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Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks

123 points by lightspot 14y ago

moistgorilla 14y ago
I'm tired of this. I am not going to pay for any product I can pirate anymore. I don't even feel guilty about it. If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. I'm tired of these middlemen. I'm also tired of people preaching about how piracy is unethical. A copied piece of data is not equivalent to a lost sale. People cannot own information. You cannot own an algorithm or idea. Imagine if Newton owned the laws of motion, imagine if he owned calculus. How can someone own an arrangement of words or sounds. If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws. edit: And let us not forget the primary purpose of these laws. The purpose wasn't so you could get insanely wealthy off of an idea. It was to provide an incentive for people to create and learn. Copyright and patent laws are now doing the opposite.
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  > If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws. People used to think freeing someone's slave was unethical property theft as well. As soon as the economic interest shift, so does the mainstream ethics. Same will happen to piracy, as soon as authors cannot make money off copyright and patents. Then it's the monopoly of ideas that will become unethical, and not the other way around.
- cheeze 14y ago
  I Don't have a problem with it if I can get an ebook for a reasonable place. That being said, throughout college many of my books were ~$150. No way I'm paying that.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  You cannot own an algorithm or idea. Imagine if Newton owned the laws of motion, imagine if he owned calculus. And you can't copyright them either. How can someone own an arrangement of words or sounds. Because that person made it? Are you saying people have no right to own the things they make?
  - vibrunazo 14y ago
    > Because that person made it? Are you saying people have no right to own the things they make? "I can only see so far because I'm standing in the shoulder of giants." Imagine if you had to pay for every one of the thousands little concept that your own idea (inevitably) derives from. That system would be unsustainable. We can only make progress because we can expand and improve on what were created before.
    - crusso 14y ago
      Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea is derived from? That's a straw man. The argument for paying people for new IP is that for a limited time we should offer rewards for people to add to the collective knowledge of our society. So really in terms of your argument, the consumer isn't paying for "standing on the shoulder of giants" either. The consumer of IP is only paying for the incremental value added by the creator of the content. As a society, we discovered that rewarding producers adds to the useful aggregate more than just hoping that they'll add the same amount of content without compensation.
      - vibrunazo 14y ago
        > Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea is derived from? IP limits production to create artificial scarcity. No matter how you look at it, after you copyright or patent something. You are limiting what can be created in the world. > As a society, we discovered that rewarding producers adds to the useful aggregate more than just hoping that they'll add the same amount of content without compensation No we did not. Historically, Intellectual property was created as one more monopoly privilege for the monarchy. [1] Together with the monopoly selling rice, and other commodities, were the monopoly of printing books. At no point in history did we, as a society, conclude that if we limit reward producers it would add to the useful aggregate. That excuse was only invented after the "monopoly privilege" over copying books were renamed to "copy rights". At the same time that other monarchy monopolies were destroyed. Society never discovered that it's worth in the aggregate. You cannot prove it's worth in the aggregate. Any attempt so far to measure the aggregate has been absurd. [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html
- fossuser 14y ago
  Too often people are just ignorant about the law's purpose, or they just don't understand it. I can see why too, it's a simpler argument with a lot of money behind it for the creator to say they should own what they create rather than realizing the limited time monopoly was only a means to promote the progress of science and useful arts. I wrote a bit about it here: http://zacharyalberico.com/post/16427595132/no-infringement-intended http://zacharyalberico.com/post/16427595132/no-infringement-...
- superuser2 14y ago
  What do you do for a living?
- planetguy 14y ago
  I am not going to pay for any product I can pirate anymore. + A copied piece of data is not equivalent to a lost sale uhh huh? Why not just declare that you're not going to look at anything that's subject to copyright any more? That way you can avoid paying those evil royalties to the people who create artwork, and nobody can say you're wrong. Don't watch TV, don't listen to music, don't read any book published after [whatever the cutoff date is] and don't play video games. Sounds like that's what will make you happy.
  - rcfox 14y ago
    He also wouldn't be allowed to read your comment either.
- citricsquid 14y ago
  > If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. 1. If a musician doesn't want to have publishers taking a cut of the revenue from their music they are free to not have a publisher involved. 2. If a musician wants to distribute their music for free or have a pay what you want system they can. If a musician chooses to use a publisher or big label then you should respect that; pretending that a publisher is a worthless middleman and using it to justify pirating media is laughable. If the publisher was worthless then the musician would not be using them, would they? Do you really think people like Rihanna and One Direction wish they could set up a bandcamp account and get rid of the publishers? Of course not because publishers provide real tangible value. Either respect the wishes of the musician by consuming through official channels or just pirate it, don't pretend you're a noble person by wanting to "donate" to the musician directly, if the musician wanted that they would not have a label involved.
  - moistgorilla 14y ago
    You completely misunderstood. I'm not justifying pirating by "pretending" the publisher is a worthless middleman. Did you not read my post? Piracy is not unethical. The fact that a middleman exists gives me more incentive to not purchase through the traditional means. Piracy is not unethical. It's not wrong. It's not stealing. If the musician wants to own the content they should simply not release it. I could care less about "respecting" the musician. Why should I pay money for low quality content when I could download the flac version for free without drm?
    - route66 14y ago
      Does repeating a statement as "Piracy is not stealing" make it true? Does echo-chambering the meme "Artists just ask for this" make it true after enough mindless repetition here and elsewhere? Why would any content creator (except, of course, producers of software, they laugh at you from their SaaS cloud) want to create anything if a pompous and self-righteous "respecting" in quotes is the spit in the face? Or could you care less? If so, why do you consider payment-or-not-download not an option? (hint: "because I can" was already answered but not considered satisfactory)
- crusso 14y ago
  >The purpose wasn't so you could get insanely wealthy off of an idea Agreed, although getting wealthy off an idea isn't inherently unethical either. > provide an incentive for people to create and learn. Agreed. Rewarding people for adding "useful" pieces to societies knowledge base should be rewarded. > Copyright and patent laws are now doing the opposite. In the aggregate? I don't think so. The professor in the linked article for this thread is obviously doing the opposite. In undergraduate academia, 95% (made up number) of the actual knowledge in the materials being used to educate are or should be in the public domain. The fact that the market for calculus books didn't completely collapse with the advent of the laptop (let alone the ipad) is a sign that there's a deliberate effort in the academic world to force students to pay for intellectual property that has no value beyond what is already freely available elsewhere. But to generalize and claim that all copyright and patent laws are doing more harm than good is specious. Are you saying we should get rid of all IP protections? Completely?
- DanBC 14y ago
