Book Publishing Giant Pulls Nearly 1400 Ebook Titles From GW Library; Forcing Students To Buy Them Instead
from the just-downright-evil dept
It is difficult to understate how downright evil the big book publishers are. If you think the RIAA and MPA are bad (and, they are), the book publishers take it to new super villain, mustache-twirling levels. George Washington University libraries have put out an alert to students and faculty that Wiley, one of the largest textbook publishers, has now removed 1,379 textbook titles that the library can lend out. They won’t even let the library purchase a license to lend out the ebooks. They will only let students buy the books.
Wiley will no longer offer electronic versions of these titles in the academic library market for license or purchase. To gain access to these titles, students will have to purchase access from vendors that license electronic textbooks directly to students, such as VitalSource, or purchase print copies. At most, GW Libraries can acquire physical copies for course reserve, which severely reduces the previous level of access for all students in a course.
This situation highlights how the behavior of large commercial publishers poses a serious obstacle to textbook affordability. In this case, Wiley seems to have targeted for removal those titles in a shared subscription package that received high usage. By withdrawing those electronic editions from the academic library market altogether, Wiley has effectively ensured that, when those titles are selected as course textbooks, students will bear the financial burden, and that libraries cannot adequately provide for the needs of students and faculty by providing shared electronic access.
For years now, we’ve noted that if libraries didn’t already exist, you know that the publishers would scream loudly that they were piracy, and almost certainly block libraries from coming into existence. Of course, since we first noted that, the publishers seem to think they can and should just kill off libraries. They’ve repeatedly jacked up the prices on ebooks for libraries, making them significantly more expensive to libraries than print books, and putting ridiculous limitations on them. That is, when they even allow them to be lent out at all.
They’ve also sued the Internet Archive for daring to lend out ebooks of books that the Archive had in its possession.
And now they’re pulling stunts like this with academic libraries?
And, really, this is yet another weaponization of copyright. If it wasn’t an ebook, the libraries could just purchase copies of the physical book on the open market, and then lend it out. That’s what the first sale right enables. But the legacy copyright players made sure that the first sale right did not exist in the digital space, and now we get situations like this, where they get to dictate the terms over whether or not a library (an academic one at that) can even lend out a book.
This is disgusting behavior and people should call out Wiley for its decision here.
Filed Under: ebooks, lending, libraries
Companies: george washington university, john wiley & sons, wiley
Comments on “Book Publishing Giant Pulls Nearly 1400 Ebook Titles From GW Library; Forcing Students To Buy Them Instead”
'Libraries exist' Publishers: And I took offense to that
‘If libraries were not already a long entrenched part of society publishers would never allow them to exist’ might be seen as an observation of publisher behavior by those outside the industry but has apparently been seen as a challenge for those same publishers.
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Maybe this idea should be turned around: entrench libraries further, but don’t publishing companies to exist. After all, publishers are a major obstacle to free expression, and in opposition to the spirit of free speech even if ostensibly supporting speech and expression by their very supposed role of distributing literature and other media.
Yet, by not being bound the guarantees for free speech that the government apparently is, they’re no guarantee that the speech they promote isn’t driven by the desire to sell media instead of distributing a wide range of content. A controversial book or the next in a dozen-book series then becomes more attractive than anything that isn’t a fair bet to fall into categories like that.
And that’s entirely logical and even admirable in the perspective of capitalism, it’s a literal marketplace of ideas. And ideas in this context aren’t judged by anything other than their ability to excite (even if it’s fear or anger), there is nothing about merit involved here unless profitability is viewed as a merit. Whether it makes sense in the long-term or cultural sense, really doesn’t matter when there are quarterly reports to be concerned with.
Thankfully authors persist in a desire to be published, and in general humans in society have more interests than profit. That’s a tendency that should be encouraged and enabled by helping students (including penniless autodidacts who rely on content to be available publicly without being charged, things like textbooks), libraries, writers, and anyone who’s hindered by publishers. Even without doing anything directly to publishers, I’m sure that aiding libraries in general, and specifically in this war being waged against them by publishers is one of the most important things any of us can do for the present and future.
How to encourage more academic authors to publish their books as open access. If students can’t afford the books, student numbers fall, and academics lose their teaching jobs.
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Patreon. Kickstarter. Indiegogo. Crowdfunding in general.
