7 replies to this topic

[ShyWriter]

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Professor's patent strangles textbook sharing on and offline

By Charlie Osborne | June 11, 2012, 4:45am PDT

Summary: Students who don’t buy in to the scheme can expect lower grades.

The realm of academic file-sharing is notorious — is it legal to share these notes, and this is alright because we need it for the course but it’s no longer in print, right? Students sharing textbooks, presentations and notes facilitated by Facebook’s new Group feature came to mind — but now, going beyond the realms of copyright infringement, it may go so far as to lower your grades.

A new patent has been granted to economics professor Joseph Henry Vogel, who is dead-set on stopping the “infringing” behaviour of devious students who share or lend textbooks — whether off or online.

After all, gaining a college degree is business. But how do you make sure those miscreants don’t go and share their coursebooks? Easy — if you do, we lower your grade.

It works in this manner; a student must buy an online access code to sign up compulsory elements of a class. The code is purchased through buying the coursebook.

In possession of this code, you’re allowed to use the course book and access restricted parts of your course. If you lend or resell, then those without the code will have their academic achievements lowered.

No code, and you cannot participate in online discussion boards, secured through the access barrier and naturally a compulsory part of a course. No sign in? Shame — here’s X percent off your grade.

Piracy, lending and reselling are threats to the publishing industry, the professor believes. Piracy might be, but surely stopping a student from taking a book from a library is going too far?

Vogel wrote:

“Professors are increasingly turning a blind eye when students appear in class with photocopied pages. Others facilitate piracy by placing texts in the library reserve where they can be photocopied.”

Piracy, lending and reselling are threats to the publishing industry, the professor believes. Piracy might be, but surely stopping a student from taking a book from a library is going too far?

No, apparently not. If you purchase a second-hand book, no problem — you can buy the access code for a “discount” rate.

Naturally, publishers are rubbing their hands in glee at the idea of being able to charge multiple times for a single book. Anthem Press of London is one such publisher who is interested in the simple, albeit restrictive system.

Less money for publishers, less opportunity for professors to be published. However, attacking the centuries-old lending system for books because it’s possible to get a few outdated and probably irrelevant textbooks through torrents might be going too far.

Image credit: Nate Bolt

Related:

• The Pirate generation: Are we ‘unreasonable’?
  
• Have we raised a generation of pirates?
  
• The most popular websites students cite and plagiarize
  
• Former student ordered to pay $675,000 for sharing 30 songs
  
• Are today’s students truly ‘tech savvy’?
  
• Students file-sharing work on Facebook: Is it legal?

SOURCE: http://www.zdnet.com...d-offline/16369

Steve

[fivealive]

well i can understand wanting to stop piracy and what not but i think this is going a bit to far.

also what about students who have their books stolen or something happens to them

[exile360]

fivealive, on 11 June 2012 - 02:36 PM, said:

also what about students who have their books stolen or something happens to them

That's the other edge of the double-edged sword that is often overlooked by companies, individuals and industries that attempt to curb piracy through means like this (DRM etc.).

It must be accounted for and those circumstances must be accomodated for an agreement (licensing agreement) like this to work. Damaged items must also be taken into consideration (i.e. my CD/DVD got scratched and is now unusable, should I have to buy a new copy?).

These companies must provide a way of retrieving what is yours in circumstances like that. THEY must provide it, so I'm not advocating the use of P2P or any other means to get back a copy of what is yours.

[fivealive]

exile360, on 11 June 2012 - 03:23 PM, said:

That's the other edge of the double-edged sword that is often overlooked by companies, individuals and industries that attempt to curb piracy through means like this (DRM etc.).

It must be accounted for and those circumstances must be accomodated for an agreement (licensing agreement) like this to work. Damaged items must also be taken into consideration (i.e. my CD/DVD got scratched and is now unusable, should I have to buy a new copy?).

These companies must provide a way of retrieving what is yours in circumstances like that. THEY must provide it, so I'm not advocating the use of P2P or any other means to get back a copy of what is yours.

i agree that pirating is rampant and something should be done but i think this is a bit extreme

[exile360]

fivealive, on 11 June 2012 - 04:21 PM, said:

i agree that pirating is rampant and something should be done but i think this is a bit extreme

Yep, I agree. I'm just saying that if companies want to do this, they really do need a way for legitimate customers to retrieve what is theirs without having to pay for it a second time if it gets damaged, lost or stolen.

Look at iTunes or Amazon. When you download something from them and lose it, you can always grab another copy of it free of charge. These publishers need to be doing the same thing.

[fivealive]

exile360, on 11 June 2012 - 04:59 PM, said:

Yep, I agree. I'm just saying that if companies want to do this, they really do need a way for legitimate customers to retrieve what is theirs without having to pay for it a second time if it gets damaged, lost or stolen.

Look at iTunes or Amazon. When you download something from them and lose it, you can always grab another copy of it free of charge. These publishers need to be doing the same thing.

agreed hopefully they set up an online service or something where it can be redownloaded

[AdvancedSetup]

Maybe if we actually spent more of that 5 Trillion dollars on education and gave prospective students difficult meaningful exams for entrance and held them and the schools accountable to complete schooling we'd all be better off instead of having private business trying to make money off of education and schools driven to get students enrolled instead of worrying about ensuring they succeed and actually graduate. The American Institutes for Research estimates that only around half of students who enroll in college actually end up graduating with a bachelor’s degree.

Certainly a hot topic I'm sure and no easy answer but there has to be a better way than it's done now.

[Strenalis]

AdvancedSetup, on 11 June 2012 - 07:40 PM, said:

Maybe if we actually spent more of that 5 Trillion dollars on education and gave prospective students difficult meaningful exams for entrance and held them and the schools accountable to complete schooling we'd all be better off instead of having private business trying to make money off of education and schools driven to get students enrolled instead of worrying about ensuring they succeed and actually graduate. The American Institutes for Research estimates that only around half of students who enroll in college actually end up graduating with a bachelor’s degree.

Certainly a hot topic I'm sure and no easy answer but there has to be a better way than it's done now.

Well said, I couldn't agree more.