Well, this is part of the problem.
Sometimes "the author's labor" amounts to reordering questions at the back to mark it as new revision and charge 150+ usd for a book that should have been $20 brand new, and is only purchased because it's a required title in a required class to get a piece of paper required for employment.
In that case... Fuck yes. Screw the author's "labor". Arguably, screw the whole damn system.
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Copyright rarely helps small authors who actually need it.
It usually gets employed by conglomerates that own distribution and are already screwing authors as hard as they think they can get away with.
It's genuinely a pretty terrible system in its current form.
The problem there isn't copyright. It's whoever is demanding students use the latest version.
> Copyright rarely helps small authors who actually need it.
>
> It usually gets employed by conglomerates that own distribution and are already screwing authors as hard as they think they can get away with.
Do you think these small authors have the resources to try to enforce copyright?
The textbook thing was a non issue when I was in college. Previous year books were sold on to the next year, and lecturers gave us page numbers for at least two editions.
I think all of the books for my year were about $150, not just one.
Now I'd assume everyone is using digital books so it might be different.
Let's take the emotion out of this, because it is clouding your judgement. There are a number of distinctions that must be made.
1. The actual labor of an author. Writing a book requires a nontrivial amount of labor. This cannot be ignored. You cannot categorically say that you have a right to the labor of an author and the publisher.
2. The dishonest business practices of publishers (and some authors). I agree that university textbooks often follow this model, but that is largely a flaw with the American university education system which has long abandoned education as its primary aim. The money-making schemes around education are downright criminal, and it is disgusting that universities abet and enable them.
3. The distribution of books where this is a problem. Most published books do not go through successive bogus editions that only reorder the exercises in the back. W.r.t. university texts, I've had professors who use old books published decades ago (e.g., Dover, which are cheap) and these tend to better than the glossy tomes many professors seem to prefer for some reason. There is absolutely no reason for a 30th edition book on basic number theory or the foundations of Newtonian physics.
Professors are first and foremost pedagogues, hence why I think the research university is a grave injustice toward students, where pedagogy takes a back seat. Each professor should effectively be writing his own "textbook". This doesn't have to be a published tome. Orally-delivered or via lecture notes, doesn't matter.
> Let's take the emotion out of this, because it is clouding your judgement.
Why make this point?
Address my actual content - I believe we can do better than modern copyright (personally - I think "no copyright" is likely a better and more ethical solution than the modern incarnation, but that's a real discussion, and there are FAR too many leeches (excuse me - vested interests) for this reasoning to gain traction in western countries).
I think modern copyright is at the root of an absolutely incredible amount of rent-seeking behavior, and I think we both agree on that point.
You state: "The money-making schemes around education are downright criminal, and it is disgusting that universities abet and enable them."
But copyright enables these exact money-making schemes, and it does so on a level far beyond the damage done by universities alone. We see this across huge swathes of the economy.
Again, my opinion is that current copyright laws have become a tool that facilitates stagnation, enriches middlemen rather than funds authors or creatives of any type, and are largely harmful to society.
That's NOT a condemnation of copyright as a concept, I believe there are implementations that can be much more fruitful. But what the US promotes is, well, a steaming pile of horse-*&^% that reeks so bad we'd be better off washing it away entirely.
So to your points:
> 1. The actual labor of an author. Writing a book requires a nontrivial amount of labor. This cannot be ignored. You cannot categorically say that you have a right to the labor of an author and the publisher.
I entirely agree, work should be compensated. I don't believe that work entitles you to a revenue stream for eternity, or functional eternity (ex: life of author plus 70 FUCKING YEARS). We don't pay the skilled workers who build houses for every month someone stays in them. They do work in exchange for a set payment. They don't get payment forever in exchange for one-time work.
> 2. The dishonest business practices of publishers (and some authors). I agree that university textbooks often follow this model, but that is largely a flaw with the American university education system which has long abandoned education as its primary aim. The money-making schemes around education are downright criminal, and it is disgusting that universities abet and enable them.
We both agree, no argument here.
> 3. The distribution of books where this is a problem. Most published books do not go through successive bogus editions that only reorder the exercises in the back. W.r.t. university texts, I've had professors who use old books published decades ago (e.g., Dover, which are cheap) and these tend to better than the glossy tomes many professors seem to prefer for some reason. There is absolutely no reason for a 30th edition book on basic number theory or the foundations of Newtonian physics.
Yes, people can and do act ethically at times, all on their own. Those people are great, but we're not referring to them, we're referring to the systemic problems of copyright that enable the opposite behavior. The world could be so much better if more people acted in this manner, but human nature implies we're not dealing with that world.
More to the point: the reason you find so many people advocating for pirating textbooks specifically, is because textbooks have often been used by authors/institutions/publishers to fleece students:
> Some textbook companies have countered [the second hand market] by encouraging teachers to assign homework that must be done on the publisher's website. Students with a new textbook can use the pass code in the book to register on the site; otherwise they must pay the publisher to access the website and complete assigned homework.
> Harvard economics chair James K. Stock has stated that new editions are often not about significant improvements to the content. "New editions are to a considerable extent simply another tool used by publishers and textbook authors to maintain their revenue stream, that is, to keep up prices."
Students can tell when they're being scammed, and are more than happy to go to war with scammers such as these.
I would personally love and do support ethical publishers /companies and authors themselves but I refuse to engage with the exploiting kind, since there is effectively little difference between them and pirates.