  > If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. I'm tired of these middlemen. The middlemen play an important role in some industries. Many people ask cstross why he doesn't have a donation link so that people who've read a pirate version of one of his books can pay him. He is very clear - he wants you to buy a book of his (any book) so that his publisher can get some of the cash as well. Books need to be written, edited, typeset, 'printed' / 'put into ebook format', distributed, etc. Some of this could be taken away from the middlemen. Kindles could have a "highlight typo / highlight grammar error" mode, which sends possible corrections to the publisher who reviews, then corrects them, and they get updated on the device. I've never trawled through a slush pile. But having seen some of the rubbish that comes out the end I dread to think what goes in the other end. > If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws. I am happy to pirate a lot of content. But I try hard to pay for everything I pirate. Sometimes that's not possible (out of print book, no longer distributed video, etc.) There are lots of things about content distribution that really suck. But I do try to pay for my content. It is wrong to suggest that wanting to pay people for the work they do is something that only a dolt would do.
  - lordlicorice 14y ago
    > Books need to be written, edited, typeset, 'printed' / 'put into ebook format', distributed, etc. The author writes the book. Typesetting and "putting into ebook format" are a copy-and-paste affair, taking at most a day. Pirated books don't need to be printed or distributed.
    - Karunamon 14y ago
      That time still isn't free.
      - chris_wot 14y ago
        So, they pay once for that time and effort. That doesn't mean that they should be paid in perpetuity! Imagine a cobbler who fixes my shoes. Should I pay them for every step I take? Of course not, I pay them once for the work they have done.
- Xcelerate 14y ago
  Explain to me again why you should have something for free that I created by putting years of my life into it?
norswap 14y ago
That's an approach... Open source textbooks are another: http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/CNP3 http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/CNP3
- truncate 14y ago
  Students who don’t pay can’t participate in the course and therefore get a lower grade. The patent kind of forces students to buy the material.
  - kika 14y ago
    The patent can't force students to buy the material, it only forces others with similar 'inventions' to get into license agreement with this, eh, em, ... person.
  - norswap 14y ago
    What I meant is that the academic world is divided in two directions. On the one side there are those who believe in making knowledge more readily accessible and the other those who would restrict its accessibility.
truncate 14y ago
I don't know which country is it talking about, but no libraries and no book sharing is only going to put more load on students. They already pay good amount of fees to their schools.
simonbrown 14y ago
I'm somewhat confused as to how this would work. Surely the university is responsible for awarding the degree and academic staff choose a supporting textbook to help students? So I assume universities wanting to use a textbook don't have to adopt the system.
- Wilya 14y ago
  The guy is a Professor and publishes textbooks. My guess is that he wants a way to force his own students to buy his book instead of copying it.
  - simonbrown 14y ago
    I'm surprised the university would allow him to do that, since he's effectively charging an additional tuition fee.
  - alan_cx 14y ago
    I find the idea of a professor pushing his own book quite appalling in education.
- sakopov 14y ago
  I suppose you'd be forced to buy books from your school's bookstore (where they're ridiculously overpriced) to get online access pass which, as i recall from my school years, expires after certain time since purchase and cannot be reused. It's a clever way for this guy to make a few bucks off of poor students. He should be proud.
jrubinovitz 14y ago
I really wouldn't mind paying for a textbook access code for every class I take, if the price was actually reasonable (unlike new textbook prices). In an ideal world: go around the print publishers and digitally publish books with an access code at a low price with nearly all proceeds going to the author. I have teachers that won't actually use textbooks because kids at my school cannot afford them. Professors will actually photocopy the material for us.
- joelhaasnoot 14y ago
  In addition to issues such as books being "print on demand", out of print, 5 new editions every year, etc. Didn't need many textbooks for CS, but the ones I did need were a pain to get.
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  > I really wouldn't mind living in a world where you can have a monopoly over ideas, if I am one of the few who can afford paying for those ideas. I would. It has much further and deeper implications in the bigger picture than just that one textbook that you could afford.
  - crusso 14y ago
    Twisting someone's words but making it appear as a quote is something I normally only see on Reddit or Fark. Could you please avoid that tactic here? Thanks.
  - superuser2 14y ago
    They're not trying to charge for access to the ideas. They're charging for the explanation of those ideas in text that a team of people crafted. They're charging way too much for it, but that's only because universities let them.
    - crusso 14y ago
      Exactly. The ideas are already out there. Charging for information that's out there when you have a semi-monopolistic hold on the market through the collusion of most higher institutions of education is unethical.
IvoDankolov 14y ago
No access code means a lower grade, all in the best interests of science. I ... no. I can't even... I'm sorry, but I find it very hard to summon an inkling of sympathy for the publishers' plea against piracy when I see measures like that. When I failed calculus because I didn't prove a theorem the way it was in the lecture notes and then was insane enough to argue the point, I thought it was pretty stupid. Here, I don't think the word even begins to describe the situation. Commodity. That's a good way of describing the role of the students. It shows a rather alarming failure of the system that instead of incentivizing the pursuit of knowledge, students are set up for failure and milked for as much money as possible during their education. I know a patent doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, and I do hope that most people in a position to make decisions in education call it out for being stupid, though I feel that's a tad optimistic. I'm just sad that a professor is the one proposing this. There go my non-existent beliefs in academia.
- glogla 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure that exact formulation is irony on part of torrentfreak author, not actual formulation of the "professor" (sorry, but if you pledged to promote science and knowledge and then do this, you get quotes around title). Still, I agree completely.
  - IvoDankolov 14y ago
    Well, yes, and the scathing tone of it is pretty thick, at least when I read it in my head. I was commenting on the idea, not the exact wording of it. It's just the first appropriate quote that I grabbed from the text.
- bdonlan 14y ago
  Of course, it's also possible this professor got the patent to ensure that nobody could use this technique. Unfortunately, many courses already are :/
- planetguy 14y ago
  I'm just sad that a professor is the one proposing this. There go my non-existent beliefs in academia. Most textbooks are written by professors. Or to put it another way, a tiny minority of professors write textbooks. This particular asshole appears to be a textbook-writing professor in a fifth-rate university (University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras, anybody?) who writes things with bullshit-sounding titles like Amazonia in the Arts: Ecocriticism versus the Economics of Deforestation. The vast majority of professors, of course, don't give a whit about increasing royalties for their textbook-writing brethren. While there's a few good textbooks which are worth having, I'd certainly never go out of my way to make sure that my students actually need to own the textbook in order to pass the course; that's just stupid.
EricDeb 14y ago
I don't see how this is any sort of revolutionary invention... certainly not an idea that is patent-able. I've already participated in classes where an online code was required to access the publisher's homework... same idea really.
vezycash 14y ago
Hilarious - your education system is getting similar to those in Nigeria congrats. Nigerians professors/lecturers have implemented this for years - you don't need a patent for this kinda crap and you can see for yourself where its led them.
mathattack 14y ago
I'm struggling to figure out how this can't be a hoax that the professor is pulling on the system. But after closer reading, he does seem serious. And he'll likely give his cause more harm than good.
comex 14y ago
The patent itself doesn't stop students from sharing textbooks, it stops publishers from implementing systems to stop students from sharing textbooks without paying this guy a fee...
