Copyright theft cannot be condoned in the name of promoting democratic student culture
Are Delhi University’s students justified in their anger over a ban on photocopying of books? The university instituted a ban after three publishers, including Oxford University Press (OUP) and Cambridge University Press (CUP), filed a suit. The publishers claim a shop in the university hands out “course materials,” essentially photocopies of books that are recommended reading.
The students agree they do this, but refuse to buy the OUP and CUP books. They say they won’t unless the books are discounted for them by these publishers.
According to a released statement, which has not yet been disowned, DU’s students and faculty want that a “strict warning be given to these criminal presses that they cannot get away with this sort of bullying and stifling of democratic student culture.”
I accept we have fallen as a nation but when did copyright theft by the middle class become democratic culture? I am puzzled also by the demand that the publishers should subsidise the books. It shows that DU’s students and those in the faculty who agree with them have little idea about the books they study and teach.
Let us look at some books from two of these publishers. This list compares the net price at which the book is sold in India with the net price (in brackets) at which the book is sold abroad. Paperbacks have been compared to paperbacks.
Published by Cambridge University Press
Socio-religious reform movements in India, by Kenneth Jones Rs.295 (Rs.3,150)
A Social History of the Deccan, by Richard Eaton Rs.626 (Rs.5,175)
The Marathas, by Stewart Gordon Rs.150 (Rs.6,015)
The Sikhs of the Punjab, by J.S. Grewal Rs.250 (Rs.5,484)
Published by Oxford University Press
Illustrating India, by Jennifer Howes Rs.2,655 (Rs.11,883)
Jawaharlal Nehru, by S. Gopal Rs.2,025 (Rs.12,435)
Interpreting Mughal painting, by Som Prakash Verma Rs.535 (Rs.2,760)
Mughals and Franks, by Sanjay Subrahmanyam Rs.338 (Rs.1,545)
I have listed these books because I bought them in the last few days. I have been buying books from OUP and CUP for many years, and can assure readers that they do not sell a book in India at the same price as they do abroad.
This is true for most publishers. Volumes from the inexpensive but high quality Penguin Black Classics series are usually half the price in India as the identical book is abroad. Virgil’s Aeneid (translated by Robert Fagles) is Rs.250 here and Rs.570 abroad. Valmiki’s Ramayana (translated by Arshia Sattar) is Rs.499 here and Rs.2,072 abroad.
It is because of this that someone in India may be able to put together a library of some quality while paying mostly half and often only a quarter of what someone elsewhere might.
And this comparison isn’t restricted to the West. Books are more expensive in Pakistan.
Amartya Sen’s Idea of Justice is Rs.374 here and Rs.613 (Pakistani Rs.1,050) there. Even books that should be cheaper in Pakistan are not. Stanley Wolpert’s Jinnah is Rs.395 here and Rs.522 (Pakistani Rs.895) there. Books are more expensive in Sri Lanka. K.M. DeSilva’s History of Sri Lanka is Rs.650 here and Rs.814 (Lankan Rs.1,950) there.
I worked for the publisher Dorling Kindersley in the late 1990s, and can inform the DU faculty and students that no millions are made by selling books here. Anyone who actually pays for books regularly will know that India is one of the world’s best places to do this.
Helping Indian students
Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press have done outstanding service to India and in particular to Indian students. They have done this first by commissioning and publishing the finest studies of India and its culture. Histories unrivalled for quality including those written in Indian languages. Second, they have subsidised Indians, and given us these works for less than they are worth and often many times less than others currently pay for them.
It is fine not to acknowledge their service (in my opinion Indians are particularly ungrateful), but it is indecent to call them criminals.
And then this threat is made:
“As a reaction, if this case is not revoked immediately, we students and faculty members have decided to boycott these three presses. We will actively ensure that no books of these three presses are used in the campus and will urge all teachers not to recommend any books or readings published by them. Instead we would work on other options of open sources and free dissemination of knowledge and urge other faculty and students to do the same.”
I find it staggering that some in the faculty should seriously believe that open sources (Wikipedia?) could replace these scholarly texts. Why not go ahead? It addresses both the problem of poor students and the complaint of copyright theft. The fact is that it is an empty threat. There is no replacement.
Indians are used to getting stuff cheap and preferably want literature free. The Pakistani newspaper I write a column for costs Rs.20 a copy and it is not an exception. This is because gathering, editing and publishing information requires money. But paying Rs.10 for a newspaper, even one of the quality of The Hindu, seems unthinkable here. So we must not see this rage at being stopped from photocopying someone’s life’s work in isolation.
