On Sunday, November 25, 2001, at 01:09 PM, Eric Cordian wrote:
Why don't people copy paperback books? Because it is cheaper to buy them. Not because the paperback book copyright police threaten you with life in prison.
Why don't people copy hardback books? Answer: they do! Go to any large copying center near a university and look for "professor packs" or "HistCon 101 Course Materials" consisting of copied material out of various textbooks, hard and soft. The deal is that the student takes the professor pack over to a copy machine and runs off a copy of each of the, for example, 400 pages. The student pays $20 or so and saves himself having to buy 10 books to read one or two chapters or sections out of each. The students are happy, the copy shop is happy, the professor is happy, and only the publishers and authors are unhappy. This was very common here in Santa Cruz, as recently as several years ago when I was doing a lot of copying of my own papers. There were signs up about not violating copyright law, but these professor packs were in clear violation. (Yeah, someone may say "Maybe the professors made an arrangement with the publishers and authors." I give this a vanishingly small chance of being the case in more than 2% of all such "course materials" packs.) I've heard that national chains, like Kinko's, are less involved in this trade. Deeper pockets, easier to threaten. (It used to be common at, ironically, the very first Kinko's, in Isla Vista, CA. The year I arrived, ironically.) As for paperback books being cheaper to copy, I've copied several paperbound books that "cost too much." --Tim May, Occupied America "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.