
Anti-Piracy Patent Aims to Stop Students from Sharing Textbooks - lightspot
http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-patent-prevents-students-from-sharing-books-120610
======
IvoDankolov

        No access code means a lower grade, all in the best interests of science.
    

I ... no. I can't even...

I'm sorry, but I find it very hard to summon an inkling of sympathy for the
publishers' plea against piracy when I see measures like that.

When I failed calculus because I didn't prove a theorem the way it was in the
lecture notes and then was insane enough to argue the point, I thought it was
pretty stupid. Here, I don't think the word even begins to describe the
situation.

Commodity. That's a good way of describing the role of the students. It shows
a rather alarming failure of the system that instead of incentivizing the
pursuit of knowledge, students are set up for failure and milked for as much
money as possible during their education.

I know a patent doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things, and I do hope
that most people in a position to make decisions in education call it out for
being stupid, though I feel that's a tad optimistic. I'm just sad that a
_professor_ is the one proposing this. There go my non-existent beliefs in
academia.

~~~
antonb2011
Don't worry about it, man. He can patent it all he wants, but thing is not
gonna fly. It's called a "tie-in sale", and the United States Anti-Trust law
prohibits it. McDonald's tried this trick a long time ago with their franchise
owners in order to better account for how much they sold, by forcing them to
buy paper cups and other supplies directly from Corporate (i.e. prohibiting
third party suppliers). I think it got really high in courts, but eventually
the franchise owners won.

~~~
chris_wot
In Australia it's called "restraint of trade" and is totally illegal. eBay
tried to do something similar by forcing users to use PayPal and the
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) struck it down.

This patent might work in areas of the world that don't have much consumer
protection, but they will NOT work in areas of the world that care about anti-
competitive practices.

~~~
chris_wot
Argh! Not restraint of trade, "third line forcing" is the term! Oops.

------
moistgorilla
I'm tired of this. I am not going to pay for any product I can pirate anymore.
I don't even feel guilty about it. If the artist wants money he should set up
a donations account so I can pay him directly. I'm tired of these middlemen.

I'm also tired of people preaching about how piracy is unethical. A copied
piece of data is not equivalent to a lost sale. People cannot own information.
You cannot own an algorithm or idea. Imagine if Newton owned the laws of
motion, imagine if he owned calculus. How can someone own an arrangement of
words or sounds. If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or
benefiting from current copyright and patent laws.

edit: And let us not forget the primary purpose of these laws. The purpose
wasn't so you could get insanely wealthy off of an idea. It was to provide an
incentive for people to create and learn. Copyright and patent laws are now
doing the opposite.

~~~
anigbrowl
_You cannot own an algorithm or idea. Imagine if Newton owned the laws of
motion, imagine if he owned calculus._

And you can't copyright them either.

 _How can someone own an arrangement of words or sounds._

Because that person made it? Are you saying people have no right to own the
things they make?

~~~
vibrunazo
> Because that person made it? Are you saying people have no right to own the
> things they make?

"I can only see so far because I'm standing in the shoulder of giants."

Imagine if you had to pay for every one of the thousands little concept that
your own idea (inevitably) derives from. That system would be unsustainable.
We can only make progress because we can expand and improve on what were
created before.

~~~
crusso
Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea is
derived from?

That's a straw man.

The argument for paying people for new IP is that for a limited time we should
offer rewards for people to add to the collective knowledge of our society.

So really in terms of your argument, the consumer isn't paying for "standing
on the shoulder of giants" either. The consumer of IP is only paying for the
incremental value added by the creator of the content.

As a society, we discovered that rewarding producers adds to the useful
aggregate more than just hoping that they'll add the same amount of content
without compensation.

~~~
vibrunazo
> Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea
> is derived from?

IP limits production to create artificial scarcity. No matter how you look at
it, after you copyright or patent something. You are limiting what can be
created in the world.

> As a society, we discovered that rewarding producers adds to the useful
> aggregate more than just hoping that they'll add the same amount of content
> without compensation

No we did not. Historically, Intellectual property was created as one more
monopoly privilege for the monarchy. [1] Together with the monopoly selling
rice, and other commodities, were the monopoly of printing books. At no point
in history did we, as a society, conclude that if we limit reward producers it
would add to the useful aggregate. That excuse was only invented after the
"monopoly privilege" over copying books were renamed to "copy rights". At the
same time that other monarchy monopolies were destroyed.

Society never discovered that it's worth in the aggregate. You cannot prove
it's worth in the aggregate. Any attempt so far to measure the aggregate has
been absurd. [2]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law>

[2] <http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html>

~~~
crusso
> You are limiting what can be created in the world.