For a textbook, you would need funding for:
* paying the author
* paying the proofreaders and/or editors (you really don’t want to do without those!)
* paying for any third-party images or other content included in the book.
* Optionally, paying for on-demand print services.
* Optionally, paying for someone to “produce” the book (that is, handle the administration of the project).
Absolutely nothing prevents someone from doing this. All they need is time and elbow-grease. And luck. And publicity. And acceptance by the institutions of learning to USE the crowdfunded book as a coursework text, or all you’ve done is produce a new book that COULD be used for that course.
You might start by lining up some professors and/or schools to fund the effort. Would invoke sunk-cost into getting further funding.
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I’m unsure if you’re being optimistic or just sarcastic in detail.
Maybe it’s the ‘all you need’ line right before listing roughly eight things you probably need at minimum to publish a textbook, the last of which includes the roughly five or six things you listed right before ‘all you need’.
At least thirteen is a lucky number.
Re: Re: OER already exists and is thriving
What you describe not only exists, but it’s thriving. In the higher ed context, you don’t need to pay the authors, because they write textbooks as part of the work their universities are already paying their salaries for (counts as ‘scholarship’ in most universities). And most of the rest of your list is being done by volunteers. Look up “OER open educational resources” and check out sites like the U Minn Open Textbook site: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
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Not true. I teach at a university with over 30,000 students. Writing a textbook (or chapter in a textbook) is not considered part of scholarship when going up for tenure or promotion. The only thing that counts is publications in peer reviewed publications.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the case as most research oriented universities.
Re: Did you know...
Did you know that many universities are capable of being their own publishers and that quite often universities are state- and/or federally-funded in part?
How about the idea of offering funds to expand, establish, or maintain (some school presses are small, some don’t exist, others are huge but have to be funded as such) these school publishing units on two basic conditions (earmarked funds?). One: Every textbook or journal published that way is required to be open access. Two: For-profit publishers not be involved, even if that requires more funding to reproduce any part they might have taken in academic publishing.
Given that academic publishers are about as aggressive as rabbit ferrets, their stake is pretty clear; and IMO they’re as exploitative as things like university tuition charges, school loans to pay for any/all of it, etc. It’s still a fight that needs to be thought, because putting profit before learning makes people not simply ignorant in the sense of lacking knowledge, but also misinformed.
Wiley is the worst of the worst.
Wiley is the worst of the worst. They’re so maximalist that they make Nintendo look like Valve and Disney like Shout! Factory (or at least the Mystery Science Theater 3000 portion thereof). Here’s why:
I would rather buy from Amazon (a company I’ve boycotted) than Wiley. Now the “for dummies” book series are compromised because they have these copyright tyrants as owners. I’ll never buy one again as long as Wiley still owns them.
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To be clear: Wiley tried an end run around First Sale doctrine on the issue of importing copyrighted items made abroad. That is, “does First Sale still hold if the sale was made abroad?”
It’s still reprehensible, but at least it made for a useful precedent.
I remember back when I was in college, there were attempts to force students to only sell to the college store.
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And when the SCOTUS said, “Of course, the first sale doctrine applies to foreign sold-works,” the publishers (like Wiley) responded by jacking up the prices on foreign works to match their domestic counterparts. The attitude around copyright has shifted from incentivizing creativity to incentivizing corporate greed at the expense of public knowledge. So much for “the encouragement of learning”…
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It switched to that before the ink was dry on the signature to make it law. For the author or creator has always been political spin to get laws benefiting the publishers passed.
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That is how capitalist dictatorship works. Corporate greed gets worshipped to frightening, cult-like heights.
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If you don’t mind me asking, why exactly the MST3K part of Shout! Factory? Is it just because of the show’s “Keep Circulating the Tapes” attitude, or is there a problematic portion of Shout! Factory not connected to MST3K? There was an article a few years ago where Shout! explained how copyright maximalism actually hinders some of their old TV show re-releases due to music copyright. Shout! Factory seems like the least problematic home video label in the digital age, but maybe that’s just me.
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The MST3K part of Shout! Factory is the only one with which I am familiar. It’s just that I remember some other internet rando upset at Shout! and thinking they were maximalist for some other property they own, but it’s second-hand hearsay and I can’t vouch for its veracity. It’s entirely possible that the entirety of Shout! Factory is lenient on IP enforcement. I can only vouch for the MST3K part because ever since the #BringBackMST3K campaign that got it on Netflix (and is now on the Gizmoplex), every single MST3K episode that they could sell has been sold DRM-free so that means we can keep it forever. It really means a lot because my favorite episode, The Final Sacrifice, is no longer available and since I bought it when it was still under license, I now have a copy of which everyone who failed to buy it is now deprived.