- tikhonj 14y ago
  On the one hand, yes, it allows the inventor to impose a royalty. On the other hand, the whole point of a patent is to spread the idea. A patent has to provide enough information to replicate the invention yourself. So now publishers just have to license the patent; before this, they would have had to come up with a system like this themselves.
pdeuchler 14y ago
Unfortunately, this is nothing new for students. I have been forced to buy institution specific versions of my books (which simply means they regenerated the practice problems), preventing me from seeking cheaper bookstores like Amazon or the mom & pop down the street. I have been forced to purchase physical CD's with serial codes to access lecture notes (of course, only provided at the school bookstore). But worst of all, I'm very often forced to purchase WebAssign keys. Web Assign is a service that allows professors (in my case, in the math/physics departments) to create online quizzes and homeworks that are graded automatically. Usually the keys cost $45-$60 and they only work for one semester per class, and while they come free with new books (which are exorbitantly expensive, might I add) any used book purchase must be supplemented with these keys. Of course, the professor is glad to tell us we have the option not to buy the key, however we will then get a 0 on the respective assignments. In my very humble opinion, the greed has gotten so out of control that it's hard for the publishers to see what is even wrong with forcing students to PAY TO DO HOMEWORK. Something desperately needs to be done. My hope is that e-books slowly democratize the process, but that could be long after I have graduated.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  In my very humble opinion, the greed has gotten so out of control that it's hard for the publishers to see what is even wrong with forcing students to PAY TO DO HOMEWORK How is that not the whole idea behind college, in general?
  - pdeuchler 14y ago
    Technically, my outrage would be at being forced to pay to do homework on top of being forced to pay to learn.
- cabalamat 14y ago
  Some universities behave unethically. Fortunately, organisations like Udacity are likely to make this an unviable business model in future.
- danielford 14y ago
fl3tch 14y ago
Since time immemorial students have shared information on good and bad professors. This will be yet another thing that is passed along. Don't take his section, he forces you to buy a code. Take her section and you can use my book.
tassl 14y ago
I have always thought that Universities should offer self-contained courses, with original homework and practice, specially in technical courses. Books should be considered as reference/reinforcement materials, never a requirement for anything. After the irruption of Coursera and Udacity, I heard a couple of professors in my university talking about the impact those courses can have in the future. They saw themselves in the future as TAs of those courses, where the students only "use" them to clarify concepts.
- IvoDankolov 14y ago
  If you ask me, TA should be the more glorious position. There's just no point in speaking the same thing in front of 200 students every (half) year in front of 200 people with little to no interactivity. So what's the point of having that person in front of the class and not some recording? Oh, right, there isn't one. There hasn't been for some years now, but the academia has had neither internal nor external incentives to innovate. Some might say giving the students the best possible experience should be an intrinsic motivation for professors. A shame it doesn't work that way. I think though that TAs in Coursera/Udacity are not active enough. Given that tens of thousands (hundreds?) take a course, they can't afford to be. It makes me think that this model is not sustainable either. I mean, in our day and age, dabbling in an area of science/art should not be a hard or expensive thing to do. And if you're willing to find your own information, it mostly isn't. But if everyone wanted to dabble in computer science and learn some basics, there just aren't enough TAs in the world to provide assistance. There certainly would be enough learners, though! And I think that's a much more sustainable model. Udacity and Coursera both have active forums, I've heard Salman Khan mention it, and even in that "Intoduction to AI class" that did not have discussion forums from the start, people organized study groups, forums and subreddits all on their own. Let's make it "cool" to study together and help others. Social routines will do the rest.
- quantumstate 14y ago
  This is exactly the way the courses at my University (Cambridge, UK) worked. The lectures covered all relevant course material and problem sheets were given out (also available online http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/examples/ http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/examples/). Each course had a short list of recommended books and usually the lecturer would give a few comments about each book at the start of the course. These were for supplementary reference and were widely available in the libraries. I bought one text book during my course for my favourite area, so I could keep it after University. Otherwise the libraries were completely adequate. I studied maths, I know that computer science and physics were the same. With arts subjects students used so many books that it wouldn't be reasonable to by them. I am not aware of any courses having required textbooks but I don't know for certain.
deleted 14y ago
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mck- 14y ago
.. during a time of a great liberating educational revolution, with the likes of Khan, Coursera, MIT/Harvard platforms forming..
wizzard 14y ago
It's been my experience that the people who share/photocopy textbooks aren't doing it to screw publishers, they do it because they cannot afford to buy the book themselves. It is a lot of extra work to pirate textbooks this way; I doubt anyone would bother without a good reason. Once again, it seems like all it's going to do is make legitimate customers jump through hoops, while the pirates find loopholes or simply fail... neither of which results in additional revenue for publishers.
anonhacker 14y ago
Don't bite the hand that feeds; I predict a drop in enrollment of classes that use these textbooks...
benmanns 14y ago
I believe professors at my university may already be infringing on this patent. I was required to buy a $90 "workbook" authored by the course professor to access a "course survey" worth 10% of the final grade. Granted, you could share the book and access to the material online, but not if you wanted an A.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Which is the university?
- meric 14y ago
  Wow $90 workbook? The workbooks made by my course professors cost only $10-20 from the university photocopy shop - which is half as expensive as doing the photocopying yourself. When they're available it comes with homework, lecture notes, etc. It also isn't counted towards the grade... When they're not available, because the lecturer did not author a workbook, we'd have to buy a $150-$250 textbook. I really hate it when the lecturer of Finance 1 and the lecturer of Finance 2 use different textbooks, even though one of the textbooks already have content of both of the courses. Luckily our library has a section full of textbooks with daily usage time limit of 2 hours. That means they're usually available when I go in to use one for homework - I don't even need to carry it with me... Which university do you go to?
jhspaybar 14y ago
This already is in widespread use, not sure how the professor expects this patent to hold up in any way. I had a 4 quarter French language requirement for my major for which I needed to purchase a $125 book, and then a $99 online fee to have access to the homework that was 20% of my grade. The real kicker? My $99 online fee only covers 12 months, 3 quarters is a calendar year without summer school, that fourth quarter requires an extra fee to gain access to the homework materials again. My physics classes also do something similar through the "masteringphysics.com" website I believe. This is nothing new, and it's brutal for students. I can usually get through a quarter with 4-6 classes for under $100 in book costs if I buy used, old editions, etc but once a teacher throws one of these online requirements my way the costs of a quarter skyrocket to unreasonable levels.
- orbitingpluto 14y ago
  I am flabbergasted. First, pay your tutition. Then you have to pay for access to all of the basic constituents of that education again? If a teacher can't get you through a course by his or her own teaching, then they aren't worth it. You're only supposed to need those extra course packs if you're planning on skipping classes. This is RMS prophecy coming to be and a lesson for me to always listen to crazy talk coming from well-bearded men.
- el_zorro 14y ago
