this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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So are you able to view content, but pay to download? If that's the case, I could probably write a scraper for the site.
If you have to pay to even see the content, then you may have a bigger problem. Try pooling resources with some of your fellow students, to have one person download all the content, and then make it available to everyone else.
Another option is to expose your instructors. There's a high probability that they are getting kickbacks, especially if this is at college level. Maybe in the form of 10% of each dollar spent by one of their students. Or, they might be getting free equipment or content from Docsity, in exchange for forcing students to use it, and offloading the costs to students.
When I was in college, one of my instructors used these "clickers" that cost students $40 per semester to rent. They used radio to allow submitting realtime quiz answers during class. Students were scored on how many questions they answered, not whether they were correct. If you didn't pay the clicker fee, you lost that 10% of your final grade.
I was suspicious, so I looked into it. It wasn't hard. The clicker manufacturer advertised kickbacks on their own website.
Based on the website his professor(s) are definitely making side money forcing students to pay to download their notes.
https://www.docsity.com/en/store/sell
No idea if that is legal for them to do or not but it is shady as hell.
Dont just consider if its "legal". But also if it is aligned with institution policy.
Depending on the details maybe it would be the kind of thing theyd have to declare when publishing? Like as a conflict of interest.
Could be other equity type avenues depending on details.
iClicker.
F#$* those things.
Faculty at the two higher eds I worked as staff at hated the cost of books and student materials too, and tried their best to keep them down. Most of them. Publishers like Pearson and Cengage started doing things like discounting teacher's editions and/or including curriculum (slide decks, all level of evaluatons and more) in exchange for becoming the learning portal and getting their hands on that sweet, sweet PII and marketable data, not to mention the yearly rolling editions of their student texts with single-use portal key codes.
This free market correction sure is taking its time...