text:
What is the "chain search" method for literature search?
I am working through a tutorial about literature search, reading, and writing. It says:

Chain Search:
A chain search consists of finding suitable literature by letting one text lead you to the next, which leads to the next and so on.

The strength of the chain search is that it leads from one good reference to another, and you will be able to follow the development of arguments through your literature search.
Its weakness, however, is that you might lack references that present different understandings or raise objections to the text that started the chain.

I did not understand chain search from this.
The definition says: “letting one text lead you to the next“. What does text mean here? Could you please explain chain search in easy words along with an example?

Please give a full citation of from where you took this quotation (preferably, provide a URL or link the text if it is online). I've never heard the term before, so citing the source would help people understand the context and give better answers. That said, it sounds like a loose, informal, non-systematic way to carry out a backward citation search, which is a well-known technique that has the same strength mentioned (and more) while mitigating the weakness mentioned.

This sounds like formal name for a way that I frequently end up exploring the literature.

Somebody points me at a relevant paper or I search and find something myself, e.g., "Xu et al., Journal of Obscurology, 2012."
I find the paper interesting and valuable, and notice that its conclusions depend on a couple of other papers, "Friedman et al., Obscurolytica, 2007", "Xu & Gupta, Journal of Obscurology, 2010," and go get those papers to look at.
I also notice that the paper cites as related work the competing approaches "White et al., Soc. Obscure, 2003" and "Garcia et al., Obscurrant, 2011", and go get those papers too.
Then I wonder if the paper has been cited in development of other significant works, and skimming through its citations, I find that "Gupta & Xu, Obscurolytica, 2015" and "Prokoff et al, Applications of Obscurology, 2016" look particularly interesting and go get those papers too.

I keep on repeating this process, chaining through relationships in the literature, until I feel like I've gotten a sufficient sense of the community of work linked to this particular paper.
As noted, however, this will only trace out relationships within a connected community of literature, and as you cannot reasonably search more than a few links per article on average, there is a chance to missing highly important connections. Still, it's a good starting point for non-systematic search of the literature and will generally pick up the main threads of argument within a particular community.

Even if this way of exploring literature at first leads to a connected community of literature, it will also help you to learn the slang of that community, which then helps to find more literature related to it on your own. (You do study a very obscure field it seems. ;-) )


text:
MLA: How to write translations of terms?
I am finishing my MA thesis and in the process of polishing it.
I adhere to MLA style and I cannot find anything online concerning:
I am translating a few terms. How do you write a term when in isolation? Imagine I am translating the word monere from Latin, which I write in italics. How to I write its translation? Between quotes or not?

Welcome to Academia SE. As this site follows a strict question-and-answer format, there should be only one distinct question per question. I therefore took the liberty to remove your second question; feel free to ask it separately.

source: Stack Exchange

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text:
Should I send professors money for illegally downloading their books?
I illegally download almost all the books I need for my studies. While I'm more than happy to give a middle finger to the publisher mafia, it does of course mean that the author of the book is not appropriately compensated for their work.
But: it is well-known that professors do not make substantial amounts of money for each copy sold of their textbook. Perhaps 5–15 % of the sales price of each unit sold. This usually corresponds to roughly 5–10 dollars.
With that in mind, would it be appropriate to simply send those odd 10 dollars to the author of the book that I am illegally downloading? If you are a professor who authored a book, how would you feel about this?

Comments about book prizes, alternative solutions, and comments as answers have been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

While this is a fair and valid question, it raises ethical ideas that would be better discussed on another forum. OK I don't see ethics, but philosophy or somewhere in that direction.

"...would it be appropiate to..." This seems to be a rather subjective term. You should define "appropriate" before (and then the answer will probably become clear to you already). For a Q&A like the StackeExchanges this is not a good fit, since answers will mostly be opinionated and akin to just polls where nobody learns anything. One can possibly pose different questions that would be quite interesting (something like "Why are scientific text books so expensive?" or "Why are authors only paid a small share of the total selling price?").

Could you clarify what you mean by "illegally downloading"? In most jurisdictions, just downloading "pirated" media is perfectly legal. The specifics might matter.

Sadly none of the answers so far have discussed about the possibility that the author(s) is no longer alive. They solely focused on alive authors, dismissing the case of dead authors. If one does like you did (download almost all the books for your studies), then the probability to download at least 1 book from a dead author(s) is non negligible. Yet this case has been totally ignored thus far...!

Also: I wonder: How many answers have been downvoted into oblivion? (I presume they're largely saying yes, and mods can answer the question.)
I sought to paypal some money to some folks in India who had done something awesome (file a legal case about censorship and coercion).  They didn't respond.  I guess they (or their email filters) thought I was a scammer, and I wouldn't blame them for the mistake.
Maybe I should send cash.

