Makes me glad to be an indian - our courts have ruled that photo-copying parts of textbooks is "fair use" under copyright laws (for academics only)!<p>- Photocopying allowed under law for educational use: Delhi HC - ‘No restriction on how much text can be photocopied as long as syllabus justifies it’: <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/delhi-university-photocopying-allowed-under-law-for-educational-use-delhi-hc-4419580/" rel="nofollow">https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/delhi-univers...</a><p>- While dismissing a plea by international publishers, a recent judgment from the Delhi High Court holds that photocopying portions of text books is a legitimate exercise if carried out for academic purposes: <a href="https://www.indialegallive.com/cover-story-articles/il-feature-news/photocopying-isnt-copyright-violation/" rel="nofollow">https://www.indialegallive.com/cover-story-articles/il-featu...</a><p>- Photocopying Textbooks Is Fair Use In India: Western Publishers Withdraw Copyright Suit Against Delhi University: <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170309/07340536878/photocopying-textbooks-is-fair-use-india-western-publishers-withdraw-copyright-suit-against-delhi-university.shtml" rel="nofollow">https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170309/07340536878/photo...</a>
Article name is misleading, this is just another front where monopolistic influence and education meet.<p>Overall this is not surprising and has been happening for a long while in other areas, ever since near no risk loans for student education financing became the norm, prices have been marked up based on the expected projected revenue from these almost guaranteed loans.<p>Its been known for awhile that most of these engineering books have only nominal changes in problem sets, and material between editions and this predatory behavior has continued unabated for at least 20 years.<p>No one in a position to influence the outcome has been willing to make changes for the benefit of the students.<p>Much of the engineering principles taught in classes at this level have not changed for almost a hundred years so requiring a new edition of a book that is tied to a online subscription (as many are now) is simply predatory and monopolistic.<p>I've known some professors that have tenure that have bucked the trend and written their own books charging only the cost without copyright, but this is more the exception than the norm and engineering/science has a higher bar when it comes to due diligence with regard to materials.
I remember the costs for science/engineering textbooks at university were absolutely outrageous.<p>On top of paying tuition in the thousands, textbooks could easily cost >$100/piece, and sometimes 1-3 textbooks would be required <i>per course</i>. And the professors would make us purchase the books <i>they wrote</i>, which cost a lot of money.<p>For a group of students with limited-no income, usually that would mean resorting to torrenting PDFs, pooling money to buy a single textbook and make copies, or looking for international copies.
Headline is misleading. The prices are for libraries, not students.<p>One might expect a perpetual ‘for let’ license to be different than a physical book. Books have a finite lifespan.
College Textbooks the eternal Scam, Rearrange a few chapters and Voilà new edition and no used textbook savings. I had a professor in college that used to rearrange his course syllabus to reorder the chapters in a manner that would defeat the simple rearrangement of content by the textbook publishers and allow the students the choice of using older editions that were the very much more affordable solution!