It is not expected that students will show maturity in this. The history of India’s violent student actions show that they usually can be trusted to do the wrong thing. However, the faculty should distance itself from this obscene attack. If it is true that there are not enough books in the library, a solution may be found in better facilities, or in middle class students sharing their books with less fortunate classmates. DU’s alumni could step forward and make a contribution to its libraries.
To malign these publishers for defending themselves against theft is unfair and unjust.
Threatening to discard them is to kill the goose that’s laying for all of us golden eggs.
(Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media.)
This article is an insult to the students and the people of this
country. The country is not run on subsidies by this author or these
companies. And what cheap stuff we get? Is it paid for by this man
or this companies? The people have a rightful claim over goods
produced by a collective and social effort and that includes
knowledge as well.
The other thing is that what is cheap and what is costly cannot be
determined by the size of the pocket of 'Directors' or 'CEO's of any
such companies. Profit-mongering has a definitive blinding effect,
this article proves it.
Open source is much more than Wikipedia. In any case, many articles in
Wikipedia are no less than scholarly. There are Open source book
libraries such as the Internet Archive (with more than 1.3 million
files) and Project Gutenberg. Many leading universities are offering
free course material (including IITs and IISc) and some are offering
free courses (such as MIT and Harvard). The Commonwealth of Learning
is promoting open course ware. The trend in higher education today is
towards openness and away from ownership of content. Well-meaning
academics are moving away from conventional copyright to Creative
Commons licenses. Even in research, the trend is towards open access.
Indeed, India's Open Source Drug Discovery Project is something we can
all be proud of.
The authors have spent months or sometimes even years preparing their books. It is simply not fair to jinx them out of their hard earned wages.
Then there is the established cost of Publishing Houses. Without them, many Indian authors would not have a market or a facility to publish their works lucratively abroad.
There is a way out - the college libraries stock these books in the same numbers as there are students in the classes. So that, each student has a book for his/her own purpose - lent to him for the whole academic year. With the promise, that he/she will not deface, damage or abuse the book and will, at the end of the year, barring 'normal' wear and tear, return the book in a usable condition. For next year's students.
This system is practised, in pulicly funded schools in Toronto Canada.
And, let us not forget, some commercials. I see no reason, an ad for Dell, Microsoft, Google, HCL or (even) Saravanas cannot be used, to bring down the price of the book. :)
Publishers should not be allowed to have exclusive rights of distribution. Anybody should be allowed to make as many copies as is desired. For the authors amongst you, move to CCSA and similar licenses.
The publishers mentioned may be among the less criminal ones in the research sphere. But their publication and fleecing model is all wrong and detrimental to education, research and society.
The author makes an very interesting point. Lets also remember that most of people doesn't make to higher education due to lack of financial constraints. In these circumstances if students were to pay for the books in Dollars or Euros, things would be more problematic.
It would be utter unrealistic to compare the prices of any country with India.Let us also remember that an average American or European student can avail enough scholarships and also has monetary resources in the form of part-time jobs.As far as copyright violations are considered ,even Westerners violate copyrights, which are much more lethal than plain xerox(for example PDF in torrents).This doesn't mean that Indian students and faculty should indulge in unethical practices. Also it is not end of world if someone violates a copyright for educational purposes.In the end students and faculty should respect copyrights and we should also understand their constraints.It is very important for India to have higher education
The day the meaning of the word "Plagiarism" is understood in India, we could confidently agree we are an "Educated" lot. We have got to learn to acknowledge works by scholars and respect it.
The article seems to make martyrs out of publishers which is blatantly one-sided.Sir, we are not used to free literature but we find it unaffordable due to the high costs involved in education.Most of us who study/have studied in these colleges, stay away from their homes and their parents have to bear the costs, hence, the need for drastic measures of cost-cutting.
1.Even at the throwaway prices, book sellers make a hefty margin of 40-50%, sometimes, even more.Why not retail it directly to students through colleges at company margins, if you are so concerned about students?
2.Comparing newspaper prices without comparing advertising rates & revenues is like comparing apples and oranges. it borders more on rank opportunism to defend your turf than show any consideration for the readers.
India is a poor country. affordability is and will be an issue here. so,to go behind hounding the readers asking them to pay a bomb shows high-handedness of the writer and the publishers alike.
