Here’s a recent story from the Washington Post, informing us that More students are illegally downloading college textbooks for free.

It's hard (if not impossible) to know just how prevalent this practice is, but some college students around the country are uploading their expensive college textbooks onto the Internet so other students can download them for free and avoid the hefty fees that are sometimes more than $200 a book.

Vocativ.com has a story titled "Why College Students are Stealing Their Textbooks," which notes that some students are even downloading them for ethics classes.

The cost to students of college textbooks skyrocketed 82 percent between 2002 and 2012, according to a 2013 report by the U.S. General Accountability Office, the research arm of Congress. As a result, students have been looking for less expensive options, such as renting books — and, now, finding them on the Internet, uploaded by other students.

In August, an organization called the Book Industry Study Group, which represents publishers, retailers, manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, librarians and others in the industry, released a survey of some 1,600 students and found, according to a release on the data, that "students continue to become more sophisticated in acquiring their course materials at the lowest cost as illicit and alternative acquisition behaviors, from scanned copies to illegal downloads to the use of pirated websites, continue to increase in frequency."

–Valerie Strauss, More students are illegally downloading college textbooks for free
Washington Post, 17 September 2014.

Well, good. The textbook industry is an obscene racket, predicated on extraordinary costs and a maze of perverse incentives, controlled by a tightly organized cartel of copyright-monopolists, gargantuan institutional sellers and gargantuan institutional buyers, throwing every ton of their incredible weight onto the shoulders of students, tollgating and massively hampering the dissemination of knowledge.

Pirating textbooks isn’t just a good idea. It’s a mitzvah. Burn the domming industry to the ground. Knowledge can and should be free.

See also.

• GT 2012-01-30: Burn the textbook
• GT 2008-05-28: How Intellectual Protectionism promotes the progress of science and the useful arts
• GT 2009-02-07: Counter-Economic optimism
• Aaron Swartz (July 2008): Guerrilla Open-Access Manifesto

Fun fact: So under the current copyright law, almost all books held under copyright by their original authors stay under copyright for the entire life of the author, plus 70 additional years after the death of the author. For works of corporate authorship, the company that owns the copyright holds it for either 95 years from the date of first publication or 120 years from the date of creation, whichever expires first. To put that in perspective, Paul Avrich’s books on the Russian Anarchists (published in 1967) Voltairine de Cleyre (published in 1978) will become available in the public domain in 2,076 CE — just over 10 years after the invention of warp drive and First Contact with the Vulcans.^[1] But at least we’ll be prepared, because the first episode of Star Trek will have finally come out of monopoly a few years before, in September 2061.^[2]

Abolish Intellectual Protectionism.

See also.

• GT 2008-05-28: How Intellectual Protectionism promotes the progress of science and the useful arts

1. ^[1]N.B.: Or, you can pirate a copy of The Russian Anarchists from Libcom now.↩
2. ^[2]Assuming that large media companies make no efforts before 2061 to extend corporate copyright terms even further. Which they almost certainly will.↩

• Future Timeline. xkcd.com (2011-04-17). (Linked Monday 2011-04-18.)

• Big Media To Innovative App Maker: Stop Innovating Without Our Permission! | Techdirt. www.techdirt.com (2011-04-18). “And, honestly, if creating an app that makes it easier to read your content is a threat to your business, you’re doing business wrong.” (Linked Monday 2011-04-18.)

• boardgames are to monopoly as comics are to garfield, THAT'S RIGHT I SAID IT. Dinosaur Comics (2011-04-19). I blame the Georgists. (Linked Tuesday 2011-04-19.)

• Austro-Californian Empire? Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2011-04-18). While in San Diego I'll be meeting with the San Diego Austrians and the Café Libertalia folks on Thursday night. Details here (for the socially mediated). (Linked Tuesday 2011-04-19.)

• if i was interested in starting a…resistance movement, i. Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2011-04-19). if i was interested in starting a…resistance movement, i would proceed by simulated terrorism. such a procedure is suggested by things like this, where i'm thinking the authorities evacuated a mall or at least closed in en masse to get a guy wandering around a mall with a rifle, when it… (Linked Tuesday 2011-04-19.)

• Birmingham officers who beat man while he was unconscious to be reinstated. Dr. Q, Gangsters in Blue (2011-04-15). On January 23, 2008 Birmingham police officers attempted to stop and question one Anthony Shannon Warren about suspected drug activity. Warren fled in his car. Because interrogating people about suspected involvement in activities that harm no one is much more important than public safety, the officers decided that the best… (Linked Wednesday 2011-04-20.)

• On Controlling Parents. der Blaustrumpf (2011-04-20). “Many of the comments, like the author herself, blame Rand for the father's selfishness. What struck me is not the awfulness of Rand's philosophy, though awful it is, but that a seemingly infinite number of options are available to parents who wish to justify abuse. A hardcore Objectivist parent is rare, thankfully, but it'd be easy to envision a Christian parent who would justify similar deprivation as a lesson in altruism and humility – the very opposite of Rand's alleged ideals.” – Cheryl Cline (Linked Wednesday 2011-04-20.)