  I've had to use the Mastering Physics site. You could purchase access the the site by itself, or get it for 'free' when you bought the required textbook. Mind you, this was no bargain - buying the book was a $280 investment.
  - duskwuff 14y ago
    And if it's anything like the online book components I remember from college, calling it an "investment" is a stretch. (Because that implies that you're getting some value from it.)
sakopov 14y ago
"No access code means a lower grade, all in the best interests of science." "Students who don’t pay can’t participate in the course and therefore get a lower grade." It's all about purchasing power, folks. You knowledge only matters a little. Please, do pirate books. For crying out loud, knowledge can and should be pirated if it cannot be afforded.
fossuser 14y ago
Well looks like it's finally coming true: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html What seemed absurd back in 1997 is more and more probable today.
Kilimanjaro 14y ago
How many books do we need for school? A hundred? Some charitable soul please donate $100MM so we can create 100 free books for our children's education and put some pressure in government to create laws to use these books in all elementary school across the nation. Then college, then university. Free forever. Sorry maffias, can't fight against progress.
- WiseWeasel 14y ago
  Wikipedia shows you don't need $100M; people will contribute for free.
aestetix 14y ago
Right, so let's reinforce the idea that a good education is for people who can pay for it, not for people who are smart enough to benefit from it...
yzhou 14y ago
Just another reason for not hiring people based on their grades.
- vezycash 14y ago
  the people who would most benefit from your comment either don't care or are too lazy to think up better ways to assess people outside the grade system.
jeffdavis 14y ago
Up-front and clear fees, directly based on the product or service offered, are the most efficient way for a market economy to work. In this case, this should mean simple fees for the classes, and book prices based on the original content in that version divided by the number of people who demand that original content. This patent describes a means to make the prices of things -- like a class -- much more obscure and indirect, which is obviously a perverse market. It's not really about piracy though; it more closely resembles a toll booth on the door to the classroom, or charging students to keep the lights on so they can read the chalkboard. This just happens to resemble a copyright issue, so it triggers that particular response from people interested in copyright. So why are such perverse systems so common? Because we demand them. It's not some conspiracy. We like to play games with prices, and overestimate our ability to outplay our opponent, and think we can get the best of them (in reality, practical matters take over and we just end up paying more on average). Take cellphones. You can buy an unlocked google phone for a simple, direct price based on the quality of the hardware and the support that you expect to receive from google (or the manufacturer). Then, you can get a prepaid service plan for cheap (I pay $30/mo for a good smartphone plan) that is based on the level of service you expect from the carrier for as long as you feel like being their customer. I will save hundreds per year over getting a contract and a discounted phone (let's say a typical smartphone plan is at least $60/mo, so I save $30/mo or $720 over a 2-year contract, but lose at most $400 from lack of a discount, netting me $320). I also have greater flexibility and choice. Yet almost everybody in the U.S., including those reading this comment, are under a 2-year contract right now. Why? I don't know. Economics is about what people actually do though, not what they should do. And given a choice between clear pricing and obscure pricing, people choose obscure pricing. EDIT: And after people get predictably tired playing pricing games with a large company, and end up just paying more, they complain.
- gareim 14y ago
  Yes, I've definitely seen many people extolling the virtues of prepaid and I agree that prepaid is a fantastic option for many, but there are reasons why contracts are fine too. Besides the psychological barriers to putting down an extra couple hundred to save a little money every month (where only in the aggregate do you start coming ahead), many of us just can't afford to drop that much cash at once for a phone. Not only that, but many have families, making that very expensive very quickly. Speaking of families, prepaid doesn't cater well to families either! For most carriers, you can add a line for what, $10 a month (I use T-Mobile)? In my family of 4, a family plan would cost around $100 to $110 (without data). The cheapest prepaid plans are now around $30 so a family of 4 would cost $120. Granted, that would include data, which I don't have. But with a contract plan, I would also get unlimited calling to others on the same carrier and free calling at night. Many Americans still actually use their phones as phones, so that's a huge plus that prepaid carriers don't offer. So while prepaid works for many, it still isn't the perfect solution for a large majority of us. One sidenote: If you're on T-Mobile, you can wait for phones to go on sale for free after 2 year contract and then get the cheapest data plan ($10 a month for 200mb) and your cost of the smartphone comes out to $240 over two years. Yes, if you HADN'T gone with the subsidy and brought your own phone (not to prepaid, but the other option T-Mobile has), your plan would be $10 less per month, but if you have a family, the benefits stated above quickly make that $10 feel a lot weaker. PM me if you don't quite understand.
ifewalter 14y ago
<joke> Well with more people increasingly dropping out of college, salaries have to come from somewhere </joke> This has been going on for years in many institutions, he has just managed to make it legal. Instead of limiting his works to his classroom only, i think he will make more profit on his work if he pushed sales and adoption of his books in other institutions, to other professors/lecturers, even than he can ever make charging a class of +/-100 excessively. And forget about the stupid patent. The main confusion comes in when you realise: Hey he's an economics professor, you'd think he'll understand business better.
tomjen3 14y ago
You already pay for the use of the labs, the chairs, the time of the professor, etc out of tuition, right? Then why on earth do you not also pay for the use of a book?
losethos 14y ago
India-niggers
sbinetd 14y ago
I do hope I'm not the only one who thought of this: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
JadeNB 14y ago
The scorn in the TorrentFreak article is so heavy that I thought that, surely, they were exaggerating to stir up the masses, and the method described in the patent was not so heavy-handed as they claimed. (I am a university professor, and I would like to believe that my profession is an honourable one.) Well, no. They've got a link to the actual patent (with many spaces missing, for some reason), and its text, or at least what I could bear to read of it, is just as they describe. By the way, as someone unfamiliar with this sort of patent, is there some legal meaning to the constant reference to "a plurality of lines of code" when detailing the mechanics of the software, or is the author just fond of the term 'plurality'? (He also refers later to a plurality of teachers and students working together.)
runn1ng 14y ago
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html Richard Stallman, Right to Read, 1997. It's really chilling to read this story today, when half of it is already truth.
- darwinGod 14y ago
  I was thinking this should have been the topmost comment on this story- Surprised that not many people here seem to have read this,for if they had- this 'story' should have been the first thing they commented on.
kika 14y ago
People, think positive. Having a patent means that no one except his genius Vogel (or his licensees) can actually implement this system. So our goal is not to bash his brilliant idea, but to convince Vogel that it's worth at least $1B (per year). To prevent this idea from implementation :-)
te_chris 14y ago
How the hell does this warrant a patent? There seems to be nothing that is either novel or innovative about this particular "invention". Oh wow, unique codes as a way of limiting free participation, absolute genius. Somebody give this guy a Nobel and Tenure, oh wait...
John_F_Miller 14y ago
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read" I find myself wanting to post this link more and more frequently these days.
Rhino55 14y ago
Peter Thiel is grinning right now. This is exactly the sort of hare-brained idea that gets taken seriously when an industry starts to die. BTW go here for lots of free books. Slow but good selection. en.bookfi.org.
bconway 14y ago
Under his proposal, students can only participate in courses when they buy an online access code Isn't that called tuition?

