I read today about a supreme court case involving college textbooks and what technically constitutes theft. The court case centered around a student who purchased his textbooks in southeast asia (where most of the books are printed) for dirt cheap prices, in effect circumventing the american publishing companies and saving money. The controversy arose when the student attempted to re-sell the books online undercutting the price of the books had they been purchased domestically by a wide margin. The student then used this method to sell $900,000 worth of books and made $100,000 in profits. (not a bad way to make some cash)

The case centers around the concept of copyrights in the law and the chain of profits to be made off of books. now to be clear the same book is being purchased the only difference is the country in which the book was purchased and the price paid for it. To me it seems that this is a case of the american publishing companies taking this guy to court because they didn’t get their full profits off of the books in question. To me this seems like petty corporate vengeance. Keep in mind that these are college textbooks that most people don’t read for pleasure but are instead instrumental in gaining an education. The price of college textbooks is absurdly high (as we all know) however it is my personal belief that these books should be as low cost as possible. Textbooks are part of getting an education but capitalism has stepped in the way and private publishing companies are using the need based textbook market to drive the price up astronomically. For some this makes higher education unattainable. thoughts?