US Supreme Court hears case of student who resold textbooks

[Vanadium 50]

Even that's ridiculous. No company is going to stop doing something profitable out of spite.

Who said anything about profitable? Sure, texts like Thomas' calculus are profitable. But Bjorken and Drell? They're lucky to sell a few hundred copies a year. The way things work now is that lower-division texts incur a huge profit, which enables upper-division and graduate texts to be sold at a loss.

It's certainly possible to put the squeeze on publishers, and drop the costs of the big sellers. But there may be unintended consequences of this.

 

[Jack21222]

Who said anything about profitable?

The poster I was responding to said profitable.

 

[SunnyBoyNY]

Just recently I bought the new edition of Discrete-time Signal Processing by Oppenheim for $140 from Amazon. The list price is close to two hundred dollars.

The textbook is excellent, albeit no different from the previous edition besides two new chapters! I also own the previous edition ($30 including shipping) that would be perfectly sufficient for the course I am currently taking. What drives the schools to force students to obtain the newest, most expensive editions?

Penny pinching students should not be blamed. It is the publisher cartel and nation-imposed prohibition that helped spur such second-hand market creativity.

As for legal purposes, there should be a clear distinction between a hobby/ebay seller and a business. I do not dare to specify the line. But clearly, a revenue over 1 million dollars could not have gotten unnoticed by IRS. Not to mention that an international student on F-1 or J-1 visa is not allowed to open a business in the US.

 

[Number Nine]

The poster I was responding to said profitable.

I don't recall saying that publishers would stop producing profitable textbooks "out of spite". Perhaps you could show me where I did.

I very clearly said exactly what Vanadium just said: That attempts to "fix" the industry (which I fully endorse) may have unintended consequences when it comes to their less profitable texts.

 

[jtbell]

What drives the schools to force students to obtain the newest, most expensive editions?

Old editions tend to be less-widely available than the newest edition. That's not good if you want to ensure that everyone in a class is working from the same page, so to speak.

If a student in one of my classes insisted on using an older edition of the textbook, I'd say, "OK, but you're responsible for dealing with any differences in content: chapters shuffled around, exercises renumbered or changed completely, etc."

 

[SunnyBoyNY]

If a student in one of my classes insisted on using an older edition of the textbook, I'd say, "OK, but you're responsible for dealing with any differences in content: chapters shuffled around, exercises renumbered or changed completely, etc."

Of course most students would buy the new edition. And what I find most interesting is that there is really no need to use a 2011 textbook to teach basic circuits, Laplace, linear algebra, etc.

While the text itself is barely updated in newer editions, the exercises are usually completely scrambled or a variable is changed so that the older edition is rendered unusable. One can imagine that if exercises stayed the same, just a portion of students would buy the new book while the rest would probably obtain their copy from a second-hand source and thus not generate revenue for the publisher.

Praise the professors who sympathize with students and use inexpensive, yet top-notch textbooks.

 

[Jack21222]

I don't recall saying that publishers would stop producing profitable textbooks "out of spite". Perhaps you could show me where I did.

I very clearly said exactly what Vanadium just said: That attempts to "fix" the industry (which I fully endorse) may have unintended consequences when it comes to their less profitable texts.

Alright, all of you need to seriously stop twisting my words. It's getting tiresome.

You said they'd stop producing things that were profitable. You did say "less profitable," but you did not say "not profitable."

Vanadium responded "who said anything about profitable."

I responded "the poster I was responding to did."

At no point did I ever accuse you of saying they'd do it "out of spite." That was my own inference because you provided no other reason they would stop producing profitable textbooks.

 

[leroyjenkens]

They're not the same. They are printed on extremely thin, inferior paper, for example.

I meant as far as content. And you're right, the paper in my International edition of Introduction to Electrodynamics is thin enough to see through the page. But it only costed 50$ instead of over 100$.

 

[rootX]

I meant as far as content. And you're right, the paper in my International edition of Introduction to Electrodynamics is thin enough to see through the page. But it only costed 50$ instead of over 100$.

You got ripped Those international books cost as little as 1$.

Thin pages? I don't know if you can justify the 100$ price tag just because of paper quality. Papers are really cheap.

Someone brought up interesting point about nationalizing textbooks industry. I think it's something that should also be considered for entertainment licensing companies. Only thing these companies know to stop piratings are throwing in heavy lawsuits. They are simply not doing enough to keep up with the current technologies and time. Textbook and other similar companies should look for more innovative ways of generating revenues than coming up with artificial price tags on their technologically obsolete products.

 

[nitsuj]

perhaps an revenue generating opportunity; for these "schools" to publish their own textbooks.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

You said they'd stop producing things that were profitable. You did say "less profitable," but you did not say "not profitable."

Yes because if they're less profitable now the implication is that they could become not profitable if they are forced to sell at the lowest international prices. Whilst that wasn't explicit it was the obvious point being made.

Rather than getting into a tit-for-tat why don't we stick with that salient point because it is one of two major concerns (the other being whether or not significantly reduced profits will reduce the quality and frequency of publication). Do we have any resources for determining if these scenarios could come to light? For example: are there any less profitable textbooks that are deliberately sold at a loss in poorer countries, perhaps as a loss leader.

 

[Vagrant]

I had a professor who made us purchase $160 'non-international' versions of a textbook, as doing otherwise is like stealing from the authors according to him. Basically he said that he would confiscate any international versions if he saw them in class or in his office hours. And he also mentioned several times in class that he knew the authors personally.
Are professors in the right to set up rules like this?

 

[skeptic2]

I had a professor who made us purchase $160 'non-international' versions of a textbook, as doing otherwise is like stealing from the authors according to him. Basically he said that he would confiscate any international versions if he saw them in class or in his office hours. And he also mentioned several times in class that he knew the authors personally.
Are professors in the right to set up rules like this?

Who was the publisher of the textbook?

I remember seeing an article in the news a while back about a professor who was fired for not requiring her students to buy the very expensive textbook for the course. It turned out, the textbook was published by the same institution.

 

[Vagrant]

Who was the publisher of the textbook?

Pearson.
From the way he spoke about this in class, this rule was a result of his personal belief that buying international editions is in essence cheating the authors.

 

[skeptic2]

It would be interesting to find out if the administration supports this professor's views and would back him if the issue ever came to a head. Perhaps a chat with the Dean of Faculty would be enlightening. Offhand, confiscating something that you paid for sounds like robbery.

 

[moonman239]

Now, I'm all for buying international textbooks, because the textbooks in the U.S. are far too expensive for any money conscious person, but the lawsuit filed against him is entirely justified. There are some instances where copyright laws cannot, and should not, be as simple as "well, he bought it, and he can do whatever he wants with it now."

I disagree. What he's doing is OK in my book, as long as he's selling the books at a reasonable price.