123 points by lightspot 14y ago

I'm tired of this. I am not going to pay for any product I can pirate anymore. I don't even feel guilty about it. If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. I'm tired of these middlemen. I'm also tired of people preaching about how piracy is unethical. A copied piece of data is not equivalent to a lost sale. People cannot own information. You cannot own an algorithm or idea. Imagine if Newton owned the laws of motion, imagine if he owned calculus. How can someone own an arrangement of words or sounds. If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws. edit: And let us not forget the primary purpose of these laws. The purpose wasn't so you could get insanely wealthy off of an idea. It was to provide an incentive for people to create and learn. Copyright and patent laws are now doing the opposite.

vibrunazo 14y ago
> If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws. People used to think freeing someone's slave was unethical property theft as well. As soon as the economic interest shift, so does the mainstream ethics. Same will happen to piracy, as soon as authors cannot make money off copyright and patents. Then it's the monopoly of ideas that will become unethical, and not the other way around.
cheeze 14y ago
I Don't have a problem with it if I can get an ebook for a reasonable place. That being said, throughout college many of my books were ~$150. No way I'm paying that.
anigbrowl 14y ago
You cannot own an algorithm or idea. Imagine if Newton owned the laws of motion, imagine if he owned calculus. And you can't copyright them either. How can someone own an arrangement of words or sounds. Because that person made it? Are you saying people have no right to own the things they make?
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  > Because that person made it? Are you saying people have no right to own the things they make? "I can only see so far because I'm standing in the shoulder of giants." Imagine if you had to pay for every one of the thousands little concept that your own idea (inevitably) derives from. That system would be unsustainable. We can only make progress because we can expand and improve on what were created before.
  - crusso 14y ago
    Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea is derived from? That's a straw man. The argument for paying people for new IP is that for a limited time we should offer rewards for people to add to the collective knowledge of our society. So really in terms of your argument, the consumer isn't paying for "standing on the shoulder of giants" either. The consumer of IP is only paying for the incremental value added by the creator of the content. As a society, we discovered that rewarding producers adds to the useful aggregate more than just hoping that they'll add the same amount of content without compensation.
    - vibrunazo 14y ago
      > Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea is derived from? IP limits production to create artificial scarcity. No matter how you look at it, after you copyright or patent something. You are limiting what can be created in the world. > As a society, we discovered that rewarding producers adds to the useful aggregate more than just hoping that they'll add the same amount of content without compensation No we did not. Historically, Intellectual property was created as one more monopoly privilege for the monarchy. [1] Together with the monopoly selling rice, and other commodities, were the monopoly of printing books. At no point in history did we, as a society, conclude that if we limit reward producers it would add to the useful aggregate. That excuse was only invented after the "monopoly privilege" over copying books were renamed to "copy rights". At the same time that other monarchy monopolies were destroyed. Society never discovered that it's worth in the aggregate. You cannot prove it's worth in the aggregate. Any attempt so far to measure the aggregate has been absurd. [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html
fossuser 14y ago
Too often people are just ignorant about the law's purpose, or they just don't understand it. I can see why too, it's a simpler argument with a lot of money behind it for the creator to say they should own what they create rather than realizing the limited time monopoly was only a means to promote the progress of science and useful arts. I wrote a bit about it here: http://zacharyalberico.com/post/16427595132/no-infringement-intended http://zacharyalberico.com/post/16427595132/no-infringement-...
superuser2 14y ago
What do you do for a living?
planetguy 14y ago
I am not going to pay for any product I can pirate anymore. + A copied piece of data is not equivalent to a lost sale uhh huh? Why not just declare that you're not going to look at anything that's subject to copyright any more? That way you can avoid paying those evil royalties to the people who create artwork, and nobody can say you're wrong. Don't watch TV, don't listen to music, don't read any book published after [whatever the cutoff date is] and don't play video games. Sounds like that's what will make you happy.
- rcfox 14y ago
  He also wouldn't be allowed to read your comment either.
citricsquid 14y ago
> If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. 1. If a musician doesn't want to have publishers taking a cut of the revenue from their music they are free to not have a publisher involved. 2. If a musician wants to distribute their music for free or have a pay what you want system they can. If a musician chooses to use a publisher or big label then you should respect that; pretending that a publisher is a worthless middleman and using it to justify pirating media is laughable. If the publisher was worthless then the musician would not be using them, would they? Do you really think people like Rihanna and One Direction wish they could set up a bandcamp account and get rid of the publishers? Of course not because publishers provide real tangible value. Either respect the wishes of the musician by consuming through official channels or just pirate it, don't pretend you're a noble person by wanting to "donate" to the musician directly, if the musician wanted that they would not have a label involved.
- moistgorilla 14y ago
  You completely misunderstood. I'm not justifying pirating by "pretending" the publisher is a worthless middleman. Did you not read my post? Piracy is not unethical. The fact that a middleman exists gives me more incentive to not purchase through the traditional means. Piracy is not unethical. It's not wrong. It's not stealing. If the musician wants to own the content they should simply not release it. I could care less about "respecting" the musician. Why should I pay money for low quality content when I could download the flac version for free without drm?
  - route66 14y ago
    Does repeating a statement as "Piracy is not stealing" make it true? Does echo-chambering the meme "Artists just ask for this" make it true after enough mindless repetition here and elsewhere? Why would any content creator (except, of course, producers of software, they laugh at you from their SaaS cloud) want to create anything if a pompous and self-righteous "respecting" in quotes is the spit in the face? Or could you care less? If so, why do you consider payment-or-not-download not an option? (hint: "because I can" was already answered but not considered satisfactory)
crusso 14y ago
>The purpose wasn't so you could get insanely wealthy off of an idea Agreed, although getting wealthy off an idea isn't inherently unethical either. > provide an incentive for people to create and learn. Agreed. Rewarding people for adding "useful" pieces to societies knowledge base should be rewarded. > Copyright and patent laws are now doing the opposite. In the aggregate? I don't think so. The professor in the linked article for this thread is obviously doing the opposite. In undergraduate academia, 95% (made up number) of the actual knowledge in the materials being used to educate are or should be in the public domain. The fact that the market for calculus books didn't completely collapse with the advent of the laptop (let alone the ipad) is a sign that there's a deliberate effort in the academic world to force students to pay for intellectual property that has no value beyond what is already freely available elsewhere. But to generalize and claim that all copyright and patent laws are doing more harm than good is specious. Are you saying we should get rid of all IP protections? Completely?
DanBC 14y ago
> If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. I'm tired of these middlemen. The middlemen play an important role in some industries. Many people ask cstross why he doesn't have a donation link so that people who've read a pirate version of one of his books can pay him. He is very clear - he wants you to buy a book of his (any book) so that his publisher can get some of the cash as well. Books need to be written, edited, typeset, 'printed' / 'put into ebook format', distributed, etc. Some of this could be taken away from the middlemen. Kindles could have a "highlight typo / highlight grammar error" mode, which sends possible corrections to the publisher who reviews, then corrects them, and they get updated on the device. I've never trawled through a slush pile. But having seen some of the rubbish that comes out the end I dread to think what goes in the other end. > If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws. I am happy to pirate a lot of content. But I try hard to pay for everything I pirate. Sometimes that's not possible (out of print book, no longer distributed video, etc.) There are lots of things about content distribution that really suck. But I do try to pay for my content. It is wrong to suggest that wanting to pay people for the work they do is something that only a dolt would do.
- lordlicorice 14y ago
  > Books need to be written, edited, typeset, 'printed' / 'put into ebook format', distributed, etc. The author writes the book. Typesetting and "putting into ebook format" are a copy-and-paste affair, taking at most a day. Pirated books don't need to be printed or distributed.
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    That time still isn't free.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      So, they pay once for that time and effort. That doesn't mean that they should be paid in perpetuity! Imagine a cobbler who fixes my shoes. Should I pay them for every step I take? Of course not, I pay them once for the work they have done.
Xcelerate 14y ago
Explain to me again why you should have something for free that I created by putting years of my life into it?

