Editorial Board
Matt Bishop
Whitney Gronski
Keiara Tenant
Heather Lockwood
Jahshua Smith
Illegal textbook downloads appealing to students
As fall semester draws closer with each passing day, so does the burden of scraping up money for textbooks. For those who can’t afford steeply priced textbooks, many of them turn to alternatives such as shopping online, pairing up with a classmate to share a book or refrain from buying books at all.
But thanks to a textbook vigilante, some students might not have to set foot in a bookstore next semester.
Geekman, as the anonymous person refers to himself, began his heroic measures in January 2007 with the creation of his Web site Textbook Torrents. The Web site allows students to download digital versions of textbooks at no cost. The site has about 6,000 PDF, text and image files and currently has around 64,000 users.
The legality of the site has been called to question but Geekman seems to have no intentions of shutting down the book haven. One of the reasons his identity remains unknown is so that he can avoid legal clashes. His residence, which is reported to be outside the U.S., also gives him some comfort.
Surprised? Don’t be.
It was only a matter of time before textbooks would be added to the list of illegally downloaded material. Textbook Torrents might be considered a sort of black market for textbooks to publishers but for some students, it’s a prayer answered.
The prices we’re charged for books are outrageous.
It’s understandable that book companies have to make money if they want to maintain their business but they should understand that we aren’t made of money. If book companies aren’t willing to meet us halfway, they shouldn’t be surprised if we’ll go to any length to save a couple of bucks.
Some students already exchange class notes and buy and sell books online through sites like Allmsu.com and Facebook.com’s marketplace. Some students have even gone as far as to buy a book, photocopy it, and return it to the bookstore in an effort to save money. It’s sad that we have to go to such extent just to receive a quality education so if offered a cheap alternative, publishers better believe many of us will take it.
Although it helps that we can sell books back to bookstores at the end of the semester, the money we receive is nowhere near the equivalent we paid for the book. For students paying for college out of pocket, this makes for even less motivation to buy from bookstores.
MSU ranked seventh in the country, the first Michigan university on the list, among colleges that received copyright complaints from the recording industry between 2005 and 2007. On a campus that holds such a rank, it’s hard to believe the idea of downloading textbooks wouldn’t become a trend.
With tuition rates rising at every turn, books should be the least of a students’ worries. If publishers lose money from Textbook Torrents and Web sites like it, so be it. That’s the price they’ll have to pay for overcharging us.
Published on Thursday, July 17, 2008
Comments
MSUGRAD 2000
07/18/08 @ 7:41am
I wish this site was around while I was attending MSU. What student wouldn’t be tempted to download texts from this site? Hell, I make pretty good money now and if I were going back to school I would look into this. Now-a-days people will do almost anything to save a buck…
Fair Enough
07/18/08 @ 9:08am
I agree with you MSUGRAD2000. I wish that we’d had the opportunity for this before I graduated a couple of years ago. I can’t tell you how many times I’d shell out one to two hundred dollars on a textbook and try to return it at the end of the semester just to be told that it couldn’t be bought back because a newer version had come out. Good for you Geekman!
Fair Enough
07/18/08 @ 9:09am
Forgot to add….. maybe this guy can do the same thing for course packs for present and future students! Talk about a waste of money!!
Bill Lumberg
07/18/08 @ 9:16am
Wow, could you be any more all over the map on the copyright issues? Your Youtube article says one thing about who should be punished for copyright infringement, your eBay article says something else, and now you are saying screw them they deserve it? Maybe if you spaced these articles out more people wouldn’t notice your constant change of heart.
P.S. “The prices we’re charged for books are outrageous.” Some might argue that the $5 per semester for the SN is outrageous for what we received in return. Yes I know we can get our money back, but maybe for a semester you should stop collecting the tax and have people show up if they want to pay $5 and see how that pans out. It might encourage you to improve your product.
AAA
07/18/08 @ 10:23am
I still prefer reading off paper than off the computer. I hate being tied to a computer, and so do my eyes. Sure I could print the stuff, but that would add up in price too.
Seriously?
07/18/08 @ 11:49am
This article is absurd. If it’s too expensive then you have the right to steal it.
Bill Lumberg
07/18/08 @ 12:24pm
Seriously?, I think that is what they are saying. My guess is that Monday’s column will be advocating pump and run at gas stations.
Tim
07/18/08 @ 1:07pm
In the face of tough economic times, a variety or illegal activities are appealing . To add to Bill’s suggestion, Tuesday’s column could be: Selling Drugs Appealing to Students
John Q.Public
07/19/08 @ 3:05pm
WAWAWA!!!…I’m a poor student and the mean old textbook companies should be defrauded out of their profits because I am affected…Why not just go out and riot,pillage,and burn? Narcissistic whiny college pukes!!! I paid for MY books….
MSUAlum2001
07/21/08 @ 8:27am
Thursday’s editorial: Knocking down old Ladies for Beer Money is OK, (as long as you don’t drive home.)
Zeke
07/21/08 @ 11:36am
How is this an editorial? The only opinion I see in here is that the SN editorial board thinks that textbooks are overpriced. So why isn’t the editorial on the price of books? So illegal downloads are appealing to students. So?
“If publishers lose money from Textbook Torrents and Web sites like it, so be it. That’s the price they’ll have to pay for overcharging us.”
How old are you people? 14? Only interested in making them pay? Pray tell, at what price does your opinion change from “illegal downloads stick it to the overcharging book sellers” to “illegal downloads steal from hardworking authors?” When does it start to matter? Perhaps if you did ANY kind of research behind the costs of the book, from licensing the intellectual property of professors and scientists to procuring the paper itself, you would have some kind of basis for your article. As it stands now, you sound like whiny crybabies.
OMFG
07/22/08 @ 4:36pm
Well… actually after dealing with textbook publishers and their Enron-like, screw the student at every possible chance mentality, I am all for it.
Dan
07/23/08 @ 9:30am
I am all for it to. It’s not that I can’t pay for books (I have and will pay for books) but it is outrageous how overpriced these books are. Not only that, bookstores are making a killing off of buying the books back for, maybe, $10 at the most, and then turning around and selling them again for the original price. It is just like music; we are moving into a world where music will soon be cheaper and/or free, because of what started with Napster. Not that stealing music is right to do, but when people started doing it the music business model had to adapt. Same goes for the bookstores who will need to adapt when less people are buying and more people are downloading.
Mike
07/24/08 @ 3:05am
I believe this article has been misconstrued.
What I took from this is not that students are justified in their illegality, but rather it’s an inescapable truth and an inevitability that when lower cost, or in this case free alternatives to expensive materials exist, they will be taken advantage of.
The textbook publishing industry is a market controlled and operated by very few, very large companies that do not practice ethical business standards. When I was a student, I got really fed up when a new edition came out to a book but nothing significant changed. I couldn’t buy the used book, and the new one had jacked up prices.
The issue of textbook affordability is not about complaining students, it’s about an industry that doesn’t play by the rules and students get victimized. As prices remain high, the publishing industry should expect pirating to be part of the game, as every student needs access to textbooks to succeed academically. It may not be fair, but unfair business practices that keep prices inflated make it inevitable.
alum '80
07/24/08 @ 2:58pm
Books have alway been overpriced and the bookstores buy them back for peanuts (if at all). Most every product in this country is sold for much more than it costs to produce ( 200%+ markup on clothing for example). Record companies have always overcharged and now are paying the price for doing so. Greed needs to be tempered and this may prove to be the only way….