“The Libgen sites deprive plaintiffs and their authors of income from their creative works, devalue the textbook market and plaintiffs’ works, and may cause plaintiffs to cease publishing certain works,” the complaint says.
The plaintiffs artificially inflate textbook prices so it all balances out.
we are quickly careening towards a world where textbooks cost $500 a pop and the majority of students obtain their books illegally. Piracy is a pain in the ass, but if students need their textbooks and the publishers make it impossible to obtain textbooks without taking out a loan, then publishers are effectively paying students to spend the time figuring out piracy. If a student makes $15 an hour at their job, then they could spend 30 hours researching and downloading their textbook and it would still be a better use of their time than actually buying a $500 textbook.
