: Attached is the corrected homework assignment. Cheers, Dr. Hagood
(attached: assignment2.pdf.exe ) - trunks333, on 07/27/2008, -1/+343 weeks before the semester starts, i email all my teachers asking for the ISBN codes of the books i need. Then use half.com to purchase those books. When the semester is over, i usually post them back on half.com and sometimes make a small profit. I average around a $40-$50 profit every semester. The important thing is purchasing those books before the semester actually starts since the prices go up dramatically on half.com. I feel sorry for those people spending $600 for each semester and then reselling the books back to the bookstore for $200.
- Tanktunker, on 07/27/2008, -0/+33They don't need a new chapter, all they need to do is move the pages around and they're protected.
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