111–120 of 217 posts
And it's instructive to contrast textbook prices with the very reasonable student discounts on software. Software labels are trying to create customers for life, while book publishers are price gouging while they can.
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But not necessarily for the students in those countries. Presumably low-cost and market-recognized quality are factors that have kept American textbooks in distribution in foreign markets (and domestic producers out of those markets). In their absence, one might think that prices will rise, quality will fall, or both; at least in the short run. If these countries are relatively free of government collusion with estab…
Alternatively, it's possible the American publishers wer effectively "dumping" their textbooks to prevent international publishers from ever being able to establish themselves.
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It seems to me that this SCOTUS has actually had a pretty good track record on civil liberties and these underdog kind of cases (Citizens United notwithstanding)
I don't understand the disdain that Citizens United gets. It is a pretty clear cut application of 1st Amendment principles. People don't lose their 1st amendment rights simply because they are organized as a corporation. The law can't favor free speech for some corporations/groups (New York Times, MSNBC, UAW, etc.) but not others (non-profit groups like Citizens United). On top of this, the speech involved was politi…
This assumes that any speech or political contribution by a corporation is automatically assented to by everyone who is associated with the corporation. Ask the employees or shareholders of a large corporation how many of them agree with using the corporation's money for the campaign contributions it makes.
If people want to express their individual opinions, they can express them individually. If they want to express opinions as a large group, they can all sign the same letter or petition. Using company money to do things that only some of the company's owners or employees would assent to is not "free speech"; it's misuse of company money. That used to be called "embezzlement", not free speech.
The law can't favor free speech for some corporations/groups (New York Times, MSNBC, UAW, etc.) but not others (non-profit groups like Citizens United).
I agree with this; I don't see why the New York Times should get any special privileges because it's a "journalistic organization". But that just means everybody should have to abide by the same rules; it doesn't mean the rules should allow corporations to do things with company money that many if not most of their employees and shareholders would not agree with, just because those things happen to be "speech".
It is great that students will be able to get cheap text books. But, are we not concerned that the court seems to be throwing out a law passed by Congress in an area where the Constitution grants them explicit power to act merely because they think the law is a bad idea? Title 17 of the U. S. Code Section 602(a)(1) “Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title,…
That's the whole point of the Supreme Court and of the balance of powers. Congress is free to pass whatever law they want, it's up to the Court to decide if the law is valid or Constitutional. If the Court thinks the law is a bad idea, they're free by all means to throw it out, that's the reason they exist.
(According to insiders from the administration, Bush thought the campaign finance law he signed was unconstitutional, but he punted the unpopular job to the Supremes.)
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100 students x $8.50 is only $850/semester. Even if the class was 500 students, that's still not an overwhelming amount of money for writing a book. If you're teaching classes that large, you're probably making more money on the lecture circuit and become advisors/consultants at companies.
You would be surprised how low some professors will stoop. My sophomore engineering graphics class required payment of $35 in royalties and $5 in copy fees (going by the standard rate of .10 a page) just to get a printed copy of the PDF course packet (required to pass the course). It wasn't bound or anything, we literally had to go to the privately owned copy center and fork over $40 and then wait while they printed…
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Having briefly skimmed the Opinion[1] (IANYAL), the heart of it was an exercise of close statutory interpretation to try and figure out exactly how s. 602 interacts with s. 109, with the majority concluding that as s. 602 refers explicitly to the s. 106 exclusive distribution right, it's subject to the same limitations as s. 106 is, including s. 109's First Sale limitation. (So s. 602 then just has the effect that th…
Thanks for that explanation. I hadn't had time to read the whole opinion. Perhaps my statement came off too harsh. I am nothing close to a lawyer, but I found the "parade of horribles" to be a little troubling. Shouldn't the Congress be the one evaluating the consequences on the law? I guess the counterargument is that those things are so horrible that we can assume that isn't what Congress meant. When reading Suprem…
SCOTUSblog analysis: http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/03/opinion-analysis-justices-...
Grouping useful stuff together: The opinion itself: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-697_d1o2.pdf The dissent is perhaps most interesting.
The publishers will just make sure to produce a different textbook between different regions now. Just re-order the chapters a little and re-order some questions/assignments. So even if someone ships in the foreign book it will be as useless as a previous edition. In general the whole textbook industry makes me sick. But fact is that lecturers are entirely responsible for it. The publishers can only do what the lectu…
I am a lecturer in a math department. I also despise the textbook industry. Would you please recommend what I might do, subject to severe limitations of (1) time and (2) political clout within my department?
Or find one of the many "released free for use" maths texts[1][2] that are "out there" and see if one is suitable for your classes?
[1]: http://people.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.ht...
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I am a lecturer in a math department. I also despise the textbook industry. Would you please recommend what I might do, subject to severe limitations of (1) time and (2) political clout within my department?
Tell your students not to purchase whatever books the department head has been bribed into using in the coming semester. Instead, spend a few hours curating online resources that may serve as notes for students; better yet, just photocopy the handwritten notes that every mathematics teacher I've ever had seems to have for each lecture they give :-) Otherwise, Paul's Online Math Notes tackles Calculus and ODEs, and II…
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> When I was in university, over in Europe, a long time ago, on the first day of lectures the professors would wheel in a cart of textbooks, saying these are suitable texts, go and pick the one that suits you best. o.O Seriously? How have I never heard that this happens? That's ridiculously sane.
As someone who goes to uni in Europe (the UK), I've never had anyone wheel in a an actual cart of textbooks, but nor have I ever had a lecturer proclaim only a single textbook is acceptable. Usually they give a list of 5-10, with a few of them being recommended. Even where they clearly prefer some particular textbook, they'll still name a few alternatives. If a lecturer ever did say only a single textbook was allowed…
ETA: Also see sibling comment from CamperBob2 for a good example of how students see themselves as customers of teachers.