norswap 14y ago

That's an approach... Open source textbooks are another: http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/CNP3 http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/CNP3

truncate 14y ago
Students who don’t pay can’t participate in the course and therefore get a lower grade. The patent kind of forces students to buy the material.
- kika 14y ago
  The patent can't force students to buy the material, it only forces others with similar 'inventions' to get into license agreement with this, eh, em, ... person.
- norswap 14y ago
  What I meant is that the academic world is divided in two directions. On the one side there are those who believe in making knowledge more readily accessible and the other those who would restrict its accessibility.

truncate 14y ago

I don't know which country is it talking about, but no libraries and no book sharing is only going to put more load on students. They already pay good amount of fees to their schools.

simonbrown 14y ago

I'm somewhat confused as to how this would work. Surely the university is responsible for awarding the degree and academic staff choose a supporting textbook to help students? So I assume universities wanting to use a textbook don't have to adopt the system.

Wilya 14y ago
The guy is a Professor and publishes textbooks. My guess is that he wants a way to force his own students to buy his book instead of copying it.
- simonbrown 14y ago
  I'm surprised the university would allow him to do that, since he's effectively charging an additional tuition fee.
- alan_cx 14y ago
  I find the idea of a professor pushing his own book quite appalling in education.
sakopov 14y ago
I suppose you'd be forced to buy books from your school's bookstore (where they're ridiculously overpriced) to get online access pass which, as i recall from my school years, expires after certain time since purchase and cannot be reused. It's a clever way for this guy to make a few bucks off of poor students. He should be proud.

jrubinovitz 14y ago

I really wouldn't mind paying for a textbook access code for every class I take, if the price was actually reasonable (unlike new textbook prices). In an ideal world: go around the print publishers and digitally publish books with an access code at a low price with nearly all proceeds going to the author. I have teachers that won't actually use textbooks because kids at my school cannot afford them. Professors will actually photocopy the material for us.

joelhaasnoot 14y ago
In addition to issues such as books being "print on demand", out of print, 5 new editions every year, etc. Didn't need many textbooks for CS, but the ones I did need were a pain to get.
vibrunazo 14y ago
> I really wouldn't mind living in a world where you can have a monopoly over ideas, if I am one of the few who can afford paying for those ideas. I would. It has much further and deeper implications in the bigger picture than just that one textbook that you could afford.
- crusso 14y ago
  Twisting someone's words but making it appear as a quote is something I normally only see on Reddit or Fark. Could you please avoid that tactic here? Thanks.
- superuser2 14y ago
  They're not trying to charge for access to the ideas. They're charging for the explanation of those ideas in text that a team of people crafted. They're charging way too much for it, but that's only because universities let them.
  - crusso 14y ago
    Exactly. The ideas are already out there. Charging for information that's out there when you have a semi-monopolistic hold on the market through the collusion of most higher institutions of education is unethical.

IvoDankolov 14y ago

No access code means a lower grade, all in the best interests of science. I ... no. I can't even... I'm sorry, but I find it very hard to summon an inkling of sympathy for the publishers' plea against piracy when I see measures like that. When I failed calculus because I didn't prove a theorem the way it was in the lecture notes and then was insane enough to argue the point, I thought it was pretty stupid. Here, I don't think the word even begins to describe the situation. Commodity. That's a good way of describing the role of the students. It shows a rather alarming failure of the system that instead of incentivizing the pursuit of knowledge, students are set up for failure and milked for as much money as possible during their education. I know a patent doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, and I do hope that most people in a position to make decisions in education call it out for being stupid, though I feel that's a tad optimistic. I'm just sad that a professor is the one proposing this. There go my non-existent beliefs in academia.

glogla 14y ago
I'm pretty sure that exact formulation is irony on part of torrentfreak author, not actual formulation of the "professor" (sorry, but if you pledged to promote science and knowledge and then do this, you get quotes around title). Still, I agree completely.
- IvoDankolov 14y ago
  Well, yes, and the scathing tone of it is pretty thick, at least when I read it in my head. I was commenting on the idea, not the exact wording of it. It's just the first appropriate quote that I grabbed from the text.
bdonlan 14y ago
Of course, it's also possible this professor got the patent to ensure that nobody could use this technique. Unfortunately, many courses already are :/
planetguy 14y ago
I'm just sad that a professor is the one proposing this. There go my non-existent beliefs in academia. Most textbooks are written by professors. Or to put it another way, a tiny minority of professors write textbooks. This particular asshole appears to be a textbook-writing professor in a fifth-rate university (University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras, anybody?) who writes things with bullshit-sounding titles like Amazonia in the Arts: Ecocriticism versus the Economics of Deforestation. The vast majority of professors, of course, don't give a whit about increasing royalties for their textbook-writing brethren. While there's a few good textbooks which are worth having, I'd certainly never go out of my way to make sure that my students actually need to own the textbook in order to pass the course; that's just stupid.

