this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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I always pirated PDFs of my textbooks, but in the few cases where I couldn't find anything online (typically when the book is niche and very new), I would always wait until I knew that I actually needed the book, because it was frustrating how often this meme came true.
I had this one professor I was really grateful for though. He was a big open-source guy, apparently used to contribute to freebsd and postgres, and he went out of his way to find open-source textbooks for all of his classes.
I had the bizzaro version of this guy in college once. He sold his own 150$ "textbook" that you had to purchase from a copy shop next to campus. It was just a bunch of sections of other text books that were clearly copied and put together in a tabbed paper folder by the little printing shop.
Was also the same guy that wouldn't accept assignments unless you turned them in a specific blue folder, which you could conveniently buy from the same copy shop for 5$ a piece.
Still kinda pissed about it like 15 years later, but at least now I can kinda appreciate the hustle that dude had going.
Would have been interesting for the entire class to buy one, take it to another copy shop, and all split the entire cost.
Then, next year, hang out outside the classroom and offer to sell it to people for $20-$50.
Blue folder would be a little tougher….
Break into his home or office the night you submit the assignment and steal all the folders. Steal all from the print shop too. Demand them back the next day or $5 a piece.
I don't know how long ago that was, but the hustle has long ago counter measured pirating or second handing the books by bundling the new books with a 1 time use code to make a profile into the online part of the course where you have to take tests. You could just buy the code on its own when I was going through this, but the code was like 80% the cost of a code and book.
They also do the thing where questions in the book will be scrambled from edition to edition, so using an older copy of a math book for example won't track because they've arbitrarily changed it just enough.
Well, fuck the professor and or the school on this case. I would have encouraged you to make an official FTC complaint. Too bad that may not be around for much longer.
Not that long ago, I only graduated last year. I've definitely noticed the tweaks-between-editions bs, so I always try to match up the isbn. I was also lucky in that I only had to deal with the online course/book bundle for general math courses, most of which I took care of in highschool and were paid for by the school, but yeah I did have to cough up one to two hundred bucks for a few of those.
One of my CS professors was a top contributor to Wikipedia articles on graph algorithms and just told us to read those in lieu of a textbook
One year I was unable to find a textbook to pirate online so I bought a used copy, set up a camera on a tripod, photographed every page and returned it the next day.
Sounds like too much work but the book was worth more than my time to do it.
When I was doing my undergrad, there was this sketchy shop in a nearby alley where they photocopy textbooks and sold them for just a bit more than the cost of the paper and binding. If they didn't have it, you could borrow it from the library to lend them and they'll give you a free copy in exchange.