@WHO: How many answers have been downvoted into oblivion? (I presume they're largely saying yes, and mods can answer the question.) – There are some deleted answers, none of which largely says yes and the only one of which receiving a considerable amount of downvotes was a clear non-answer.

With that in mind, would it be appropriate to simply send those odd 10 dollars to the author of the book that I am illegally downloading?

First, I would be concerned about your legal exposure. You would be effectively admitting piracy.
Second, you cannot unilaterally change the terms of sale. When the professor published the book, they agreed to sell it through the publisher in exchange for certain terms. The legal and (in my view) ethical options are to accept or decline these terms; you cannot invent and execute your own terms instead, even if they seem reasonable. In short, this is a rationalization. (That said, I personally am sympathetic to your concerns about publishing companies exploiting college students.)
Thus, the "appropriate" thing to do is to buy the books through legal channels.

If you are a professor who authored a book, how would you feel about this?

Not a professor, but I have taught and written a book with thousands of copies sold. I'm sure I am losing money due to piracy, but I have never received a payment like you describe.

Realistically, if I were to receive cash anonymously, I would probably chuckle and pocket the cash, or maybe set it aside for a few years to see if anything came of it.
If I received money from a known student, I would be very concerned about the appearance of impropriety, and would not accept it. I would also be concerned about whether I should report the piracy, though I probably wouldn't.
If this "caught on" and I was receiving a non-negligible amount of money from many pirates, I would have to talk to the publisher and seek guidance.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I find the moralistic tone of some of the other answers a bit distasteful, and also unhelpful. It’s pretty clear to me that you didn’t come here to ask for a general lecture about the pros and cons of piracy of textbooks and other digital content, and that is the sort of knowledge that already exists in a zillion different places and isn’t worth repeating. You had specific questions that aren’t addressed anywhere else, so I’ll try to answer them.

With that in mind, would it be appropiate to simply send those odd 10 dollars to the author of the book that I am illegally downloading?

I don’t find anything inappropriate about the act of sending $10 to a book author, no matter the reason. However, I should emphasize that that doesn’t mean that I think everything you’ve described yourself doing is “appropriate”. And to the extent that some of the other things you are doing are inappropriate, they will still be inappropriate even if you send $10 to book authors.

If you are a professor who authored a book, how would you feel about this?

Well, I am a professor who authored a book.* I would be a little amused, but mostly indifferent. I wouldn’t think more of you for doing it, but I wouldn’t think less of you (compared to my opinion of someone who pirated my book but didn’t send me $10, that is) either. I would likely think that you had decent intentions, but were expressing them in a way that was somewhat misguided.

Should I send professors 10 dollars for illegally downloading their books?

The sending of $10 to authors by itself is not a terrible idea and on the face of it is mostly just harmless and inconsequential (as opposed to the act of piracy itself, which is a lot more consequential but is not what you asked about, so I won’t discuss it). I’d still advise against it, but not for any of the reasons other people mentioned. Mostly I think that if you went ahead with it it would be a way for you to delude yourself into thinking that this act cleanses your conscience and absolves you of ethical responsibility for the act of illegally downloading the book. It is a kind of a cop-out: you want to download books illegally but also want to think that you’re an ethical person, so you’ve come up with this plan to allow yourself to think that you’ve achieved both goals but for a fraction of the “normal” price. Well, I’m afraid you don’t get off so easily. Ethics doesn’t work that way.
To summarize, I can’t tell you what you should do, but whatever you do, my advice is, own your actions. If you choose to download books illegally, do so after informing yourself about precisely what that means and what the consequences (ethical and otherwise) are — for yourself, for book authors, for publishers, for other readers and people who would have become readers of books that might never get published, etc — and make sure you can defend your decision and be at peace with it. But don’t go for half-baked solutions like sending some pittance to the book author to help yourself feel better and pretend you don’t need to think about the issue anymore. The truth is, you do need to think more about the issue. It is a complicated issue and the level of thinking about it where I think you’re currently at is only beginning to scratch the surface of its true complexity.
Thanks for the interesting question!

*Actually my book cannot be pirated since I give the digital copy away for free on my website (for a variety of reasons, including the knowledge that if I don’t then a pirated copy would likely be available anyway), with my publisher’s permission of course. What I wrote above about how I would feel refers to my best attempt at imagining a hypothetical scenario in which I wrote a book that I was not giving away digitally for free. But I think it’s a fairly accurate guess anyway.

The legal ramifications of sending money to someone to make amends for piracy is not something to be taken lightly. It is not only about the taxes the reciever has to pay, but now the reciever is selling bootleg copies of his work, the publisher might intervene quite harshly.