• Free Market Anti-Capitalism Paper Online. DarianW, DarianWorden.com (2011-04-19). My contribution to the 2011 APEE Topics in Free-Market Anti-Capitalism panel is now available for download from my archives page: Capitalism, Free Enterprise, and Progress: Partners or Adversaries? The paper disentangles the concepts of capitalism, free enterprise, and progress in the context of the early Industrial Revolution. While a lot… (Linked Wednesday 2011-04-20.)

• Digital Cash Sparks Digital Debate. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2011-04-20). Writing in Time, of all places, Jerry Brito discusses Bitcoin, the latest alternative currency to capture the digerati's imagination: The web has also seen all-purpose digital currencies, from defunct dot-com bubble start-ups Flooz and Beenz, to the slightly more successful e-gold. Unlike cash, however, digital currencies to date have had a… (Linked Wednesday 2011-04-20.)

• Hark, a Vagrant: Chopin and Liszt. Hark, A Vagrant! (2011-03-28). buy this print! Chopin! Liszt! I wanted to get back into the world of composers because let’s face it, they are Grade A comic material. Too bad I know relatively little about most of them. I went on a reading spree and came out with Chopin and Liszt, who were… (Linked Sunday 2011-03-20.)

• What Happens if You Combine a Hundred Tourist Photos? [Photos] Max Read, Gawker (2011-02-21). Swiss artist Corinne Vionnet creates art for her series "Photo Opportunities" by overlaying hundreds of tourist photos (she finds them online) on top of one another. What she ends are these beautiful, shimmering things—Boing Boing calls them "metaportraits"—that are as recognizable as they are eerie. They look almost like oil… (Linked Sunday 2011-03-20.)

• Solidarity Forever. DarianW, DarianWorden.com (2011-02-20). "Acts of solidarity are going to be either gifts or entrepreneurial affairs, depending on how you understand the basic dynamics. If you wait around for someone in this tangled-up culture of ours to "deserve" solidarity, you'll just sit on your hands and nothing will change (except for the worse.) You… (Linked Sunday 2011-03-20.)

• Is ignoring copyright the best strategy against IP monopolists? Michel Bauwens, P2P Foundation (2011-03-20). Rick Falkvinge has an excellent editorial on the death of copyright if the IP industry ignores all appeals for sensible reform, such as those proposed by the Swedish Pirate Party. Kevin Carson has a further reaction: "I think ignoring the law and developing countermeasures against enforcement are a much more… (Linked Sunday 2011-03-20.)

• feministhulk: HULK APPROACH SMASHING PATRIARCHY LIKE JUDITH BUTLER APPROACH WRITING SENTENCES: AS LONG AS IT TAKES TO GET JOB DONE! Twitter / feministhulk (2011-03-18). feministhulk: HULK APPROACH SMASHING PATRIARCHY LIKE JUDITH BUTLER APPROACH WRITING SENTENCES: AS LONG AS IT TAKES TO GET JOB DONE! (Linked Sunday 2011-03-20.)

• on the second anniversary of Obama's pledge to end torture... vikki, Gangsters in Blue (2011-01-24). Friday, Jan 21, 2011 Friends, Tomorrow is the 2nd anniversary of President Obama’s pledge to end torture. Given the conditions of prolonged solitary confinement and acute isolation many people face in the federal system along with at the US prisons at Guantanamo, Bagram, and elsewhere, we are a far cry… (Linked Monday 2011-01-24.)

• Decentralization of the Police Accountability Report. Nick Saorsa, Cop Block (2011-01-20). Keeping with Cop Block's decentralized theme, we have decided to open up the Police Accountability Report (PAR) to you, the listeners.  If you are aware of a local high profile incident of police brutality, unaccountable official(s), or an interesting activist program, you can now submit an audio clip to be… (Linked Monday 2011-01-24.)

• Written Communication Can Be Good Communication. DarianW, DarianWorden.com (2011-01-20). It has been said that the internet, or any text format, is not a good medium for discussion. But writing can be as good or better than verbal communication, particularly verbal communication where the other person is not seen (such as phone or radio). Of course, the internet also allows… (Linked Monday 2011-01-24.)

• How the iPhone Mail App Decides When to Show You New Mail Messages. John Gruber, Daring Fireball (2011-01-24). Details matter.  â˜…  (Linked Tuesday 2011-01-25.)

• November 8th, 2010. The Monkeys You Ordered (2010-12-24). A unicorn is here to see you. (Linked Tuesday 2011-01-25.)

• Literal Caption Contest: Winner! The Monkeys You Ordered (2011-01-25). Intellectual Monopoly Vs. Creativity and Humor (Cont’d.) (Linked Tuesday 2011-01-25.)

• OAuth Will Murder Your Children. Zach Holman (2011-01-25). Say there's a hot new startup that just launched today that you've just gotta sign up for and use immediately. It's that hot. I bet they even have a whiz-bang HTML5 website. Paul Graham is rumored to be in talks about funding it. John Gruber has already made a snide-but-poignant… (Linked Tuesday 2011-01-25.)