Not really true. You could say that IP limits some forms of use that could
produce new creations. But that would ignore the fact that often IP is
licensed, thus not preventing the creation of some content.

Further, providing a reward for the creation of new IP dramatically increases
the overall creation rate of what society considers to be "useful" IP.

> No we did not. Historically, Intellectual property was created as one more
> monopoly privilege for the monarchy

That's just an ad hominem.

> At no point in history did we, as a society, conclude that if we limit
> reward producers it would add to the useful aggregate.

See, this is just factually incorrect. All you need to do is to look at US
history and the motivations for creating copyright and patent law as part of
the new nation to see that you're wrong.

The saddest thing is that I actually think that our system of IP is in serious
need of a rewrite. The way that big media companies abuse our legal system and
the power of our government should be criminalized. At very least, we should
be using statistical models and the Scientific method to determine the ideal
values for copyright and patent lengths rather than basing new IP laws upon
the lobbying efforts of Disney.

That said, as an advocate for changing the situation, you're not being
effective. You make totally unfounded arguments and in at least one other
place in this same thread I saw where you were using cheap online debating
tricks to try to get your point across.

When I read the original article this thread is based on, I felt some
legitimate annoyance at the professor since what he's doing is unethical. But
then I read a couple of your posts and felt I needed to respond to arguments
that were remarkably uninformed and disingenuously constructed.

~~~
h89
> That's just an ad hominem.

No it isn't....

~~~
crusso
The value of IP laws doesn't depend upon the (fabricated) motivations of those
who created it.

So, yeah, it is an ad hominem.

~~~
chris_wot
Actually, it isn't. Ad hominem is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by
pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.

In this case, he is referring to a third party (the monarchy) who actually did
use it as a monopoly priviledge for the monarchy. Saying that it is
frabricated does not make it so. In fact, if you look at all that was said, it
was "Historically, Intellectual property was created as one more monopoly
privilege for the monarchy."

~~~
crusso
> Actually, it isn't. Ad hominem is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim
> by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting
> it.

Which is what the poster did in bringing up the motivations of a monarchy that
used some form of IP regulation that we weren't even discussing. Discrediting
monarchies' motivations for wanting IP has nothing to do with the situation we
have today. It's an ad hominem.

None of that has anything to do with the utility of reward-based IP laws in
promoting the creation of useful IP to society. So you could also consider
some argument about how monarchies used IP in medieval times to be a red
herring. Regardless of the label, the argument is equally invalid.

~~~
chris_wot
I've actually reread my comment, and I concede the point.

------
pdeuchler
Unfortunately, this is nothing new for students.

I have been forced to buy institution specific versions of my books (which
simply means they regenerated the practice problems), preventing me from
seeking cheaper bookstores like Amazon or the mom & pop down the street. I
have been forced to purchase physical CD's with serial codes to access lecture
notes (of course, only provided at the school bookstore). But worst of all,
I'm very often forced to purchase WebAssign keys. Web Assign is a service that
allows professors (in my case, in the math/physics departments) to create
online quizzes and homeworks that are graded automatically. Usually the keys
cost $45-$60 and they only work for one semester per class, and while they
come free with new books (which are exorbitantly expensive, might I add) any
used book purchase must be supplemented with these keys. Of course, the
professor is glad to tell us we have the option not to buy the key, however we
will then get a 0 on the respective assignments.

In my very humble opinion, the greed has gotten so out of control that it's
hard for the publishers to see what is even wrong with forcing students to PAY
TO DO HOMEWORK.

Something desperately needs to be done. My hope is that e-books slowly
democratize the process, but that could be long after I have graduated.

~~~
CamperBob2
_In my very humble opinion, the greed has gotten so out of control that it's
hard for the publishers to see what is even wrong with forcing students to PAY
TO DO HOMEWORK_

How is that not the whole idea behind college, in general?

~~~
pdeuchler
Technically, my outrage would be at being forced to pay to do homework on top
of being forced to pay to learn.

------
runn1ng
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html>

Richard Stallman, Right to Read, 1997. It's really chilling to read this story
today, when half of it is already truth.

~~~
darwinGod
I was thinking this should have been the topmost comment on this story-
Surprised that not many people here seem to have read this,for if they had-
this 'story' should have been the first thing they commented on.

------
fossuser
Well looks like it's finally coming true:
<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html>

What seemed absurd back in 1997 is more and more probable today.