For once, I agree with Mr Aakar Patel. Yes, some of the books are
expensive and need to be photocopied, but Indians have a habit of
overkilling, which leads them to confrontation with the law, and then
they cry foul.
Indians are particularly obnoxious when it comes to wallowing in self-
righteousness and self-pity.
Author make a valid point. Most students are happy buying multiplex tickets at 200Rs +. But want to have free books. Doesn't make sense.
Books are among the fews things that are still lower than international rates.
I wanted to make a clarification? The reason Times of India and Hindu are sold below cost price is not because of any social motive, but because they make a large amount of their revenue through advertisements. Look closely at these papers and you will find equal space delegated to news and advertisement.
Secondly, as an economics student who has studied in DU, a lot of our course texts were not 200-300 but more then 1000. Micro-economic theory by Hal Varian and Macro-economic Theory by Dornbush and Fisher are two examples that immidiately come to mind. OUP and CUP sell cheap paperbacks, but all the books in the course list are not OUP and CUP books.
The Indian and South Asian editions of most books are indeed much
cheaper than the other editions. But the production quality of the
Indian/South Asian editions is very poor. Let us not delude ourselves
on that count.
In any case, that's no excuse for the widespread photocopying of
entire books. We do have to respect the copyright laws protecting the
authors and the publishers. And it is not often that an academic book
fetches huge profits to its publishers.
The very students who complain about the prices of academic books
don't think twice about merrily spending a fortune on junk fiction, on
clothes and accessories, swanky pubs and restaurants, fancy bikes and
so on. Thrift kicks in when it comes to buying text books!!
It is not the duty of a business house to subsidise its products.
Students should instead ask their colleges/universities to stock more
copies of books and help the poorer students.
Boycott these books? Cutting one's nose to spite one's face?
When it comes to education, it should be an honor to get a book
listed as a university student course reference. I never consider
that the authors of the books had taken the pains just in order to
create a text book out of it. I would love to hear from the author in
his own signature that he wishes to earn out of the students money.
It is primarily the publishers who come out and complain. The costing
of student editions should be done at the level of paying capacity of
the locality, comparing to USD prices is simply meaningless.
Authors who write specifically for text books never price them
highly. It normally priced nearly the cost of good quality
photocopying, or a factor of 2x. Instead of complaining about
photocopying, it would be better if the University decides to
correspond with the authors and request for grants. It's just that
the publisher might have already usurped all such rights from the
author. Publishers may set policy to sell thru library at lowcost and
set an example
There is tendency to think that when the crowd says, it is correct. Another recent example is the India's so called 'Second Freedom' movement by Anna Hazare and his followers.
The author is right in his defence.
It seems bizarre that the author would compare his ability to buy OUP and CUP books to that of BA, MA and research students, many of whom come from socio-economically underprivileged backgrounds, and do not receive any sort of scholarship to fund their education. Investigations by students has revealed that the price of all the syllabus recommended books for ONE paper in the MA course can be up to Rs. 82,000. And there are a total of 16 papers only at the MA level. These presses pay next to nothing in royalties to academic authors, who rely on the university to make their living. And then, the same presses sell back faculty research to the very university that has funded the same! I think you should get your facts right, Mr. Patel, rather than issue a feeble defense of the publishing industry, a defense that relies on shockingly archaic notions about 'Indian' ingratitude and miserliness. And, the students are making no threat of violent action.We believe in peaceful democratic protest.
I broadly agree with the author. The author has mainly talked about literature and social sciences texts. I can say from my personal experience that many excellent scholarly science and technical books published by CUP and OUP are available in India at a price that is much cheaper than it is in Europe or the US. For example, the authoritative book on quantum computation titled "Quantum computation and quantum information" by Michael Nielsen and Isaac L. Chuang costs about US $61
(about Rs 3355.00) but its Indian edition is sold for Rs. 400.00.
One should not kill the goose that lays golden eggs.
The fact is, Aakar Patel, that you have no idea what is open source in this case. Your limited view only allows you to see "Wikipedia". Your views are understandable considering you've worked with a publisher in early 90s, wha you do not understand however is the kind of precedence this culture of copyright protection is gonna bring. If they're not "making millions"
what is the point of suing a petty photocopy shop at all anyway? It is just to create a culture of anti piracy and capitalistic knowledge. someday to even endorse a similar thought we'd have to give a fee.
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