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AFAIK, some of their more maximalist policies (i.e., using DRM, region restrictions, etc.) only comes from the requirements imposed by the people that license the content they put out. For example, their Thomas and the Magic Railroad 20th Anniversary Blu-ray/DVD is region locked to Region code A/1, simply due to the fact they licensed it from Sony, which only has distribution rights to the film in the US and Canada. Not exactly the polar opposite of copyright maximalism, but compared to Disney (in your previous comment), Shout! Factory is far better!
i wonder if there is a maclargehuge market base which could decide that Wiley isn’t a publisher with which to do business. [insert thinking emoji here]
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You could just insert your thinking emoji, like so:
🤔
I’m okay with this. I hate the idea of children being able to learn for free…
/s
publishers hating book lending may have started around 300 years ago
https://torrentfreak.com/you-cant-defend-public-libraries-and-oppose-file-sharing-150510/
Long before software EULAs were a thing.
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And before that, the Stationer’s Company.
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Greed. Greed never changes.
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Man, this new Fallout sequel sucks…
It's a bold strategy, Cotton.
To save copyright, they have to thoroughly destroy all respect for copyright.
Let’s see how that works out for them.
Re: Nothing there to respect
At this point I am firmly of the opinion that the only people that respect copyright are either those that know nothing about it or those that profit from it’s incredibly broken state.
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You are correct. The only valid response to copyright’s extremely broken state is mass infringement to the point its economically impossible for greedy corporations to counter it all.
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Bayside Advisory simp pissing his pants and defaulting to “Self-flagellation is so medieval” commentary in 3, 2, 1…
“It is difficult to understate how downright evil the big book publishers are. ”
No, it isn’t and that’s the problem. Most people have no idea what shitstains the big publishers are. It needs to be stated loudly and often in the press. That MIGHT help.
A copyright being used to prevent the progress of science and useful arts should be grounds for invalidation.
If you’ve ever read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, you’ll recall the question he was asked by local Papua New Guinean public personality and politician Yali, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”
In his book he goes into quite some detail examining up the conditions that were necessary for such a superabundance of “cargo” in one society as opposed to another.
And when it comes to distribution of such goods within any given society, equal distribution tends to make people – the whole shebang – wealthy; unequal distribution tends to lead to internal strife. “Let them eat cake,” anybody?
The catch is that in order to have people skilled enough to develop and maintain a highly skilled manufacturing society, the people have to be educated to a high standard. (This is one of the catches the PRC’s CCP doesn’t seem to realize.) And the only way to maintain such a high skill level with minimum effort, is to allow people to do the heavier lifting themselves. (It’s why the West succeeded with its minimal censorship model – you get so much more done by trusting people. Besides, the original censorship lapse was in Hanoverian England, where because the new king George couldn’t speak English, the politicians let some laws, eg censorship, lapse out of laziness, then discovered they weren’t actually needed, after all.)
So what Wiley is setting itself up to do is fail, slowly, and embarrassingly. Because they need a certain number of new entrants to maintain standards, they’ll find they don’t have those after a while. The pool of available applicants will slowly diminish. Or in a more graphic metaphor, Wiley is chewing its legs off to remain in the trap, where a saner entity would not do so.
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You are not wrong but that is not an issue for them. We do not live forever and greedy companies like them are a great example of this. They are not in it to perpetuate the business like a family owned business. They are single mindedly focused into extracting as much profit out of the market until they drive themselves into the ground.
Its why C-suite execs have golden parachutes. They do not sink with the companies that they drive to the ground in their endless greed so it is no big deal to them to strangle the very market that they rely upon. They move on to exploiting a different market.
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This is why some of us refer to our current economic system as “Late-stage capitalism”.
🙂
I really hate to be “that guy” but I think you meant “It’s difficult to overstate how downright evil the big book publishers are”.
Sorry.
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No, “understate” is correct in this case. It means “downplay”. “Overstate” means “exaggerate”.
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Why would that be difficult?
understate/overstate
It is difficult to understate how downright evil the big book publishers are.