------
jeffdavis
Up-front and clear fees, directly based on the product or service offered, are
the most efficient way for a market economy to work. In this case, this should
mean simple fees for the classes, and book prices based on the original
content in that version divided by the number of people who demand that
original content.

This patent describes a means to make the prices of things -- like a class --
much more obscure and indirect, which is obviously a perverse market. It's not
really about piracy though; it more closely resembles a toll booth on the door
to the classroom, or charging students to keep the lights on so they can read
the chalkboard. This just happens to resemble a copyright issue, so it
triggers that particular response from people interested in copyright.

So why are such perverse systems so common? Because we demand them. It's not
some conspiracy. We like to play games with prices, and overestimate our
ability to outplay our opponent, and think we can get the best of them (in
reality, practical matters take over and we just end up paying more on
average).

Take cellphones. You can buy an unlocked google phone for a simple, direct
price based on the quality of the hardware and the support that you expect to
receive from google (or the manufacturer). Then, you can get a prepaid service
plan for cheap (I pay $30/mo for a good smartphone plan) that is based on the
level of service you expect from the carrier for as long as you feel like
being their customer. I will save hundreds per year over getting a contract
and a discounted phone (let's say a typical smartphone plan is at least
$60/mo, so I save $30/mo or $720 over a 2-year contract, but lose at most $400
from lack of a discount, netting me $320). I also have greater flexibility and
choice.

Yet almost everybody in the U.S., including those reading this comment, are
under a 2-year contract right now. Why? I don't know. Economics is about what
people actually do though, not what they should do. And given a choice between
clear pricing and obscure pricing, people choose obscure pricing.

EDIT: And after people get predictably tired playing pricing games with a
large company, and end up just paying more, they complain.

~~~
gareim
Yes, I've definitely seen many people extolling the virtues of prepaid and I
agree that prepaid is a fantastic option for many, but there are reasons why
contracts are fine too.

Besides the psychological barriers to putting down an extra couple hundred to
save a little money every month (where only in the aggregate do you start
coming ahead), many of us just can't afford to drop that much cash at once for
a phone. Not only that, but many have families, making that very expensive
very quickly.

Speaking of families, prepaid doesn't cater well to families either! For most
carriers, you can add a line for what, $10 a month (I use T-Mobile)? In my
family of 4, a family plan would cost around $100 to $110 (without data).

The cheapest prepaid plans are now around $30 so a family of 4 would cost
$120. Granted, that would include data, which I don't have. But with a
contract plan, I would also get unlimited calling to others on the same
carrier and free calling at night. Many Americans still actually use their
phones as phones, so that's a huge plus that prepaid carriers don't offer.

So while prepaid works for many, it still isn't the perfect solution for a
large majority of us.

One sidenote: If you're on T-Mobile, you can wait for phones to go on sale for
free after 2 year contract and then get the cheapest data plan ($10 a month
for 200mb) and your cost of the smartphone comes out to $240 over two years.
Yes, if you HADN'T gone with the subsidy and brought your own phone (not to
prepaid, but the other option T-Mobile has), your plan would be $10 less per
month, but if you have a family, the benefits stated above quickly make that
$10 feel a lot weaker. PM me if you don't quite understand.

------
jhspaybar
This already is in widespread use, not sure how the professor expects this
patent to hold up in any way. I had a 4 quarter French language requirement
for my major for which I needed to purchase a $125 book, and then a $99 online
fee to have access to the homework that was 20% of my grade. The real kicker?
My $99 online fee only covers 12 months, 3 quarters is a calendar year without
summer school, that fourth quarter requires an extra fee to gain access to the
homework materials again.

My physics classes also do something similar through the
"masteringphysics.com" website I believe.

This is nothing new, and it's brutal for students. I can usually get through a
quarter with 4-6 classes for under $100 in book costs if I buy used, old
editions, etc but once a teacher throws one of these online requirements my
way the costs of a quarter skyrocket to unreasonable levels.

~~~
el_zorro
I've had to use the Mastering Physics site. You could purchase access the the
site by itself, or get it for 'free' when you bought the required textbook.
Mind you, this was no bargain - buying the book was a $280 investment.

~~~
duskwuff
And if it's anything like the online book components I remember from college,
calling it an "investment" is a stretch. (Because that implies that you're
getting some value from it.)

------
sakopov
"No access code means a lower grade, all in the best interests of science."
"Students who don’t pay can’t participate in the course and therefore get a
lower grade."

It's all about purchasing power, folks. You knowledge only matters a little.
Please, do pirate books. For crying out loud, knowledge can and should be
pirated if it cannot be afforded.

------
comex
The patent itself doesn't stop students from sharing textbooks, it stops
_publishers_ from implementing systems to stop students from sharing textbooks
without paying this guy a fee...

