Пиратство учебников: студенты считают это логичной альтернативой завышенным ценам издательств

Pirating is another form of acquiring textbooks. The same reason students pirate textbooks is similar to why open textbooks are gaining more popularity. Textbooks are just too expensive, and students are left looking for alternatives. It is unfair to assume that the motives behind pirating are the same for all pirated products; factors such as cost and accessibility make pirating textbooks different. Though pirating textbooks is illegal, it is not amoral — it is logical. Reselling digital copies of media, including textbooks without proper authorization, is illegal. However, reselling physical copies of a work is legal, provided the copy bought was lawfully sold. All products are subject to this reasoning, though there are clear differences in why textbooks are pirated; they are composed entirely of the same material as their physical counterparts. The boundary between physical and digital is greyed because both forms offer the same content. However, online mainstream published textbooks have several detractors that make them less enviable than physical copies. Digital textbooks often come with serial codes that expire, while, obviously, physical textbooks last indefinitely. The only problem is that physical copies have proven themselves to be very expensive, and their online counterparts are not much better. Pirating in the case of textbooks becomes more of a question of necessity rather than profit. Furthermore, piracy and open textbooks both show the price tag on textbooks is not derived from their supply, rather it is inflated. Textbooks are expensive even though they are relatively easy to produce, physically and digitally. Open textbooks are an apt example that information that would otherwise be put in a textbook can be sourced without the hefty price tag. Even still, open textbooks are subject to the same legal scrutiny as piracy. The glaring issue is that major publishing companies like Cengage, McGraw Hill and Pearson Education are more than eager to maintain their chokehold over the textbook market. Textbooks are undeserving of the price that publishers ask; they fail to adhere to the law of supply and demand — pirating textbooks does not become unethical but understandable. Ultimately, ethics differ depending on what perspective is taken. A reasonable approach to ethics would be from the perspective of morality, religion or culture. Being opposed to pirating for these reasons is understandable. To consider the perspective of major publishing companies, as ethical, is dubious at best and malicious at worst. Especially when one considers that these are the same companies that have infringed on copyright laws and have decreased their own authors on royalties. It is ironic how the same companies that claim copyright infringement violate copyright themselves. Piracy in this case then, is not the result of unethical maliciousness but of a logical drive to find a better, ethical alternative.