Overstate, Mike, overstate.
Always a way
If these students can’t do something to ensure all of these titles are made “available” to all students, then I am afraid they are not worthy of the name.
Use another company
I know this might seem like an obvious question, but can’t the library and students use another company for their textbooks? Or does Wiley have a monopoly on the textbook business there?
And if so, aren’t there anti-monopoly rules against them pulling books like this?
Or let me guess: they’re allowed to do it because of the tiny print on page 432 of their terms and service that no one read?
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Yes, Wiley has a monopoly: copyright. There are books nobody else is allowed to reproduce. If a professor assigns a Wiley textbook for a class, neither the students nor library can realistically use a competitor. (Excepting certain competitors, such as LibGen, who pay little attention to copyright and are constantly under attack from publishers.)
The better question is whether professors could avoid dealing with Wiley and switch to a competitor. For books they’re authoring, they could and should use some kind of “open textbook” publisher as linked from another comment. And if they’re deciding on a book for a course, and an open one is available, they should use it; if not available, though, the situation is tricky, because all the major textbook publishers seem to be equally “evil”. Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, and Cambridge University Press, for example, are all fighting against Sci-Hub.
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For now it seems like:
a) supporting ‘pirates’ aka libraries like Sci-Hub
b) participating in said library work as one is able
c) support accreditation alternatives to tuition-charging institutions, like those accredited by DEAC (not all are tuition-free)
are some solutions.
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With time and effort.
The curriculum gets built around the textbook, and I strongly doubt another publisher offers the exact same book.
Universities should have moved to open source, free!y distributable textbooks a long time ago.
There's another possible approach to this problem.
Some people might protest this egregious action by Wiley with their feet. They might decide to download Wiley books and articles for free from sites like Z-Library or Sci-Hub, being sure to use a VPN to connect.
Wiley and other publishers do everything they can to make Copyright a profit center instead of following the spirit of the copyright clause of the constitution.
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what is the spirit of the copyright clause do you think is? It’s just about promoting innovations and arts, no? It does not say about accessibility, no? It does not even say anything about the welfare of societt no? Locking up culture behind paywalls for lifetime of a generation or two and making it readily accessible to the wealthy and not to the poor seem compatible to the spirit. If inequitable accessibility to culture do help speed up the progress of innovations and art, then that is what the copyright clause is about, no?
The founders were certainly not enlightened when it came to copyrights. They thought copyrights were more like actual properties and did not see governmental edicts like copyright laws as anathema to free speech. It’s like government should not have right to regulate private speech but if private speech is equated to private property then theres no contradiction while regulating speech that is being treated as private property. This is definitely backward thinking of the founders espoused by copyright cultists following in their steps, which does not make a lot of sense for a free and democratic digital society at least for me. You may think the copyright clause as an enlightened and good part of the Constitution, but I don’t. I think Copyright as a civic religion is not a good force for humankind and does not deserve to be put in such a high pedestal. Sorry but this civic religion along with what it values and believe in is lame.
Copyright was a weapon created for class warfare and been used since its creation for class warfare since Queen Anne’s days and even before that time when the copying restrictions imposed by the European monarchies in favor of their economic/political partners in publishing were not called copyright yet.
The fuss about Copyright being weaponized is silly. Copyright IS a weapon. Nothing is fundamentally changed about this evilness that Copyright was and still is. It has never been stopped being a tool of censorship and never stopped being a weapon of class warfare since its creation in the days of Queen Anne, even in America. It is a weapon being used perpetuate social injustice and inequality in America.
The class of publishers using Copyright, that happened to be largely made for them, to attack the lower socioeconomic classes is nothing new and unremarkably evil even in this case. I see no more than just ruthless capitalism in action employing a legal system that was made for ruthless capitalism.
From the view of the bourgeois, this action should not be considered particularly evil, no? To be sure, it’s no Martin Shkreli evilness. Maybe your Vanderbilt or Gould evilness? but even that is nothing; not something that should stand out in this current Digital Gilded Age of Cronyist-Capitalistic America in where corporate profits and corporate welfare trump accessibility to Digital goods for the underprivileged socioeconomic classes.
It would be terrible if someone uploaded a scan of their textbook to a torrent site or suchlike.
You wouldn’t steal a car…
Well, what can I say, it’s a sad situation. Students have different financial situations, and buying access to all the books for someone can not be affordable