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Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

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Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#151

Post by khuey »

dubya wrote: post #93
dublinben wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only saving grace of digital distribution of textbooks is that it (often) allows easier pirating. The availability of inexpensive used textbooks is less crucial if free PDFs are available.

The publishers are already pushing bundled grading systems with their textbook. You get the textbook and also a login key so you can submit homework and quizzes online. I don't know how widespread it is yet, but I suspect many service courses at state schools will adopt it soon.

It's getting more and more popular for intro level courses. It's an easy way to shift more of the cost of running the course off of the university (or the state) and onto the students because you need fewer TAs/grading assistants.

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#152

Post by khuey »

WildUtah wrote: post #123
nitrogen wrote: post #83

It's interesting that the Omega watch case had a 4-4 tie in the SC while this decision was 6-3. Does this mean that Costco can start importing cheap watches again? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_S.A._v._Costco_Wholesale...

Costco won in district court on remand. The theory was that even if it was infringing copyright, using copyright to block physical goods was an abuse of copyright. So Costco still won in the end. Omega was appealing the decision last I heard. Cr_ppy Omega watches are overpriced anyway.

Seems like this precedent should make Omega's appeal that much harder.

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#153

Post by CamperBob2 »

pdonis wrote: post #132
CamperBob2 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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". But t…

What can you say about the NYT that you can't say about CU? Actually, if anything, CU would be less open to the issue I'm raising, of corporate money being expended for purposes that many or most of its shareholders do not agree with. CU was organized for the express purpose of political speech; NYT and most corporations are not. And most corporations are not even organized for the express purpose of publishing speec…

The legal fiction of a "corporation" is abused in all manner of ways.

True, but I don't see how to fix it without serious unintended consequences in other areas.

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#154

Post by pm90 »

impendia wrote: post #44
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #9

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?

The most practical thing to do would probably be to start a book bank; or, just have the department library stock up on textbooks which can then be loaned to every class that uses it. Those that want to keep the textbook can buy their copy, but most, who just want to read the material for the course, will happily use it

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#155

Post by MacsHeadroom »

jlgreco wrote: post #134
hub_ wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why the content industry pushed for the DMCA and used that in the case of the DeCSS case: DMCA as a mean to protect market protection like DVD region encoding. The problem with physical books is that they can't do it. The know it, the court knows it.

Presumably however this means that buying both your DVDs and your DVD player from another region is now unambiguously legal. (IANAL)

I'm fairly certain that was always clearly legal.

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#157

Post by rayiner »

Natsu wrote: post #140
rayiner wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's a bad idea" is a very different thing than "it's unconstitutional." It shouldn't even need to be said, but this is a mistake that is pervasive on HN.[1] There are infinite shitty ideas that are nonetheless Constitutional. The Court is empowered to throw out unconstitutional legislation. It is not empowered to throw out Constitutional legislation that happens to be a bad idea. [1] On everything from campaign fin…

It is, however, empowered to figure out how to interpret ambiguous legislation. And when more than one interpretation is possible, I don't really think it is such a bad idea to choose the more sensible option. I don't believe they've "throw[n] out" any part of the law here. Rather, they have chosen the interpretation they found more reasonable and consistent with the Constitutional prerogative of promoting the progre…

In this specific case I don't disagree, I think they made a good and reasonable call, interpreting an ambiguous statute consistently with its other copyright jurisprudence.

More generally, I'm quite wary of situations in which the Court second-guesses Congress. Every time the Court does so, it uses up some of the Court's political capital, which is ultimately the only thing the Court has to enforce its judgments. Even though I'm a liberal, I tend to be very skeptical of judicial activism because I think that political capital should be saved for when it is really necessary.

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#158

Post by phaedryx »

impendia wrote: post #44
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #9

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?

Not sure, but I think the solution in general is open textbooks, e.g.: http://utahopentextbooks.org/

With print-on-demand: https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/#content6

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#159

Post by gwright »

pdonis wrote: post #135
gwright wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of association. You are free to invest or not invest in a corporation. You can be a customer or not. You can be an employee or not. The idea that a group of people (organized as a church, club, corporation, partnership, union, political party, non-profit, etc.) can only 'speak' as a group by getting every 'member' to explicitly sign a document for each and every instance of 'speech' or expenditure of money is…

Freedom of association is one thing. Making use of the legal privileges attached to "corporations" and "nonprofits" for uses way beyond the intent of those privileges is quite another. Yes, no large organization can get the explicit assent of every member to every official statement it makes. But that doesn't mean corporate management has carte blanche to do whatever they want with company money. But, as I posted in…

What 'legal privileges' are you talking about? Speech isn't a privilege it is a right.

Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks

#160

Post by johnrgrace »

neilc wrote: post #69
greenyoda wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst offenders are the professors who write their own textbooks (even though there are dozens of better ones already available) and then use them in their courses, making money off each student. Maybe there should be conflict of interest rules in universities. The heroes in this game are the instructors who are creating open-source textbooks.

The worst offenders are the professors who write their own textbooks (even though there are dozens of better ones already available) and then use them in their courses, making money off each student. I think you are seriously overestimating the financial gains such a professor would make. I've taken several classes with profs who teach from their own textbook; the profit per book sold that a prof receives is usually…

In the late 90's I took an intro psyc course and the prof wrote his own online textbook, mass 300 student lecture and we all had to "subscribe" to his book for $40 each, he taught 3 sections a semester. He had $72k a year on sales, because you couldn't pass the course without the "book". It was one the most god awful eye bleeding design I've ever seen. But, yes you CAN make decent money off selling your own textbook to students on the 101 level.
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