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Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks

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Re: Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks

#101

Post by noonespecial »

pdeuchler wrote: post #19

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 o…

I used to garner a sour look by simply asking how much more I had to pay to not have to do the homework.

Re: Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks

#102

Post by chris_wot »

Karunamon wrote: post #96
chris_wot wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's really a terrible analogy.

Why so?

Re: Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks

#103

Post by chris_wot »

crusso wrote: post #97
chris_wot wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea is derived from? Oh, I don't know. The USPTO?

If you read the context of that quote then you're telling me you think that the USPTO is arguing that an effectively infinite amount of money should be paid for every new piece of IP since you'd also need to pay something for all the IP that it was built upon. The USPTO is certainly NOT arguing that when you pay for IP you also must pay something for everything that the IP is built upon.

Perhaps not. But let's say that I patent some technology that uses as it's basis another idea that is patented. Then I develop some technology based on this. I then license that technology. Then someone else creates a patent based on my patent and then licenses it from me.

So here is where I perhaps get a little confused. Is this allowed? If you can't refine an idea, then this restricts innovation. If I can refine the idea and then patent it, does this mean that any license costs must go only to me? Or do I have to pay a portion of these license costs to the original patent I have derived my ideas from?

Option 1: Can't refine a patent. Result: restriction of innovation and trade.

Option 2: You can refine a patent, but don't have have to license this to the original patent author. Result: you can bypass patents. The whole system becomes pointless.

Option 3: You can refine a patent, but you must pay part of the license you charge to the original patentee. Result: Costs increase for each patent license.

Re: Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks

#104

Post by MichaelGG »

route66 wrote: post #71
moistgorilla wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

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…

Not to get into the argument (if you can't understand the difference between copyright infringement and theft, good luck), but the suggestion that no one would create work without copyright is absurd.

Plenty of music is released for free, many photographers are happy just to have someone see their work, and lots of software is written with very permissive licenses.

Remember, the entire point of copyright is to benefit society by having more works available to the public. That's it. I don't believe it's proven that we need strong (or any?) copyright in order for this to happen.

Re: Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks

#105

Post by chris_wot »

crusso wrote: post #99
chris_wot wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it isn't. Ad hominem is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it. In this case, he is referring to a third party (the monarchy) who actually did use it as a monopoly priviledge for the monarchy. Saying that it is frabricated does not make it so. In fact, if you look at all that was said, it was "Historically, Intellectual prope…

> Actually, it isn't. Ad hominem is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it. Which is what the poster did in bringing up the motivations of a monarchy that used some form of IP regulation that we weren't even discussing. Discrediting monarchies' motivations for wanting IP has nothing to do with the situation we have today. It's an ad ho…

I've actually reread my comment, and I concede the point.

Re: Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks

#106

Post by norswap »

truncate wrote: post #5
norswap wrote: post #3

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

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.

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.

Re: Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks

#107

Post by meric »

benmanns wrote: post #30

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.

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?

Re: Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks

#108

Post by alan_cx »

Wilya wrote: post #8
simonbrown wrote: post #6

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.

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.

I find the idea of a professor pushing his own book quite appalling in education.

Re: Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks

#109

Post by masklinn »

planetguy wrote: post #52
IvoDankolov wrote: post #9

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 do…

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 Amazo…

> 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.

Yep, sounds like that teacher: the one who writes awful textbooks and mandates those books for his courses, shitting a new one every year to ensure a steady income stream.

Re: Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks

#110

Post by stordoff »

quantumstate wrote: post #69
tassl wrote: post #24

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…

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/ ). 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 wer…

Notes like http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1112/LogicProof/logic-notes... were pretty common in CompSci. Often the notes were sufficient on their own, with pointers to further reading if required (see page 1 on the linked notes). With the libraries, it was quite easy to manage without buying any books.
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