I would assume that a good chunk of students in poverty simply don't have a device that works well for consuming books on.

If you don't have a tablet or laptop, just a phone with a small screen, I can see people saying z-lib isn't helpful for them. That they'll just use physical books at their library.

I can definitely imagine a lot of undergrads who would assume that if a book isn't available in their college library then they'd never need it anyways. (Rightly or wrongly.)

>And remember that so many textbooks now contain a mandatory online component where assignments get submitted and tests are taken, so you're forced to buy it even if z-lib has it. (I'm not defending that... just explaining it.)

It's a disgrace that universities are willing to use books that have been turned into consumable goods by single-use software or usurious saas rental messes.

Yes, this is how textbook manufactures sell to university. One time codes for online exercises / labs. This happens mostly for intro classes. I have no idea why universities do this, my guess is they are sold on hw problems being randomized so it makes cheating more difficult.

What I don't get is that 20 or so years ago there were professors writing online books meant as no-cost alternatives to the corporate publishing companies which controlled much of the academic market.

Why did all of those projects fail?

If you don't have a laptop, the place you live in / study at probably doesn't have a good public library.

Not a public library -- their institution's library. The context here is higher ed students in poverty situations, and I've never heard of a college or university (that isn't online-only, at least) that didn't have a library.

I’d guess the easiest explanation (which admittedly erases all nuance) is that folks just misinterpreted the question and reflexively dismissed it as soon as they saw “Z-Library” and “Helpful”.

I’d also be inclined to discard theoretical “in the long run it’ll be unhelpful” concerns, since that opens up an infinitely-deep can of hypothetical contrived scenarios of arbitrary complexity that can’t be disproven. I’m sure there are very real concerns, but it’s impossible to reason about which concerns specifically people would care about.

IMO that leaves the purely practical concerns:

- Students in poverty might not have reliable internet, devices or digital literacy. If zlib isn’t available to them, it isn’t helpful

- Books available might not cater to the local language/culture, or the real world curriculum needs of those students. If zlib doesn’t help them succeed, it isn’t helpful

- The interface sucks and is confusing, which makes students struggle to find what‘s useful. If zlib isn’t useable for them, it isn’t helpful

> Is it this complicated argument that they will discourage authors from writing books and then this will hurt all students in a hypothetical scenario? Or there are other reasons?

That really can't be it because the question isn't about whether it is moral, legal or good for publishers.

I really think this is just elitism and gatekeeping at its worst.

That's why this _can_ be it. If authors stop writing books it will hurt students (who wont have books to read). Nothing to do with ethics or morals.

"Educated slaves are unhappy"

Educated slaves also refuse to work for peanuts.

What’s the lizardman constant? 4% or so? There’s some of it.

Maybe they do not need more textbooks? If they do not need to follow newest version of it, they can get second hand book.

Maybe I was a bad student, but I stopped buying books after my freshman year, unless there was a very specific reason to have it. I really didn’t use most of them.

I still remember one professor my senior year saying we needed the book to do problems he would assign, and we wouldn’t pass without it. I opened the book one time for a problem that we worked on in class. It could have easily been projected up on the board or printed as a hand out. It’s been 20 years and I’m still a little bitter. I felt lied to and cheated; most of us did.

It depends on your major. For those who study English, for instance, many of the assigned books are out of copywrite already. And new books are market price so they won't be more than 20 dollars. And if you're in a not so conservative English department a lot of the "theory" texts, aside from the more obscure ones, are freely available online because they're written by people who care more about intellectual freedom than making a buck or two.

I could play devils advocate and say that it’s bad for poor students because if authors are not fairly compensated then these authors won’t write textbooks and if they don’t then future students won’t benefit from having the textbooks.

When my courses had profs who had written the book, they'd have the school book store print and bind them to booklets, and sell them for close enough to cost, and also put up a download link for the pdf

Few academic authors are in it for the money.

I mean yeah, getting your work published just means that you can sue if someone steals it (often the case with those university presidents that they plagiarized work from undergrads or those who otherwise couldn't fight back). But if publishers stop making money off academic texts, then they won't be inclined to fight those battles. Then again, a lot of the money comes from university library subscriptions to entire catalogues of texts including books and articles, so either something you want to access is already in your ecosystem or it isn't.

An interpretation given the benefit of the doubt is, using Z-library might get the said student in trouble and therefore is not helpful overall.