Dr. Hfuhruhurr said:
And Others
Obviously quite a few people are oblivious to the reason behind eBay's decision. It was implemented to prevent students--students in all learning venues--from obtaining books that contain answers only printed in teacher editions. eBay has no idea if a buyer is a bona fide teacher, home school or not, and they probably have no desire to go to the trouble to find out. If a parent wants to home school their little darlings then they best prepare to pay the price of obtaining their teacher materials through normal channels. They may whine--as they are certainly doing--but a far greater good is served by keeping these books out of the hands of students.
Of course the home schoolers and religious wingnuts have chosen to cast ebay's decision as one directed solely at them--says a lot about these people doesn't it. "Woe is poor me......er... never mind the other guy. Woe is poor abused me." WingNut Daily even does so with its headline in spite of recognizing the all encompassing nature of the decision. "The policy, which is inclusive of all teachers' texts . . . ."
source
This is alot of bunk. If there were copyright issues or issues beyond raw financial gain and job/career security etc. then the companies providing these materials would do such on a lend agreement in which every individual allowed a copy of the book to use would be required to sign a legal document and the company would maintain the right, under any breach of contract, to demand the copy of the book. This has nothing to do with protecting the material, it's copyright, and the claim to keep teachers editions out of the hands of students is a convenient means to shroud the primary aim of this policy. If these books can be sold by school districts or disposed of by the school districts with no contractual obligations to the publisher than the only one that stands to benefit is those who advocate public education to the degree of trying to supress the likes of homeschooling. I'm sure it wasn't untill some big wigs in public education realized that the disposal of teachers editions in education was, through means like the internet, posing a serious risk to the overall nigh-monopolistic status
enjoyed by the public education industrial complex that prompted them to apply presure to those avenues that were most dangerous to their nigh monopolisitic hold on the text-book industry. This way would clearly be preferable to requesting the text-book industry to pull the copyright card, cause then all that legalistic mumbo-jumbo and added cost and loss of control must be enacted so that the copyright argument will have a leg to stand on. Or on the other end they didn't want to tick off directly those who were selling the text books, especially since common sense seems to bare out that such individuals would be those from within their own rank and file. So applying presure to the likes of the largest online trading entity, on with nigh monopolistic capacity, to act as the 'bad cop' in this 'good cop bad cop' scenario. Big education gets to secure their ties to text book companies without complications, text book companies are happy to oblige, especially those ones with massive contracts with large public education entities across the nation, and then a substantive segment of your up and coming industry competition is put at a significant disadvantage as you've placed them, in the minds of the naive public, in the sad camp with those unscrupulous students, and it seems they never even have to address directly those who would be willing to sell such items in the past to those bad bad students who do little worse than what many an poorly educated teacher does with the teacher's edition, use it as a crutch and a source for busy work.
Which I suppose gets me to the topic of why aren't these hometeachers either getting into the entreprenuerial aspect of this or even going 'open source' in creating material. Do to the public education attempts at styfling you what so many in the computer world have done to the oppresive measures of innovation stiffeling oligopolies via a wholesale turn to the more altruistic 'open source' material.
I've seen enough mediocrity and inanity in everything from elementary to some college text books to know that, especially on the low end, it wouldn't take too much to out do in real substance and potentially(with today's editing software, graphic software and some talent and know how) even in presentation and market viability, the reams of mediocrity that are pushed out through so much of the school text book industries texts. Such also seems more condusive to a one on one customized education experience, what seems to potentially be a key advantage of the likes of homeschooling vs pulic or even some private ed.
