Interrupting the usual emo crap for something important
When you rob students blind, mark up textbooks and readers over 30 dollars and have crap re-sell policies, this is what you get. Students are poor, or if they aren't, it's still galling to know that mandatory textbooks are selling for 8-10 dollars less than average at a retail store than a university-run bookstore. With three textbooks per course in a school year, that's around 300 dollars more out of our pockets than it should be. That's just for political science. For engineering and medical science students, textbooks can add up to a thousand dollars, on top of their actual tuition.

I've never actually photocopied textbooks, not out of principle, but out of laziness. I'd rather buy used textbooks on student-run exchanges than at the U of T bookstore. I don't recommend doing what is illegal -- I believe it's always best to be on the right side of the law -- but when such blatant highway robbery is being committed, it's hard for students to patronize the bookstore without this nagging feeling (in the wallet, particularly), especially when it means the difference between skipping meals, doing well in a class, or crawling back to the financial aid officer to up OSAP payments.

I personally don't know what can be done, and I've been fortunate so far that I can either afford the books or have a friend who I can borrow from. But more pressure needs to be put on these university-run bookstores; although we understand it's a business, they are also a business for poor, starving students and when even professors refuse to sell their course packs because they deem it to pricey, like how my English prof sold it out of his office instead, it's time for the student body to propose solutions or put pressure on the bookstore or the university administration to reconsider royalty fees, or subsidize the bookstore and such.

I don't think illegally photocopying textbooks is the answer though, even if in reality it saves money and symbolically it's a huge middle finger to the publishers/bookstores: it only drives textbook prices further up and the cycle of exploitation continues.

Now brb while I procrastinate from reading my textbook and instead, read my friends page.

Understandably copying is intellectual theft, however the price of new books is excessive and difficult to afford for many trying to obtain a better life through education. To add insult to injury I personally have purchased textbooks required for courses and throughout the term the instructor has never even openned the book once! I am not referring to inexpensive books, but $200 texts plus accompanying workbooks. I since have discovered that I could buy used current edition textbooks from the US amazon website for a fraction of the cost, and since have seldom purchased new books.

My biggest problem is with the new "editions" publishers put out every every year or so. These texts offer little or no new content but reorganize the text so that a student using an older edition cannot follow along. This eliminates buying/selling of used texts and forces students to buy the new edition each year. The publishers offer incentives to university professors to use the new editions each year. Add this to the fact that profs frequently list books they've authored themselves as "mandatory texts" - without actually using them in class, and think that students' ethics are not the ones that should be put into question.

I'm an engineering student who routinely purchases textbooks online. For example, this term I required an updated electronics text which my university's bookstore was sold for $190 tax. I was able to buy an international edition (exactly the same text) for $20 shipping! Some might think that I bought an illegally copied text over the internet. This is not the case. North American publishers routinely sell the same product to overseas students for a heavily reduced price. These publishers hide behind our copyright laws, so they can charge us a fortune. The problem will only be fixed when publishers start to charge a reasonable amount. Profits would increase because fewer students would be photocopying, buying online texts, and downloading e-books. I have no sympathy for Access Copyright, publishers, and bookstores. The government should be protecting us from this corporate greed.