~~~
tikhonj
On the one hand, yes, it allows the inventor to impose a royalty.

On the other hand, the whole point of a patent is to spread the idea. A patent
has to provide enough information to replicate the invention yourself.

So now publishers just have to license the patent; before this, they would
have had to come up with a system like this themselves.

------
wizzard
It's been my experience that the people who share/photocopy textbooks aren't
doing it to screw publishers, they do it because they cannot afford to buy the
book themselves. It is a lot of extra work to pirate textbooks this way; I
doubt anyone would bother without a good reason.

Once again, it seems like all it's going to do is make legitimate customers
jump through hoops, while the pirates find loopholes or simply fail... neither
of which results in additional revenue for publishers.

------
JadeNB
The scorn in the TorrentFreak article is so heavy that I thought that, surely,
they were exaggerating to stir up the masses, and the method described in the
patent was not so heavy-handed as they claimed. (I am a university professor,
and I would like to believe that my profession is an honourable one.) Well,
no. They've got a link to the actual patent (with many spaces missing, for
some reason), and its text, or at least what I could bear to read of it, is
just as they describe.

By the way, as someone unfamiliar with this sort of patent, is there some
legal meaning to the constant reference to "a plurality of lines of code" when
detailing the mechanics of the software, or is the author just fond of the
term 'plurality'? (He also refers later to a plurality of teachers and
students working together.)

------
jrubinovitz
I really wouldn't mind paying for a textbook access code for every class I
take, if the price was actually reasonable (unlike new textbook prices). In an
ideal world: go around the print publishers and digitally publish books with
an access code at a low price with nearly all proceeds going to the author.

I have teachers that won't actually use textbooks because kids at my school
cannot afford them. Professors will actually photocopy the material for us.

~~~
vibrunazo
> I really wouldn't mind living in a world where you can have a monopoly over
> ideas, if I am one of the few who can afford paying for those ideas.

I would. It has much further and deeper implications in the bigger picture
than just that one textbook that you could afford.

~~~
superuser2
They're not trying to charge for access to the ideas. They're charging for the
explanation of those ideas in text that a team of people crafted. They're
charging way too much for it, but that's only because universities let them.

~~~
crusso
Exactly. The ideas are already out there. Charging for information that's out
there when you have a semi-monopolistic hold on the market through the
collusion of most higher institutions of education is unethical.

------
fl3tch
Since time immemorial students have shared information on good and bad
professors. This will be yet another thing that is passed along. Don't take
_his_ section, he forces you to buy a code. Take _her_ section and you can use
my book.

------
tassl
I have always thought that Universities should offer self-contained courses,
with original homework and practice, specially in technical courses. Books
should be considered as reference/reinforcement materials, never a requirement
for anything.

After the irruption of Coursera and Udacity, I heard a couple of professors in
my university talking about the impact those courses can have in the future.
They saw themselves in the future as TAs of those courses, where the students
only "use" them to clarify concepts.

~~~
quantumstate
This is exactly the way the courses at my University (Cambridge, UK) worked.
The lectures covered all relevant course material and problem sheets were
given out (also available online <http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/examples/>).

Each course had a short list of recommended books and usually the lecturer
would give a few comments about each book at the start of the course. These
were for supplementary reference and were widely available in the libraries. I
bought one text book during my course for my favourite area, so I could keep
it after University. Otherwise the libraries were completely adequate.

I studied maths, I know that computer science and physics were the same. With
arts subjects students used so many books that it wouldn't be reasonable to by
them. I am not aware of any courses having required textbooks but I don't know
for certain.

~~~
stordoff
Notes like [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1112/LogicProof/logic-
notes...](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1112/LogicProof/logic-notes.pdf)
were pretty common in CompSci. Often the notes were sufficient on their own,
with pointers to further reading if required (see page 1 on the linked notes).
With the libraries, it was quite easy to manage without buying any books.

------
sbinetd
I do hope I'm not the only one who thought of this:

<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html>

------
norswap
That's an approach... Open source textbooks are another:
<http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/CNP3>

~~~
truncate

        Students who don’t pay can’t participate in the course and therefore get a lower grade.
    

