this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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We had a student run server for piracy at my University to get copied textbooks from, but even then we had to sometimes look elsewhere. I often couldn't afford books and not all professors allowed the cheaper used previous editions.
Science textbooks were the worst with their stupid fucking online code bullshit so we could do homework. They even made it where you could buy just the code, which was something like $70. Still better than 300+, but JFC. Having to spend over $1000 for books that you are only going to use for 10 weeks was nuts.
The last saving grace we had is all textbooks were required to have at least one copy in the library that could not be checked out/removed. You could photocopy the homework pages that way. If your classmates were nice, they would let you borrow theirs to copy any pages too. You could also buy your textbook, copy what you needed, and return it within the return window.
And usually, there was an awesome professor that would "accidentally" make a free e-version of the textbook available to the class. God I appreciated the hell outta them.
I had professors that instead of a text book had you buy a “reader” from a copy shop. It was just a big binder of photocopied pages from text books, academic journals and various published papers. I still hold on to a few of them as they were kinda like mix tapes of various ideas and info, way more interesting than a text book.
The local copy shops were bigger centers of piracy than Napster at the time.