EricDeb 14y ago

I don't see how this is any sort of revolutionary invention... certainly not an idea that is patent-able. I've already participated in classes where an online code was required to access the publisher's homework... same idea really.

vezycash 14y ago

Hilarious - your education system is getting similar to those in Nigeria congrats. Nigerians professors/lecturers have implemented this for years - you don't need a patent for this kinda crap and you can see for yourself where its led them.

mathattack 14y ago

I'm struggling to figure out how this can't be a hoax that the professor is pulling on the system. But after closer reading, he does seem serious. And he'll likely give his cause more harm than good.

comex 14y ago

The patent itself doesn't stop students from sharing textbooks, it stops publishers from implementing systems to stop students from sharing textbooks without paying this guy a fee...

tikhonj 14y ago
On the one hand, yes, it allows the inventor to impose a royalty. On the other hand, the whole point of a patent is to spread the idea. A patent has to provide enough information to replicate the invention yourself. So now publishers just have to license the patent; before this, they would have had to come up with a system like this themselves.

pdeuchler 14y ago

Unfortunately, this is nothing new for students. I have been forced to buy institution specific versions of my books (which simply means they regenerated the practice problems), preventing me from seeking cheaper bookstores like Amazon or the mom & pop down the street. I have been forced to purchase physical CD's with serial codes to access lecture notes (of course, only provided at the school bookstore). But worst of all, I'm very often forced to purchase WebAssign keys. Web Assign is a service that allows professors (in my case, in the math/physics departments) to create online quizzes and homeworks that are graded automatically. Usually the keys cost $45-$60 and they only work for one semester per class, and while they come free with new books (which are exorbitantly expensive, might I add) any used book purchase must be supplemented with these keys. Of course, the professor is glad to tell us we have the option not to buy the key, however we will then get a 0 on the respective assignments. In my very humble opinion, the greed has gotten so out of control that it's hard for the publishers to see what is even wrong with forcing students to PAY TO DO HOMEWORK. Something desperately needs to be done. My hope is that e-books slowly democratize the process, but that could be long after I have graduated.

CamperBob2 14y ago
In my very humble opinion, the greed has gotten so out of control that it's hard for the publishers to see what is even wrong with forcing students to PAY TO DO HOMEWORK How is that not the whole idea behind college, in general?
- pdeuchler 14y ago
  Technically, my outrage would be at being forced to pay to do homework on top of being forced to pay to learn.
cabalamat 14y ago
Some universities behave unethically. Fortunately, organisations like Udacity are likely to make this an unviable business model in future.
danielford 14y ago

fl3tch 14y ago

Since time immemorial students have shared information on good and bad professors. This will be yet another thing that is passed along. Don't take his section, he forces you to buy a code. Take her section and you can use my book.

tassl 14y ago

I have always thought that Universities should offer self-contained courses, with original homework and practice, specially in technical courses. Books should be considered as reference/reinforcement materials, never a requirement for anything. After the irruption of Coursera and Udacity, I heard a couple of professors in my university talking about the impact those courses can have in the future. They saw themselves in the future as TAs of those courses, where the students only "use" them to clarify concepts.

IvoDankolov 14y ago
If you ask me, TA should be the more glorious position. There's just no point in speaking the same thing in front of 200 students every (half) year in front of 200 people with little to no interactivity. So what's the point of having that person in front of the class and not some recording? Oh, right, there isn't one. There hasn't been for some years now, but the academia has had neither internal nor external incentives to innovate. Some might say giving the students the best possible experience should be an intrinsic motivation for professors. A shame it doesn't work that way. I think though that TAs in Coursera/Udacity are not active enough. Given that tens of thousands (hundreds?) take a course, they can't afford to be. It makes me think that this model is not sustainable either. I mean, in our day and age, dabbling in an area of science/art should not be a hard or expensive thing to do. And if you're willing to find your own information, it mostly isn't. But if everyone wanted to dabble in computer science and learn some basics, there just aren't enough TAs in the world to provide assistance. There certainly would be enough learners, though! And I think that's a much more sustainable model. Udacity and Coursera both have active forums, I've heard Salman Khan mention it, and even in that "Intoduction to AI class" that did not have discussion forums from the start, people organized study groups, forums and subreddits all on their own. Let's make it "cool" to study together and help others. Social routines will do the rest.
quantumstate 14y ago
This is exactly the way the courses at my University (Cambridge, UK) worked. The lectures covered all relevant course material and problem sheets were given out (also available online http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/examples/ http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/examples/). Each course had a short list of recommended books and usually the lecturer would give a few comments about each book at the start of the course. These were for supplementary reference and were widely available in the libraries. I bought one text book during my course for my favourite area, so I could keep it after University. Otherwise the libraries were completely adequate. I studied maths, I know that computer science and physics were the same. With arts subjects students used so many books that it wouldn't be reasonable to by them. I am not aware of any courses having required textbooks but I don't know for certain.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mck- 14y ago

.. during a time of a great liberating educational revolution, with the likes of Khan, Coursera, MIT/Harvard platforms forming..

wizzard 14y ago

It's been my experience that the people who share/photocopy textbooks aren't doing it to screw publishers, they do it because they cannot afford to buy the book themselves. It is a lot of extra work to pirate textbooks this way; I doubt anyone would bother without a good reason. Once again, it seems like all it's going to do is make legitimate customers jump through hoops, while the pirates find loopholes or simply fail... neither of which results in additional revenue for publishers.

anonhacker 14y ago

Don't bite the hand that feeds; I predict a drop in enrollment of classes that use these textbooks...

benmanns 14y ago

I believe professors at my university may already be infringing on this patent. I was required to buy a $90 "workbook" authored by the course professor to access a "course survey" worth 10% of the final grade. Granted, you could share the book and access to the material online, but not if you wanted an A.

chris_wot 14y ago
Which is the university?
meric 14y ago
Wow $90 workbook? The workbooks made by my course professors cost only $10-20 from the university photocopy shop - which is half as expensive as doing the photocopying yourself. When they're available it comes with homework, lecture notes, etc. It also isn't counted towards the grade... When they're not available, because the lecturer did not author a workbook, we'd have to buy a $150-$250 textbook. I really hate it when the lecturer of Finance 1 and the lecturer of Finance 2 use different textbooks, even though one of the textbooks already have content of both of the courses. Luckily our library has a section full of textbooks with daily usage time limit of 2 hours. That means they're usually available when I go in to use one for homework - I don't even need to carry it with me... Which university do you go to?

jhspaybar 14y ago

This already is in widespread use, not sure how the professor expects this patent to hold up in any way. I had a 4 quarter French language requirement for my major for which I needed to purchase a $125 book, and then a $99 online fee to have access to the homework that was 20% of my grade. The real kicker? My $99 online fee only covers 12 months, 3 quarters is a calendar year without summer school, that fourth quarter requires an extra fee to gain access to the homework materials again. My physics classes also do something similar through the "masteringphysics.com" website I believe. This is nothing new, and it's brutal for students. I can usually get through a quarter with 4-6 classes for under $100 in book costs if I buy used, old editions, etc but once a teacher throws one of these online requirements my way the costs of a quarter skyrocket to unreasonable levels.

orbitingpluto 14y ago
I am flabbergasted. First, pay your tutition. Then you have to pay for access to all of the basic constituents of that education again? If a teacher can't get you through a course by his or her own teaching, then they aren't worth it. You're only supposed to need those extra course packs if you're planning on skipping classes. This is RMS prophecy coming to be and a lesson for me to always listen to crazy talk coming from well-bearded men.
el_zorro 14y ago
I've had to use the Mastering Physics site. You could purchase access the the site by itself, or get it for 'free' when you bought the required textbook. Mind you, this was no bargain - buying the book was a $280 investment.
- duskwuff 14y ago
  And if it's anything like the online book components I remember from college, calling it an "investment" is a stretch. (Because that implies that you're getting some value from it.)

sakopov 14y ago

"No access code means a lower grade, all in the best interests of science." "Students who don’t pay can’t participate in the course and therefore get a lower grade." It's all about purchasing power, folks. You knowledge only matters a little. Please, do pirate books. For crying out loud, knowledge can and should be pirated if it cannot be afforded.

fossuser 14y ago

Well looks like it's finally coming true: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html What seemed absurd back in 1997 is more and more probable today.