The patent kind of forces students to buy the material.

~~~
norswap
What I meant is that the academic world is divided in two directions. On the
one side there are those who believe in making knowledge more readily
accessible and the other those who would restrict its accessibility.

------
truncate
I don't know which country is it talking about, but no libraries and no book
sharing is only going to put more load on students. They already pay good
amount of fees to their schools.

------
vezycash
Hilarious - your education system is getting similar to those in Nigeria
congrats. Nigerians professors/lecturers have implemented this for years - you
don't need a patent for this kinda crap and you can see for yourself where its
led them.

------
yzhou
Just another reason for not hiring people based on their grades.

~~~
vezycash
the people who would most benefit from your comment either don't care or are
too lazy to think up better ways to assess people outside the grade system.

------
benmanns
I believe professors at my university may already be infringing on this
patent. I was required to buy a $90 "workbook" authored by the course
professor to access a "course survey" worth 10% of the final grade. Granted,
you could share the book and access to the material online, but not if you
wanted an A.

~~~
meric
Wow $90 workbook? The workbooks made by my course professors cost only $10-20
from the university photocopy shop - which is half as expensive as doing the
photocopying yourself. When they're available it comes with homework, lecture
notes, etc. It also isn't counted towards the grade...

When they're not available, because the lecturer did not author a workbook,
we'd have to buy a $150-$250 textbook. I really hate it when the lecturer of
Finance 1 and the lecturer of Finance 2 use different textbooks, even though
one of the textbooks already have content of both of the courses. Luckily our
library has a section full of textbooks with daily usage time limit of 2
hours. That means they're usually available when I go in to use one for
homework - I don't even need to carry it with me...

Which university do you go to?

------
kika
People, think positive. Having a patent means that no one except his genius
Vogel (or his licensees) can actually implement this system. So our goal is
not to bash his brilliant idea, but to convince Vogel that it's worth at least
$1B (per year). To prevent this idea from implementation :-)

------
anonhacker
Don't bite the hand that feeds; I predict a drop in enrollment of classes that
use these textbooks...

------
ifewalter
<joke> Well with more people increasingly dropping out of college, salaries
have to come from somewhere </joke>

This has been going on for years in many institutions, he has just managed to
make it legal.

Instead of limiting his works to his classroom only, i think he will make more
profit on his work if he pushed sales and adoption of his books in other
institutions, to other professors/lecturers, even than he can ever make
charging a class of +/-100 excessively. And forget about the stupid patent.

The main confusion comes in when you realise: Hey he's an economics professor,
you'd think he'll understand business better.

------
John_F_Miller
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html>

Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read"

I find myself wanting to post this link more and more frequently these days.

------
mathattack
I'm struggling to figure out how this can't be a hoax that the professor is
pulling on the system. But after closer reading, he does seem serious. And
he'll likely give his cause more harm than good.

------
tomjen3
You already pay for the use of the labs, the chairs, the time of the
professor, etc out of tuition, right?

Then why on earth do you not also pay for the use of a book?

------
aestetix
Right, so let's reinforce the idea that a good education is for people who can
pay for it, not for people who are smart enough to benefit from it...

------
mck-
.. during a time of a great liberating educational revolution, with the likes
of Khan, Coursera, MIT/Harvard platforms forming..

------
Kilimanjaro
How many books do we need for school? A hundred? Some charitable soul please
donate $100MM so we can create 100 free books for our children's education and
put some pressure in government to create laws to use these books in all
elementary school across the nation. Then college, then university. Free
forever.

Sorry maffias, can't fight against progress.

~~~
WiseWeasel
Wikipedia shows you don't need $100M; people will contribute for free.

------
bconway
_Under his proposal, students can only participate in courses when they buy an
online access code_

Isn't that called tuition?

------
te_chris
How the hell does this warrant a patent? There seems to be nothing that is
either novel or innovative about this particular "invention". Oh wow, unique
codes as a way of limiting free participation, absolute genius. Somebody give
this guy a Nobel and Tenure, oh wait...

------
simonbrown
I'm somewhat confused as to how this would work. Surely the university is
responsible for awarding the degree and academic staff choose a supporting
textbook to help students? So I assume universities wanting to use a textbook
don't have to adopt the system.

~~~
Wilya
The guy is a Professor and publishes textbooks. My guess is that he wants a
way to force his own students to buy his book instead of copying it.

~~~
simonbrown
I'm surprised the university would allow him to do that, since he's
effectively charging an additional tuition fee.

------
EricDeb
I don't see how this is any sort of revolutionary invention... certainly not
an idea that is patent-able.

I've already participated in classes where an online code was required to
access the publisher's homework... same idea really.