What disturbs me about the whole idea is the following: the legal aspect is the legal aspect and there are various views on that (I support the Open Access perspective; the EU has made a great effort to enforce it) - however, the OP tries to recruit the prof into their view of how legitimate author reimbursement should look like. This is what really disturbs me about this proposal; not every accepter of the money would realise that they play along the arbitrarily made-up game rules of OP.

@Bent if someone sent me $10 without asking me, I wouldn’t consider myself to have “stolen bootleg copies of my work”, nor do I think that I would be legally complicit in an illegal sale in any way (think about it like this: it would be very problematic if the law had such a loophole that enabled you to make someone a criminal just by sending them $10). It should be very clear, what OP decides to do is %100 on him.

@Bent as for taxes: yeah maybe, but I think you’re overthinking this. The professor can always decide to give the money to charity/a random needy person, or even throw it in the trash (or report it in their taxes like any other income). Again, everyone is responsible for their own actions, so I don’t see why what the professor does with the money should be of any concern to OP. (But in general I completely agree with you it’s good to be aware of legal issues related to this question, which are quite important.)

"think about it like this: it would be very problematic if the law had such a loophole that enabled you to make someone a criminal just by sending them $10". You've got it wrong. A person can not be made a criminal by someone sending him money. But you force the person to do something. If the person decides to keep the money it is income, the reason in this case is compensation for a bootleg copy. Now he is in conflict with the contract with the publisher. Return the money? But to whom? I assume the money is send without return address. The only option left is to report it to the police. cont

cont.. if a bank in error puts money into your account you are required by law to report it to the bank. You cannot just leave the money, or worse spend it, even if it is not your fault. In this case you either know the money is for a bootleg copy of a book or, in fact, even worse you do not know what it is for. The law require you to assume the worst in such a case. You are not a criminal for someone sending you money, but you are for not making every effort to make sure you are not doing something wrong.

@Bent ok, I understand but I think we’re coming at this from different angles. If it were me receiving the money, I would regard it as a gift from an enthusiastic reader (regardless of what the reader claims it is, which is irrelevant from my point of view), and not worry about any of the stuff that you’re worrying about, except maybe the tax issue, which I would consult my accountant about. It is not my responsibility to help law authorities or publishers combat piracy (even of my own book), and I never promised my publisher not to accept gifts from readers.

@DanRomik I hope you never get any money from someone who has sold weed or similar in US state that you do not live in. If you do, you will know how to spell 'felony' and 'end of career'. I do not know of any jurisdiction in the world where you are not supposed to know where every cent of your income comes from and if you do not know you yourself is at fault.

@Bent that’s really interesting, thanks. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it I guess. By the way, any chance you can tell me the name of the felony I’d be committing by receiving money of unknown origin? I’m not disbelieving you, just curious.

The comments suggests that the publishers don't violate any ethical standards and are thus blameless. That's very seldom the case. The publishers generally don't uphold their ethical responsibility to make their knowledge accessible to every human on earth.
According to the universal human right declaration (Art. 28) everybody has the right to participate in the scientific advancement. Art. 28 recognizes that authors have a right to protection of the moral and material interests but doesn't see that right to interest protection belonging with publishers.

@Bent if someone send me money with a comment saying "Thanks for your great book!" I do not see a chance to get in legal trouble for that. Dan Romik: I like your view on this situation this time

@Bent By that legal theory, wouldn't every church that had members involved with the Mafia be legally complicit with their activity? If an entity could be prosecuted for receiving anonymous donations from a dubious source, I'd think a rather large number of charitable organizations would be unable to continue operating.

@Bent Do you have a source for any of this? There is no presumption an individual will be able to account for every penny of their income, and there is certainly no requirement for an individual to attempt find out where the people paying them money got that money (if they have actual knowledge that the money they are being paid is illicit then that is a very different situation).

@Christian Would you please try to craft an answer which answers OP and fits more information about what you just said into it? I am interested in hearing more about what you've mentioned. Is it binding in any way on anyone? Even if not, is it officially recognized or supported by any governments or other major groups?

@Bent, are you seriously saying a donation of negligible amount is taxable income as if it were the payment for a good/service?

@AndreaLazzarotto Of course. If a student sends money to the author of the book because they are the author of the book - why would that not be a payment for goods or services? As long as there are few students doing this, my  income tax declaration has an exemption you get if you did not sell stuff leading to earnings of > 400 € in total in the year in question, though.

@cbeleites you are assuming a direct business transaction between the student and the book author. If Alice and Bob agree to exchange a PDF of a book for 10$, this is a sale contract. If Alice "steals" property from Bob without Bob agreeing and then decides to donate 10$ to Bob, there is no sale and no contract. The amount is negligible so not taxable.

