chelseagirl (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chelseagirl) wrote2021-09-09 06:58 am
chelseagirl) wrote2021-09-09 06:58 am
seriously, intellectual property theft is theft
Reposted from my FB:
I'm struggling here. Some very sweet, very young students said something yesterday that really got under my skin. So I'm venting here because they are definitely good kids and I don't want to take it out on them. But.
They don't want to buy the textbook for the First Year Writing class. I get it -- textbooks have become absolutely predatory in their pricing, and even though ours is the most affordable, they see it as another drop in the overflowing bucket. But as we discussed it, I mentioned that a student in my literature class was asking whether the novels would be available as PDFs.
My students didn't seen anything wrong with that. They got that I would not want to scan a 500 page book, but not that it was theft of someone's intellectual property. That writing is someone's livelihood and that books don't just magically jump from our fingers. That it hardly seems an imposition to ask students to buy a handful of paperbacks that are available for under $20 apiece and in ebook form for even less than that.
My students are going to become engineers and computer professionals and doctors. They would not expect people to take their work for free. Why do they see the written word so differently?
I'm struggling here. Some very sweet, very young students said something yesterday that really got under my skin. So I'm venting here because they are definitely good kids and I don't want to take it out on them. But.
They don't want to buy the textbook for the First Year Writing class. I get it -- textbooks have become absolutely predatory in their pricing, and even though ours is the most affordable, they see it as another drop in the overflowing bucket. But as we discussed it, I mentioned that a student in my literature class was asking whether the novels would be available as PDFs.
My students didn't seen anything wrong with that. They got that I would not want to scan a 500 page book, but not that it was theft of someone's intellectual property. That writing is someone's livelihood and that books don't just magically jump from our fingers. That it hardly seems an imposition to ask students to buy a handful of paperbacks that are available for under $20 apiece and in ebook form for even less than that.
My students are going to become engineers and computer professionals and doctors. They would not expect people to take their work for free. Why do they see the written word so differently?
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