October 14, 2008
In Win for Publishers, 'Textbook Torrents' Piracy Site Shuts Down for Good
A popular online directory of pirated textbooks for download has closed shop for good, despite a recent taunt from its founder that he would continue to operate in defiance of threats of legal action by publishers.
The site, Textbook Torrents, came to the attention of publishers after being featured in a Chronicle article in July. Since then, publishers pressured the site’s founder — an anonymous college student who goes by the online name Geekman — to close, but he had refused, calling his site an act of “civil disobedience” meant to make a statement about the high cost of textbooks. Just last month Geekman told The Chronicle that he planned to find a way to keep the site up permanently.
But it appears that Geekman yielded to the pressure last week. He replaced the site with a statement noting that it is closed for good. “I would be lying if I claimed that the concern of legal action wasn’t a major factor in the decision,” he wrote in the statement. But he said the effort of maintaining the site was also a factor. “I am at heart an activist, a crusader for the underdog,” he wrote. “When I see something that I believe is wrong, I do what I can to fix it, if only in some small way. I believe this is what Textbook Torrents has stood for, and what we have done.” He called for others to set up similar pirate sites to fill the gap.
The blog TorrentFreak first noted the site’s demise last week. Jim Groom, an instructional-technology specialist at the University of Mary Washington, points out on his blog that the site’s popularity raises questions about the future of textbooks. —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Tuesday October 14, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Previous: Tech Therapy: Why Can't Librarians and IT Departments Just Get Along?
Next: A New Satellite Opens Its Eye and Sees Kutztown University
Finally a break for the underdog publishing companies who barely make ends meet. If not for this legal victory, a government bailout would have been necessary.
— Okedokee Oct 14, 12:59 PM #
I don’t want to defend publishing companies, but I just wanted to say that it’s profoundly irritating when people misuse the term “civil disobedience” like this “Geekman” has. Stealing another person’s intellectual property is not civil disobedience— it’s just stealing. One could argue that it’s justifiable stealing, like Robin Hood stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but it’s not civil disobedience in any way, shape, or form.
— The Ethical Exhibitionist Oct 14, 02:49 PM #
Does the site’s popularity raise questions about the future of textbooks or the future of civility?
— Mark Oct 14, 03:01 PM #
Believe it or not, publishers wish that it would go all digital tomorrow. The value that publishers add is in the development of the learning materials and ancillaries. It is expensive work. One of the major reasons textbooks are as expensive as they are is that all those development costs are shouldered by the poor student who has to buy that first new copy of the new edition. The next 4 times that same copy is bought and sold, the used book industry gets the revenue, not the author or publisher.
If it were a digital world in textbooks (like other media) prices would go way down because the revenue would go to the author and publisher, not the used book companies. All of the costs would not be focused on a few students unlucky enough to be the first purchasers. The good news is that it is beginning to happen, the bad news is that, like most things in the academy, change comes at a glacial pace.
— jmellett Oct 14, 06:05 PM #
Try to think about what textbook publishers actually add to the value of the product they eventually sell. Certainly they polish an author’s submitted work by improving grammar and style. In many fields they help create fancy graphics to help readers understand the material more easily (physics, chemistry, microbiology, medicine, economics, etc.). And they do marketing, printing (in many cases farmed out), and distribution.
What they don’t add is the immense human capital that the author has accumulated and through textbook writing is making available to others.
And then there’s the monopoly profit that accrues because of the legislated rules and regulations surrounding so-called intellectual property. Note that the legal intellectual property in the book is quite different from the human capital that the author has amassed. It is the legal web that leads to the high book prices that people complain about.
The monopoly profit due to the copyright laws is compounded by the monopoly nature of the publishing industry itself. The market concentration in college textbook publishing as evidenced by the wave of merger and acquisitions is therefore a contributing factor to the high prices. In a traditional economic analysis, one solution to this second monopoly problem (probably more precisely an oligopoly problem) is to have entry into the market, increasing the number of firms, and, in the textbook discussion, eventually falling prices.
Switch your brain now to the world of open source software. Open source applications have three noteworthy features. One is that they are digital, obviously, and therefore can be distributed at zero marginal cost. Another is that in many cases they can be improved by users, with the improvements made available to everyone. And finally, there seems to be a pool of individuals out in the digital universe that is willing to create improvements. The problem with open source software is that there are sometimes very high fixed costs (e.g., Sakai), and in some cases maintenance costs (e.g., Linux) that have somehow to be covered. Foundations, are you listening?
