A good infographic that explains dollars and sense! http://matadornetwork.com/change/infographic-why-the-movie-industry-is-so-wrong-about-sopa/

"Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly." Poppycock! An e-reader, dropped once will break, unlike a book, making the durability and portability questionable. While the quality of an iPad, may be consistent, so are conventional books. As far as interactivity, a book requires you to physically manipulate a page to get more information, activating parts of your brain associated with learning. An e-reader requires you to stare at a screen that is as easy to ignore as any TV commercial. Searchability? That is called an index. If you don't know how to use one, you won't do much better with keywords. Finally, environmentally friendly? E-readers are made of non-renewable resources that must be mined, causing environmental destruction, toxic byproducts, and greenhouse gasses to power them. Books are made from trees, which unlike rare earth metals are renewable.

It does however make you complicit in terrorism, the terrorism effected by the capitalist system designed to make wealth trickle up. They CEO will always be paid before the stockholder or the worker. Continuing to participate in the system does make us all bad people.

To assume that a lack of government regulation is the same as no regulation is to completely overlook the corporate regulation that those who want net neutrality oppose. I would always rather have the government regulating instead of the profit driven anti-competitive private sector.

I tried submitting this story yesterday, but this version looks much cleaner than mine. Oddly enough, I have no idea how to make hyperlinks...

So go to another school, if you don't want to study under Keown. A professor teaching his own thoughts is what you sign up for, and I am sure his isn't the only classroom that uses the text, otherwise it wouldn't be published. I also make students read things I have written. If they don't want to learn what I have to say, they ought not take my class! That isn't a kickback, that is the publishing industry fighting fair use by making his students pay for his books. He could distribute it for free, but he has a contract telling him not to do that...

Nonsense. That would be grounds for firing, and in fact seeming too close to a sales rep is grounds for disciplinary action.

By "piracy" they of course refer to fair use for academic purposes. I have had multiple publishers reps tell me that any use of their materials without payment to them is piracy, and then they tell me they have never heard of fair use, and that I must have made it up...

Duly noted, but as I said elsewhere, for every farmer like you I have met, I meet another 10 who just do what the chemical companies tell them to do... And I completely agree that consumption patterns have to change rather than putting all the onus on farmers to be "sustainable."

Duly noted. I work with a wide variety of farmers, so I really shouldn't overgeneralize. Unfortunately, for every farmer I meet who wants to farm smarter, I meet 10 who don't think about their actions, they just think about making money. The organics studies show that labor input goes up per acre, but you have higher drought resistance and therefore about 4% higher yield over time. The problem I have seen is that people are so far into debt with the chemical companies, they can't afford the transition. But in the long term, that fertilizer bill goes away... As long as consumers buy wider variety...