This answer apperas to just have a hand wave "clearly it's ethically wrong" but I don't find that compelling at all - under Kant's 2nd Imperative we can see 'if everyone does it, what happens' and, well, the author gets well compensated; he continues to produce work and the "rent seeking" of the publisher gets quashed. Under an ethical framework that doesn't think media mega-corps should have been allowed to buy-off politicians to get massive extensions to copyright this seems pretty ethical.

So would you say that once this "complexity" is taken to account, the current system is actually pretty good and the prices pretty sensible?

Actually, what you should do, if you want to behave ethically, is purchase legal copies of the books you've stolen.

This answer has generated a lot of controversy. Let me explain a bit of the background and thinking behind it. It will take me more than one edit to be complete, so please be patient. Most of this annex is derived from comments I've made elsewhere here.
First, I don't make any legal argument at all. Everything I've written here is that it is unethical to unilaterally break a social contract, substituting your own terms, taking something that isn't yours and benefitting from it without compensating the producers (both authors and publishers) who have expended resources in its creation. It is an insult to creators. I haven't discussed legality. Others here seem to be trying, like the OP, to find a way to make it sort of ok, when there is an obvious, clean, and simple solution. Purchase a legal copy. Other "solutions" are just self delusion.
The OP and others here seems to believe that the publishing industry is itself immoral and should be combatted. I agree in part with that, but only in part. But that doesn't change the ethics of this action (downloading without payment). But most people who think that publishers just rip them off, haven't thought about the problem very deeply. The main costs in publishing (paper or electronic) are acquisitions, reviewing, editing, layout/graphics,  manufacture/hosting, and marketing. This in addition to the time and effort of the author(s) who produce the work. All of these are expensive undertakings and require skilled professionals.
Some of the work is done by volunteers (often reviewing). But copy editors, who improve the language and layout/book-designers etc. need to be paid. Many of the people in acquisitions, editing, and marketing need to be on the road visiting (and paying for) every conference they can find. And the marketers give away a lot of books, also.
Some here seem to think that the costs of books etc are just too high, but they have always been high. I just read that textbooks account for about 1% of the cost of education. A Calculus book (e.g. Stewart) now costs about 10 times what mine did in the early 1960s. But so does everything else. Food, housing, transportation, etc. The kindle edition of Stewart is only about 5-6 times what my hardcover was back then. I remember spending about $100 for most of a year's books and was horrified. Now is is said to be about $900. BTW, I still have that book, so it was a good investment.
Note also that the price charged on successful books includes the amortized cost of creating, but not manufacturing, the ones that never sell. It is hard to predict a winner so publishers create a lot of failed books; several for every successful one. If the price difference between ebooks and hardcovers is an indication, about half the cost is due to manufacturing. Which means that much of the cost of trying to develop most books is never recovered. So publishers absorb those costs initially, but include it in price of books that sell. This is the "cost" of choice that we pay. One model is to charge back the development cost of a failed book to the author. A clear disincentive to write.
Another reason for the high cost of all but elementary books is that the total market is both small and divided up by the presence of several book options. Choice again. If we all used Johnson & Kiokemeister's Calculus with Analytic Geometry from 1960 (a good book) then the cost would be very small. But there are new books to choose from, increasing the cost of all since most are unsuccessful, but still eat up development resources.
Some have stated that publishers have a monopoly and that they exploit it. But publishers don't have a legal monopoly. Anyone can attack their business model. Anyone can offer competition. If their profit margins are outrageous then someone has a lot of incentive to do it. But no one has yet been able to put all the pieces together (from acquisition to distribution) to make it any cheaper for buyers. Some models replace paid employees with volunteers and that works up to a point, but hasn't been shown to scale. Apple's profit margin is 22%. McGraw is 25% (one of the highest). Creating things is hard work from a lot of people.
Don't get the idea here that I'm against a system in which IP is free to use. But there needs to be some incentive to produce it or it won't get produced at all. I've written some ebooks, actually, and have produced software that has been downloaded (free) more than 15,000 times. But that was my choice to do, not someone else's decision who tried to override my wishes.
My preferred solution is to work toward a system in which authors are compensated separately from book sales, say via grants funded via tax revenues. This makes the creation of IP truly a social good and a shared responsibility. Books could then be distributed for free or sold for manufacturing cost, or whatever.
My biggest complaint about the publishing industry, actually, is simply that they don't spend enough effort on marketing their titles after two years. Most authors get almost all of their revenue in those first two years because of this. Always on to the new thing.
But still, my argument here is an ethical one, not a legal or economic argument. It is wrong to substitute your decision for that of the creator of something of value - especially if it is of value to you.

@Buffy: I voted your answer down because it fits the too-common antipattern of answering an ethical question of the form "how can I do this better?" by "you should not do it at all". There are some cases where this is a good answer, but this isn't one of them, and in either case the answer is comment-length and devoid of justification. I am used to much better from you.

