Does your school allow you to use pirated copies of textbooks?

[Deleted User]

At my university most teachers turn a blind eye to it. There is one teacher who does not. He is the convener of a course based on a certain company's software. This company gets really shitty when it comes to copyright infringement. Other teachers who teach this unit turn a blind eye to it but he cannot because being the convener, if shit starts coming down the shit comes down on him.

 

[FAST6191]

Never heard word one and it was endemic, though not as easy as it is today.

 

[nando]

i never bought textbooks in college. i would just check out the books i needed from the library for the whole year. the late fees are way cheaper the textbooks themselves.

But also most of my classes had "readers" which were photocopies of nany different books compiled into one giant book that we bought for like 10 bucks. So they didnt seem to be anti piracy.

 

[Maz7006]

Never paid a single cent. Pretty much everybody didn't care.

 

[PabloMK7]

I don't have any textbooks, all the content can be downloaded from the university's webpage for free. (If I really need a book I can go to the library or search online)

 

[InsaneNutter]

It was never an issue either way.

The vast majority of time anything I used a book for was simply for a reference in an essay, as we had to reference "reliable sources". Their was no way to know how I came to read the book to reference it.

I only ever needed one book to use in class at it had some exercises we used to work though each week, I just purchased that book.

I never actually pirated any books, usually the library had a copy or it was possible to log in to the Uni's website and read an online copy of it.

 

[enarky]

When I went to university we photocopied the shit out of expensive books that were required reading. Nobody cared, least of all the teachers - usually it was more important for them we pass their courses. Why should they care, they are there to teach, they aren't the copyright police.

Nobody should expect students to buy hundreds of bucks of textbooks in my honest opinion, that's just insane.

 

[Minox]

The two universities I went to didn't "allow it" so much as they just didn't want to know about it. Students could pirate all the books they wanted, but the unspoken rule was that you didn't speak up about using pirated material during the lectures.

 

[The Catboy]

What they don't know, don't hurt them. It's not like they can ask you prove that you bought the book

 

[RattletraPM]

In theory they don't allow it, in practice it depends. Most universities here wouldn't give a damn if it wasn't that most teachers require their students to buy books written by them to attend their courses. So if you're caught using a "generic" pirated book you're fine, but obviously if you get caught pirating one written by one of the teachers then you're obviously going to get in trouble.

Of course you'd be very unlucky/stupid to get caught as most teachers in public unis have hundreds of students while private ones sometimes don't even require you to buy books, but you get the point.

 

[tech3475]

My uni didnt have any mandatory textbooks, just some recommended ones or ones we could get for free either through the library or online.

That said, one part did require the use of matlab and was the only part which wasnt using free (for us) software outside of the IT suites.

I ended up getting the student discount while others abused the trial version (although the student version came in useful for other things).

 

[AtsuNii]

From the last study i followed books wose everyone just got it the easy way or no books at all. Software however teachers didn't care if it was pirated or not, as long as you could do what you had to do.

 

[Clydefrosch]

As employee of one of germanies largest university libraries, I say to you: We literally have a million scanners so people don't need to buy those expensive books.
Depending on department, we also have multiple copies of the most important course books to loan.
We basically pay some kind of royalty per scanner to the collecting society 'VG Wort' that distributes that money to the publishing companies to offset lost sales and stuff a little.
And while we technically don't allow complete book copies and have to interfere if we notice like some guy copying multiple books from start to finish, we can't be everywhere.

If people get their books online, more power to them, just don't do it from the campus connection.

Professors themselves make use of our scanners, sending their undergrads to copy new articles and compile readers and stuff.

 

[FAST6191]

Curious reading some of the responses.

Never had a "required" book beyond a little leaflet thing with steam tables in it (allowed to take that into the exam) and I guess the past papers, all of which were tiny amounts really (cost of photocopying sort of thing).
Got three that were heavily suggested in the first semester of year one, used them throughout it all, and I use them often as primary lookups to this day, either to pull equations and reference concepts from them or to brush up on something if I have not used it in a while and need it. Cost of those was more than the paperbacks and cool things about technology type books I was used to but don't think I was out more than £120 or so for the lot.
I went to the library for some other things, and one of the other courses we occasionally did things with had one or two (literally) they got in later years as a professional reference (I would get my equivalents to that on my own time well after graduation).

Everything else was slideshows we downloaded, things with copied off noteboards or handouts.

 

[E1ite007]

In what used to be my highschool, depended on what the teacher said.
In my particular case, I never used books in highschool, but some friends that used to be a different English class, their teacher told them to photocopy her book 'cause it was cheaper.

 

[supergamer368]

can’t say for my school, but they probably would considering they even pirate episodes of bill nye the science guy sometimes

 

[mariopepper]

When i was t school they allowed to use pirated copies of textbooks for studying. Is it badly you think?