Kilimanjaro 14y ago

How many books do we need for school? A hundred? Some charitable soul please donate $100MM so we can create 100 free books for our children's education and put some pressure in government to create laws to use these books in all elementary school across the nation. Then college, then university. Free forever. Sorry maffias, can't fight against progress.

WiseWeasel 14y ago
Wikipedia shows you don't need $100M; people will contribute for free.

aestetix 14y ago

Right, so let's reinforce the idea that a good education is for people who can pay for it, not for people who are smart enough to benefit from it...

yzhou 14y ago

Just another reason for not hiring people based on their grades.

vezycash 14y ago
the people who would most benefit from your comment either don't care or are too lazy to think up better ways to assess people outside the grade system.

jeffdavis 14y ago

Up-front and clear fees, directly based on the product or service offered, are the most efficient way for a market economy to work. In this case, this should mean simple fees for the classes, and book prices based on the original content in that version divided by the number of people who demand that original content. This patent describes a means to make the prices of things -- like a class -- much more obscure and indirect, which is obviously a perverse market. It's not really about piracy though; it more closely resembles a toll booth on the door to the classroom, or charging students to keep the lights on so they can read the chalkboard. This just happens to resemble a copyright issue, so it triggers that particular response from people interested in copyright. So why are such perverse systems so common? Because we demand them. It's not some conspiracy. We like to play games with prices, and overestimate our ability to outplay our opponent, and think we can get the best of them (in reality, practical matters take over and we just end up paying more on average). Take cellphones. You can buy an unlocked google phone for a simple, direct price based on the quality of the hardware and the support that you expect to receive from google (or the manufacturer). Then, you can get a prepaid service plan for cheap (I pay $30/mo for a good smartphone plan) that is based on the level of service you expect from the carrier for as long as you feel like being their customer. I will save hundreds per year over getting a contract and a discounted phone (let's say a typical smartphone plan is at least $60/mo, so I save $30/mo or $720 over a 2-year contract, but lose at most $400 from lack of a discount, netting me $320). I also have greater flexibility and choice. Yet almost everybody in the U.S., including those reading this comment, are under a 2-year contract right now. Why? I don't know. Economics is about what people actually do though, not what they should do. And given a choice between clear pricing and obscure pricing, people choose obscure pricing. EDIT: And after people get predictably tired playing pricing games with a large company, and end up just paying more, they complain.

gareim 14y ago
Yes, I've definitely seen many people extolling the virtues of prepaid and I agree that prepaid is a fantastic option for many, but there are reasons why contracts are fine too. Besides the psychological barriers to putting down an extra couple hundred to save a little money every month (where only in the aggregate do you start coming ahead), many of us just can't afford to drop that much cash at once for a phone. Not only that, but many have families, making that very expensive very quickly. Speaking of families, prepaid doesn't cater well to families either! For most carriers, you can add a line for what, $10 a month (I use T-Mobile)? In my family of 4, a family plan would cost around $100 to $110 (without data). The cheapest prepaid plans are now around $30 so a family of 4 would cost $120. Granted, that would include data, which I don't have. But with a contract plan, I would also get unlimited calling to others on the same carrier and free calling at night. Many Americans still actually use their phones as phones, so that's a huge plus that prepaid carriers don't offer. So while prepaid works for many, it still isn't the perfect solution for a large majority of us. One sidenote: If you're on T-Mobile, you can wait for phones to go on sale for free after 2 year contract and then get the cheapest data plan ($10 a month for 200mb) and your cost of the smartphone comes out to $240 over two years. Yes, if you HADN'T gone with the subsidy and brought your own phone (not to prepaid, but the other option T-Mobile has), your plan would be $10 less per month, but if you have a family, the benefits stated above quickly make that $10 feel a lot weaker. PM me if you don't quite understand.

ifewalter 14y ago

<joke> Well with more people increasingly dropping out of college, salaries have to come from somewhere </joke> This has been going on for years in many institutions, he has just managed to make it legal. Instead of limiting his works to his classroom only, i think he will make more profit on his work if he pushed sales and adoption of his books in other institutions, to other professors/lecturers, even than he can ever make charging a class of +/-100 excessively. And forget about the stupid patent. The main confusion comes in when you realise: Hey he's an economics professor, you'd think he'll understand business better.

tomjen3 14y ago

You already pay for the use of the labs, the chairs, the time of the professor, etc out of tuition, right? Then why on earth do you not also pay for the use of a book?

losethos 14y ago

India-niggers

sbinetd 14y ago

I do hope I'm not the only one who thought of this: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

JadeNB 14y ago

The scorn in the TorrentFreak article is so heavy that I thought that, surely, they were exaggerating to stir up the masses, and the method described in the patent was not so heavy-handed as they claimed. (I am a university professor, and I would like to believe that my profession is an honourable one.) Well, no. They've got a link to the actual patent (with many spaces missing, for some reason), and its text, or at least what I could bear to read of it, is just as they describe. By the way, as someone unfamiliar with this sort of patent, is there some legal meaning to the constant reference to "a plurality of lines of code" when detailing the mechanics of the software, or is the author just fond of the term 'plurality'? (He also refers later to a plurality of teachers and students working together.)

runn1ng 14y ago

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html Richard Stallman, Right to Read, 1997. It's really chilling to read this story today, when half of it is already truth.

darwinGod 14y ago
I was thinking this should have been the topmost comment on this story- Surprised that not many people here seem to have read this,for if they had- this 'story' should have been the first thing they commented on.

kika 14y ago

People, think positive. Having a patent means that no one except his genius Vogel (or his licensees) can actually implement this system. So our goal is not to bash his brilliant idea, but to convince Vogel that it's worth at least $1B (per year). To prevent this idea from implementation :-)

te_chris 14y ago

How the hell does this warrant a patent? There seems to be nothing that is either novel or innovative about this particular "invention". Oh wow, unique codes as a way of limiting free participation, absolute genius. Somebody give this guy a Nobel and Tenure, oh wait...

John_F_Miller 14y ago

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read" I find myself wanting to post this link more and more frequently these days.

Rhino55 14y ago

Peter Thiel is grinning right now. This is exactly the sort of hare-brained idea that gets taken seriously when an industry starts to die. BTW go here for lots of free books. Slow but good selection. en.bookfi.org.

bconway 14y ago

Under his proposal, students can only participate in courses when they buy an online access code Isn't that called tuition?