I agree with this answer except for the word “stolen”. Digital piracy is ethically problematic and in many (possibly most) circumstances unethical, but it is not identical to, and should not be conflated with, theft. I downvoted the answer because of this inaccuracy, but will undo my downvote if you edit the answer to correct this issue.

I moved longer discussions in comments to chat and just left the hooks, i.e., the direct criticisms of the answer. Please continue discussing in chat. Also, please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

Upvoted because this is the answer of what to do if you find yourself in possession of a pirated book. 1. You inspect it and you don't need it, so you delete it. 2. You decide you like it so you buy a legal copy. Sounds daft, but a friend once gave me pirated copies of his favourite books. I read a few paragraphs of each, then bought the ones I liked, and deleted the others.

I downvoted because you tell a bunch of just-so stories about academic publishing that just don't correspond to reality.  For starters: prices in 2018 are about 8.5 times what they were in 1960.  Many calculus textbook are over $200 now.  Calculus textbooks were certainly not over $23 in 1960!  The inflation in textbook prices has wildly exceeded inflation, as many online sources attest.

@PeteL.Clark, pretty sure you are wrong. I was there. Above $100 for five books with Calc being the most expensive. And I estimated 10  times (back of the envelope), which is in line with general inflation. A house that was then $20K is now about ten times that. Nearly everything that has material and labor inputs as the dominant costs - like publishing.  Tuition to a private was then about $2k per year. Now ???

"Some have stated that publishers have a monopoly and that they exploit it." There are a bajillion publishers out there, so to call it a monopoly is nonsensical. Calling the entire industry a monopoly is as nonsensical as saying "if you want a degree you have to attend a university and therefore the higher education industry is a monopoly".

OP has not stolen anything, and it is unreasonable for people who are not rich (i.e. most people, including most students) to purchase copies of the academic books they read. People don't have this kind of money available, and even if they did, it would not benefit society for them to make these payments. -1.

@einpoklum So since I am not rich, it would not be reasonable for me to pay this much for a nice meal at a Michelin star restaurant, and hence it would be completely moral to skip out without paying?

@TobiasKildetoft: I resent you considering access to academic material to be similar to enjoying a meal at a Michelin-star restaurant. Studying is not indulgence.

@einpoklum Access to specific academic material. For most purposes, you could make do with freely available materials, but it is more efficient to pick a specific book. Sure, the restaurant analogy is strained to bursting point, but that was to highlight the difference between something which is necessary and something which is better but more expensive.

@einpoklum, curious that you value an expensive meal, but don't value the effort and resources that go into the creation of a textbook. "Academic material" doesn't create itself. The fact that the final result may be only 'bits' doesn't mean that real resources weren't expended in the organization of those bits. Or is it just that "it is easy to steal" so "it is ok to steal"? Hmmm. There's that word again. Would you prefer "illegal taking"? The OP said it was illegal, here, and tagged it with ethics. I focused on the ethical part, actually and illustrated some of the actual resources.

@einpoklum, if you download an ebook and discard it immediately, no harm, no foul. But if you download it without paying and gain value from it yourself, it isn't the same thing at all. Why is the work of a chef to be valued and that of an author and editor not to be valued? This is the world you want, but not the world that is. You can, of course, impose your will by downloading, but it is still unethical.

@Buffy: I did not suggest I don't value the effort and resources that go into the creation of a book. But a book being valued work does not imply prospective readers of the book should pay money in order to read it.

@einpoklum. My library, will actually let you check out e-books without charge. It isn't the same thing at all. A university could, in theory, provide e-books after making some agreement with publishers. There are other solutions that putting your own "rules" in front of everyone else's.

@Buffy: You're mistaking who "everybody" is. "Everybody" shared copies of files - academic and otherwise - in disregard of the presumption to forbid this. So, it is publishers's lobby efforts that you're trying to enforce rather than "everyone's rules". It didn't quite work for Queen Anne and it sure won't work for the greedy Elsevier & al today. The idea of restricting copies is obsolete.

Also, I do think libraries and universities in general should participate in arrangements for funding book publication. But if a students' library has done so - then it doesn't matter (IMHO) whether the file you have came from this server or that server; and if it hasn't - then you need SciHub. Oh, and - many/most people who download papers from Sci-Hub don't have check-out privileges at university libraries.

Please continue this discussion in chat.

Since you still insist on equating digital piracy with theft, here, here and here is some relevant reading offering a more nuanced view of the question. And as I said, piracy can still be wrong without being identical to theft, so this inaccuracy does not invalidate everything you wrote.

@DanRomik, I think my position is clear enough. So is yours. Give it a rest.

