Latvian Police Raid Teacher's Home for Uploading $4.00 Textbook 289
richlv writes "Latvian police recently raided the home of a history teacher and confiscated his computer. The crime? Scanning a history book and making it available on his website covering various topics on history. The raid was based on a complaint from the publisher (Google Translate to English), which has a near-monopoly on educational materials in Latvia, often linked with shady connections in the Ministry of Education."
textbook publishers use all kinds of BS to keep th (Score:3, Interesting)
textbook publishers use all kinds of BS to keep there monopoly on educational materials in place.
Getting an education today is hard (Score:5, Interesting)
All my life I've learned with "pirated" material: throughout school, my teachers copied all kinds of materials regardless of whether or not it was copyrighted - including my primary school teachers hand-copying entire pages of grammar or math books and giving away dittoed copies, photocopies of of all kinds... whatever was necessary to learn. Learning was considered "fair use" when I was young. Nobody in their right mind thought twice before copying something for education purposes.
Then when I started dabbling in computers, I started "pirating" software all by myself. I knew what I was doing was illegal, yet it didn't feel wrong. I learned C with an illegal copy of Turbo C. I learned CAD with an illegal copy of AutoCAD. I learned everything I know with an illegal copy of something.
Sure I shafted Borland, AutoDesk and all the others, but then I bet they made a whole lot of money afterwards, when I and all the others like me hit the job market and started using their products professionally - on seats paid by the companies I worked for to the tune of many thousands more than a single user seat.
I don't know how I would have gotten an education without pirated material. I don't know how kids today get an education if their teachers should fear jail when they use pirated material. What a sorry state society is in...
price tag is irrelavant (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:For $4 there is no reason not to buy it (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I don't understand this either, it seems like the book publishers are screwed either way. "$100 for a textbook?! That's way too expensive, people should just copy it!" "$4 for a textbook!? That's really cheap, no one should care if we just copy it!"
Re:Getting an education today is hard (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:price tag is irrelavant (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:textbook publishers use all kinds of BS to keep (Score:5, Interesting)
textbook publishers use all kinds of BS to keep there monopoly on educational materials in place.
I'm not sure. When in Finland these teachers had the over-the-weekend marathon to create a math textbook and put it into Github, they commented that they might as well release it for free, as the profit they get from books is always so small anyway. And, in increasing amounts you can read high-quality material for free from the intertubez, further shaking the position of commercially published books.
Re:Don't copy that floppy! (Score:5, Interesting)
On the contrary, it may be perfectly legal, even in the US. Lists of phone numbers and addresses, voting records of public servants, and other facts or assemblies of facts cannot be copyrighted. Even interpretations of historic events could be quotes of material that is no longer under copyright. A purely factual history book could quite possibly contain no copyrightable information. If on the other hand mere recountings of history are copyrightable, one wonders whether the authors stepped on others' copyrights. The historic information came from somewhere.
But all that is a minor point. Likely the history book has recent thinking of scholars about the deeper meanings of the historic events covered. If not, and there wasn't any copyrightable material in the draft, we can be pretty sure that the publisher added some no matter how inaccurate or irrelevant, to cover this exact situation.
The important part of this matter is that knowledge of history should be freely available to all citizens. If they don't have a copyleft history book, they should make one.
Re:textbook publishers use all kinds of BS to keep (Score:4, Interesting)
The publishers didn't get their monopolies by nefarious business practices, they were handed their monopoly by school boards and voters.
So please point the finger where it needs to be pointed: at school boards and the voters who keep opposing school choice.
Re:and in the us the same book will be $200-$400 u (Score:3, Interesting)
the textbook actually costs about 6 lats each part (11 dolalrs) there are 4 parts and 4 practical parts (5 dollars each)
for comarison average monthly salary in latvia is about 350 lats give or take.
Re: Do they even have fair use in Latvia? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:and in the us the same book will be $200-$400 u (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in college I took an Analysis of Algorithms course as part of my CS degree. The textbook was $100-something and it was on it's 16th edition or so. Several weeks into the semester, my copy of the book was accidentally destroyed. Searching for a used copy online, I found one of the first several editions for about $10. I took a chance that no that much changed. Aside from the pages yellowing with age, I never found any differences to the current edition. The current edition actually had a few minor typos that the earlier edition that I had didn't have.