Textbook Torrents - 'Download Textbooks for Free'

#1    pearson is what you'd call "the small end of a wedge" the site will be sued out of existence soon enough. publishers aren't going to let this go on if it cuts into their profits. textbooks are a huge ripoff, especially given the fact that most professors don't even bother to use them in class. then, you get to sell them back for 5-10% of what you paid, and the bookstore marks them back up to 80%.

hell, education in general is a ripoff. put yourself in debt 40000 bucks, wait in line for the same 12 buck an hour jobs

#2    @Notbob

My so very jaded these days aren't we?

First you knock the site, then the publishers, college professors, bookstores, and then blammo - higher education itself.

Ever heard of sate schools? 8,000 bucks a year for 4 years is pretty cheap to get t be able to do what you love in life.

#3    The registration is closed tho =/...If they upload solutions manuals to the site as well then it would be a grand compliment to the textbooks.

#4    the person/s who run the site needs to let some sites mirror them. If that was the case, well they could take down some but it wouldn't do any good because their would be more of them. :-)

#5    our education system was designed to create unthinking consumer factory worker robots who believe what they are told to and sit still at their machine all day. at some point, someone figured out that they could convince that factory robots that a 40000$ piece of paper would make them like their rich bosses, thus making them more indebted, and therefore more desperate to take the lousy jobs (making the rich guys happy)

education is a multibillion dollar industry, people are more "educated" than ever, yet their degrees are not a measure of intelligence, only the ability to pay tuition and jump through the right hoops. people are dumber than ever

#6    notbob I couldn't agree more.

#7    @Not

Hmm then who's "teaching" all our doctors, nurses, political scientists, computer engineers, dentists, civil engineers,etc.,etc.,most of whom don't "sit still at their machine all day"(???).

As usual you display exceptional self-loathing and a inordinate distaste for everything that isn't created or done with your blessing.

Our educational system is designed to EDUCATE PEOPLE, and depending on which institution you attend you will pay and learn accordingly. Almost all institutions are NON-PROFITS.

As Mark Twain once said, "All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten."

But, what's left unsaid is that a school has TEACHERS who can help you learn a given subject. Reading about math or biology is one things, but having a Professor guide your pen through equations or scalpel through dissection is quite another.

A degree is by no means a measure of intelligence, but it does provide a basis of knowledge and familiarity.

What's the alternative? Teachers and school staff working for free while we all sit in groups and talk about what to learn?

Anarchy is fine and all, that is until your house starts to smell like gasoline from all the fumes.

People are dumber then ever, but it has nothing to with college and everything to do with apathy and a disconnection from society thanks to TV and other sedentary activities.

#8    Theyre already erasing torrents.

"On Friday, we received a request from Pearson Education, one of the bigger textbook publishers, listing 78 torrents that they wanted disabled. While they are acting on extremely shaky legal ground, we are not in a position to fight a legal battle with the organization. As a result, in the interest of allowing the continued existence of this place, I have acceded to their request and disabled access to the listed torrents. "

This POS will be gone in no time.

#9    @Josef

Yeah I mentioned this in the article ...

"The site's come under fire recently from Pearson Education, apparently one of the bigger textbook publishers, asking it to remove some 78 torrents linking to books it holds the copyrights too. Unlike the RIAA, book publishers are simply going after individual torrents rather than entire sites or individual file-sharers or site admins."

But POS? Geeze, does anybody here file-share anymore or does everybody just trade "home movies"..... tsk tsk.

How can anybody hate the fact that people are ACTUALLY TRYING TO LEARN SHIT......instead of downloading pron or crappy CAMs they're grabbing Doestoevsky, Chekov, Marx, books on Quantum Mechanics, History.....

KNOWLEDGE should always be free.

#10    Ahh but knowledge is free...just look at the internet. A textbook is a compilation of knowledge in a certain subject in which they brought together the expertise of learned people (if its a good textbook). Online if you try to search for a compilation of knowledge on a certain subject you'll only find bits and pieces. Instead of searching for all the things you need and going to many internet sites, you can just open to chapter one of your textbook and it will all be there.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't believe textbooks should be free as there are people out there who spend long hours writing these things, who have families and need incomes. However, the outrageous prices that they charge for textbooks is ridiculous. Our country definitely is in need of textbook cost reform.

#11    Im all for free textbooks (and free porn, by the way...dont knock it) but that site is total crap. Do it right or dont do it at all. Its presumably a US based site. That was their first mistake. And did it not occur to them that publishers might threaten legal actions? If they dont want to go through the legal maneuvers, they shouldnt have started the site. It was inevitable, after all. And now its inevitable that it will be shut down. Its probably gone already just in the time it took me to type this. Completely unworthy of a Zeropaid article. Maybe UniteTheCows.

By the way, heres a tip for the university goers out there. Yeah, I used to buy all the books my first year. But then I, like others here, realized that the books werent even used in the classes. So what I did...get this...was DIDNT BUY THE BOOKS! It only took me a year to figure this out. Saved a lot of money.

#12    Heh, not buying the textbooks might work for you, but I'm an Engineering major and I have reading and homework and quizzes from the textbooks almost every class. I'm just forced to order international editions of the textbooks which can be up to $100 cheaper. Problem with these is that they only use metric units and the US versions use American and Metric =/.

#13    @Josef

Well I agree on them being to blame for not doing their legal homework, but hey until you and I go through all the hassle and headache (can u imagine?) of starting a torrent site of our own it's tough to knock those that have and do.

#14    bnm01 maybe we engineers are the exception to the rule, because I'm also doing an engineering degree and use my textbooks heavily. Even more amazing is the fact that my profs make their own textbooks and offer them at the copy center or book store for a mere 20$. So I must say I've found my textbooks well wroth it and fairly priced. There are however times where I've downloaded solutions manuals.