@darijgrinberg: In no way, shape, or form, was this an an ethical question of the form "how can I do this better?" Read the question. It basically says "I'm illegally downloading books. If you were the professor/author, would you appreciate $10 sent to you directly?".  And I don't think this question answers that, so perhaps your downvote is reasonable after all.

@Buffy : This is going to be a bit long series of comments on this answer, and was inspired by issues brought up last night when I commented regarding the “mandated physical exercises” recent thread, that led me to consider this question thread as well, which I’d also seen before and I found you had also posted a post upon it, and also saw you had made one here. I actually would have posted this as a separate answer to the ones here, but can’t, because this thread is now closed. I apologize for the other thread; I got riled a little, sorry, before it sunk in hard.

What I would say is that you both make some important, valid points here but also your post comes across as exercising what I find to be other instances of the “extreme judgmentalism” that I saw you respond negatively to in the other dealing, and more it seems to me that you may not have fully appreciated the OP’s position here. I am not advocating you to accept a different ethical system or conclusion, but your post seems rather quite less sympathetic than the otherwise-sympathetic tone you have expressed elsewhere to people with a different view.

For one, I most strongly challenge the idea that to “unilaterally break a social contract and substitute your own terms” is all that wrong to do - at the very least, to the extent there may be any fault with it, it’s less than that of personally making a promise to you of something of value and then reneging upon it. “Social contracts” are neither entered voluntarily nor are they easily escaped, rather they are, in effect, “socially blessed” herd mentality. Herd mentality with teeth, and you elsewhere slammed “herd” mentality. You could argue them perhaps necessary, (cont'd)

(cont'd) but still, this makes them much more susceptible, I’d think, to criticism, and what I think OP’s stance here is that when the usual methods for challenging those social contracts don’t work, that more direct action to rebel against them may be warranted.

Of course you could say that the author also implicitly accepts the social contract and so then it does in effect kind of, sort of constitute a “renege on personal promises” type situation, but I’d say that also ignores the fact of hir own coercion into said “contract” just same which, again, tempers it. The issue is complicated and I’m not here to debate it at length, I’m just pointing it out. At the very least, I suspect OP shares this attitude and my point is to explain it for sympathizing purposes.

Now, where I see you as exercising fleet in your judgment is this: “taking something that isn't yours and benefitting from it without compensating the producers (both authors and publishers) who have expended resources in its creation.” and then reaffirming toward the end with that “IP” “needs an incentive”. Yet he has said rather clearly, I’d think, in his post that the reason he would be giving $10 to the professor was because based on the sources that he used to analyze the situation, this would constitute the “compensation” of the author. (cont'd)

(cont'd) Hence, he actually does think those who produce value deserve compensation, but he’s taking issue with the system of that compensation.

That said, I think your strongest point against his course of action is that he has neglected to take into account that there are other contributors of value to the book in the supply chain besides just the author, such as editors, illustrators, and proofreaders at the very least, without whom the book would be more like a pile of manuscript with no images, not as well organized, and with more significant grammatical and/or spelling errors, than the slick product that he almost surely appreciates.

A final point may be made that one would also have to balance the negatives of rebellion like he is doing here against the negatives of supporting a system that itself may be ethically questionable which is what one will inevitably do by paying the market price for a copy of the book. You may see that the former outweigh the latter, but you should acknowledge that a case could be made for the opposite as well. As said, my argument here really is to sympathize with the OP and advocate for such than it is to advance the superiority of one or the other ethical position.

After thinking about it a bit more, I wouldn’t do this. Here’s a few reasons:

The professor will have to waste their time trying to decide whether or not to accept your offer, and surely they have better things to do.
They may have to declare such sources of income if they become large enough, so you’re creating issues for them without offering much help.
You need to hide your identity otherwise it will be obvious you’ve breached anti-piracy laws.
The publisher may or may not have contributed considerably to the book (e.g. editing, advertising) and cutting them out of the picture goes “too far” in the direction of rewarding the content creator and denying rewards to the content distributor.

In short then, I wouldn’t do this.
However, also I disagree with Buffy’s answer. Ebooks are a non-rival good. Hence the ethics of “stealing” them is pretty complicated, and in my view there are situations where “stealing” a non-rival good is permissible or even obligatory. It’s inaccurate to call this “simple theft” in my opinion. In any event, whether you send them money or not, I wouldn’t feel too guilty about this¹.

¹ Roughly: If an ebook is on sale for $70 and it has $90 of value for you, buy it. If it has $50 of value for you, then obviously you’re not going to buy it. So you either get some value from this ebook (by “stealing” it) or you don’t (by not “stealing” it.) Therefore you should “steal” it, since society ends up $50 better off overall if and only if you “steal” it. And if, upon reading it you find that the total value to you has exceeded $70, then you should buy it.