Now put the two cases together and pose the natural question: Why don’t we have hardly any open source, online instructional materials that substitute for the traditional textbook? The examples that exist, and there certainly are examples, have not been very successful so far. Perhaps they only lack the funding. But that can’t be the case with the MIT Open Course Ware project. What we need is some university or foundation to take the lead in offering high quality, interactive open source materials that can be maintained over time.
— The Big Bopper Oct 15, 11:08 AM #
Open source is also an opportunity for publishers, as the generation of the material can be an author-pays model. The publisher can be a value-added proposition, and can even potentially make this work by advertising dollars, etc.
Given that most textbooks are written by faculty and supported by the public, we need a viable way to encourage the best to develop this material above and beyond the minimal fees a publisher pays to the author.
Small publishers should consider this a major new area for them. Large publishers have an even larger opportunity ahead of them.
Alas, most consider open source to be a non-viable model.
— Scientific author Oct 15, 11:34 AM #
Easy to talk about open source, but hard to get authors to put in years of work for no return. As a textbook writer and publisher for 30 years, now putting out texts for $16, with 25% royalties to author, I suggest keeping this alternative in mind; many people prefer a hardcopy.
— scriven Oct 15, 02:41 PM #
Do we unthinkingly jump to conclusions sometimes?
When we take for granted that every college course must have one or more specifically-engineered ‘textbooks?’
When we believe that published materials that are not ‘textbooks’ are generally inappropriate for use in ‘serious’ coursework?
When we do not think it strange that college libraries do not generally buy copies of ‘textbooks,’ which the students they serve must read?
When we assume that the inexpensive real ‘texts’ of news agencies, the internet, periodicals, advertising, politics, and business, which college students will be expected to digest and create as soon as they graduate, are not relevant in the classroom?
— barth Oct 15, 04:39 PM #
Go to India and China and see what the cost is for a so-called International student edition is, but not for resale and/or import into the USA. With record trade deficits and outsourcing to India and China, I think Indian and Chinese students and/or their governments and companies can pay for the same cost of text books as we charge students in Western Europe, Mexico, the USA, Canada and Australia. It is too much to ask our young college students to stop subsidizing the cost of text books to India and China. And we wonder why there are so many Indian and Chinese graduate students in US graduate schools. They have easier and more affordable access to textbooks written by professors who salaries are paid for by the parents and grandparents of college students. This practice must stop. We are severely damaging the value of the university education of our young people. The professors should encrypt their lecture notes and use the students genetic code to be able to read. The same technology used by Hollywood should also be used for the lecture notes made by university academics. The idea that less than one percent of academics make up their own lecture notes is mind boggling. The students should be taught the results of the latest research results being undertaken by the university academics and researchers, before it is published in peer reviewed journals and text books and made available to students in India and China.
Most companies do not share their IP with the competitors. Why do your university academics not keep their knowledge and IP for the students and tax payers who pay their salaries. The current policies are responsible for the large number of jobs being outsourced to India and China. The way to reverse the trend is to change not only the publication of text books, but also the publication and distribution of new knowledge, technologies and information. The students who pay the high salaries of the university academics should get access to the IP, information and research results Before tho students, researchers and academics in India, China and even other universities. This will make the degrees from many of our flag ship universities worth the cost that our young people now are being charged. As it inow is, the students and academics in India and China and their graduate students have easier and more affordable access to this IP, information and research results then our own students. Does this really make sense?
— KJJ Oct 20, 09:32 PM #
It’s strange to live in a time when students routinely spend $50/month for cable TV, $100/ month for cigarettes, $150/month for cell and texting, $200/pop for sneakers, $300/year for movies and videogames, and $500/month for an automobile/gas/insurance, but bristle at $100 or less for a textbook that will prepare them for a lifetime of learning and career. How screwed up are our priorities? As a textbook author, I can assure you that the paltry financial return for the time and effort to write a book hardly makes it worth doing now — and in no way would I spend what amounts to a second full-time job doing it as part of my other duties in the academy. If you want amateurs writing textbooks, a la wikipedia, then higher education is in even bigger trouble than I thought. Think about that next time you’re wondering about the educational preparation of your surgeon, attorney, journalist, or financial planner. In the meantime, stop filling the empty heads of youth with the absurd, hypocritical notion that intellectual property is or should be free — unless you want to do your own work as a volunteer rather than as a professional.
— bff Oct 31, 10:34 PM #