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This answer holds true for all e-books. I would further add that textbooks in particular "spread out" their value to society in a way that other books (say, fiction) generally do not; ie, the information in the textbook is meant to be put to use in productive work for the benefit of the public.

I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, I can give you only one vote :-(

"The professor will have to waste their time trying to decide whether or not to accept your offer" this can be bypassed by simply saying "I liked you book and sent you an additional $10". The author has no reason to not accept the gift; it's not offered in exchange it's given as a gift.

@pbhj, that's actually a pretty good idea!

If you are a professor who authored a book, how would you feel about this?

I'd feel extremely annoyed. You're not only doing something illegal, you're cheating someone of their work. This wouldn't be because of money - it's very unlikely I wrote the book to make money. It'd be about justice and fairness, concepts which are too core to my values to compromise for $10. Plus the fact that you pirated my book means someone with even less scruples than you could also have pirated it.
My likely reaction is to notify the publisher at once, and if it comes to a lawsuit, I'd testify against you.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

This answer is not clear; could you explain please? The part that I find confusing is that you speak of cheating someone of their work, but immediately then insist not because of money, as it is very unlikely you wrote to make money. First, then why did you write the book? Second, then how were you cheated, if not because of money (where you feel cheated precisely because no money was given to the publisher). To recap, please explain: 1) Who is cheated and how? 2) If not for money, why did you write the book? 3) If you do not write for money, why don't you give the book online for free?

@Aaron the publisher is cheated of their work done. That, I think, answers the other questions as well.

@Allure It fully answers the part about being cheated, but it does not answer the part about "Why not just give the book data away for free then?" since you could do that instead. However, that part is not necessary to understand your answer and is merely left as a curiosity. Thank you.

@Aaron there's another question about this - https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63951/if-an-author-does-not-intend-to-make-much-revenue-from-a-book-why-not-make-it-o. My perspective is, publishers do a nontrivial amount of work. If I engage their services, I can't give the book away for free anymore (unless I make it open access, in which case I need to pay the publisher a substantial amount of money). The alternative is to not engage the publisher in the first place, which significantly increases the effort required to publish the book (not to mention distribute it).

@Allure I meant more what you ended with, as in, not engaging with the publisher in the first place. I think that part of your comment implies that you consider any editing, illustrating, or any other duties they perform to be worth it, and indeed that may be the case. Possibly even distribution if you do not want to host an ebook yourself. Thank you again.

@Allure my publisher allows me to give my book away freely online, which I do. I didn’t even have to ask for permission, it was included in the standard contract they offered me. Not all publishers are so enlightened of course, and I assume this has to do with the style and target audience of the book. But still: I think the premises underlying your comment need to be re-examined. Basically if you wrote a textbook and actually didn’t care about the money and wanted to give it away for free, it would not be at all hard to achieve without any ethical problems related to cheating the publisher.

@DanRomik if the publisher allows you to give away your book online, how are they getting revenue from it?

@Allure Many people prefer a nicely bound copy of the book instead of either a purely electronic version or a bunch of loose sheets of paper.

@Allure: Revenue is not the only aim of academic publishers like Cambridge University Press, which is the publisher of Dan's book.

@Allure they get revenue from sales of physical copies of the book. It is reasonably priced and people (and libraries) still buy it. In fact I suspect that for certain types of textbooks, having a free version available online may actually increase hard copy sales, but I don’t have data to back that up. Cambridge University Press might have such data though, and that might be another reason why they are okay with it.

@DanRomik It's very surprising to me if this is standard procedure for CUP. Did they let you upload the final ebook or just a preprint? What was the acquisition process like? What exactly was in the contract? How many copies of the book did they sell? If you're interested in discussing these things let's do it in chat.

Undertake a sincere and useful civic action as penance for your (somewhat self-righteously defended) abuse. Collect all the students at your university. Sign a petition to your state representative (or equivalent for outside the US). State your case with proof rather than subjective statements such as "... it is well-known that". Demonstrate why you believe that publishers hold the equivalent of a virtual monopoly on textbooks, for example because they keep the costs to enter the textbook publishing business at a prohibitive level. Demonstrate where you find their business model has increased the expense of textbooks unfairly, for example because relatively higher portions of the costs for a textbook are going to pay salaries at upper administrative levels. State a case for how this is causing the cost of education to be well beyond the means of today's college students even with loans. Propose and demand appropriate legislative action to fix the problem.
Start a movement that will do something beyond raising a (rather disrespectful) attitude about the problem and then asking for moral support in a discussion forum for what amounts to a penny that will be given in disdain. In other words, as much as I emphasize with the pain any student faces with covering the costs of textbooks, my proposal absolutely will not make right the action of effectively stealing a textbook. If nothing else, it is only a far better penance than sending money to the author.

I just read that textbooks account for about 1% of the cost of education. A Calculus book (e.g. Stewart) now costs about 10 times what mine did in the early 1960s. But so does everything else. Food, housing, transportation, etc. The kindle edition of Stewart is only about 5-6 times what my hardcover was back then. I remember spending about $100 for most of a year's books and was horrified. Now is is said to be about $900. BTW, I still have that book, so it was a good investment.

While the relative cost may be low, it is still a substantial out of pocket expense. Loans and scholarships do not pay for the textbooks. As I stand now on the other side, I am pained to see students struggle to have to buy books that are, as you say, well beyond the costs that should be reasonable. I can buy a smart phone today at nearly the same cost as I paid for my first programmable TI calculator back then. Why can't I buy a textbook today for the same cost as back then? Is the paper today made of gold or platinum?

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law. There is no such law for paper.

One civic act that might actually help is to work toward a system in which authors are compensated separately from book sales, say via tax revenues. This makes the creation of IP truly a social good and a shared responsibility. Books could then be distributed for free or sold for manufacturing cost, or whatever.

Yes. Moore's law. But then, one might expect the same forces in play to decrease cost across all industries. Alternatively, we might agree that paper costs increase, but realize the material's costs in a book are but a fraction of the net costs anyway. I am not in favor of using tax revenues for social rebalancing here. I'd rather see action toward recognition of publishers as monopolies. I see it from the other side as well with the explosion of costs for journal subscriptions for our libraries. We digress.

Publishers don't have a legal monopoly. Anyone can attack their business model. Anyone can offer competition. If their profit margins are outrageous then someone has a lot of incentive to do it. But no one has yet been able to put all the pieces together (from acquisition to distribution) to make it any cheaper for buyers. Some models replace paid employees with volunteers and that works up to a point, but hasn't been shown to scale. Apple's profit margin is 22%. McGraw is 25% (one of the highest). Creating things is hard work from a lot of people.

Note also that the price charged on successful books includes the amortized cost of creating, but not manufacturing, the ones that never sell. It is hard to predict a winner so publishers create a lot of failed books. If the price difference between ebooks and hardcovers is an indication, about half the cost is due to manufacturing. So publishers absorb those costs initially, but include it in price of books that sell. This is the "cost" of choice that we pay. One model is to charge back the development cost of a failed book to the author. A clear disincentive to write.

@Buffy Interesting insights. They've expanded my understanding of the issue. Thank you.

At the moment, piracy is the competitive business model, though there also are some open source or creative commons textbooks, or attempts to create such.

@JeffreyJWeimer I don't think it's reasonable to try to apply the idea of Moore's law to something outside of the sector it applies in.  Even Moore's law isn't holding up well lately; but the context that it was involved a boom in computers and "the digital age".  If anything, you could probably argue that it might increase the relative costs of paper products; because their use is less, and therefore there would be less economic demand.  I'm sure that can probably be offset by better processes due to technology, but "Moore's law for paper" probably happened for the printing press era.

@JeffreyJWeimer wrote "Loans and scholarships do not pay for the textbooks." Is that something new? When I was in college, loans and scholarships were precisely what most students in my area used to cover their textbook costs. In fact, the college bookstore was usually a ghost town until the day those loans and scholarships were disbursed, and then suddenly the college book store was so crowded it was difficult to move. And the books were expensive, but less than the average loan/scholarship amount.

TL;DR:
Ask your librarian how to obtain mandatory textbooks, articles etc. You will be surprised what they can actually do for you.

I doubt you are obliged to buy the book but rather bring the book with you to the course. Am I nitpicking? Probably yes.
There is a significant difference, tough. In the second, highly probable, case you can borrow the book in the university library for a whole semester, month, week, etc. for "free" and the books lended by the library were paid fairly through their budget. Usually, textbooks are published within the university publisher and the library usually keeps enough copies to supply the students. Do go ask your librarian whether they possess the textbook needed and borrow it.
When you are there, do yourself a favour and ask for online access to scientific journals and publisher houses outside your university. As a student you should have some access to such resources as well - your university is paying A LOT for such access. In the end you can find you didn't pirate at all. You should find that - the school shall provide you anything mandatory to the whole study - books, hardware, software, and tools.
I have also heard many times "You should buy this textbook..." but it was in lectures the teacher expects we, students, will use the book not just in one semester and/or we will write notes in there. Many times they were right, sometimes they weren't.

"free" means that you may be obliged to pay annual access to the library, you are paying for the course and the access is a part of the package provided. At least you or your parents pay taxes that contribute to the university budget and the library is an unsignificant part of it.
Actually, you have payed for the book the day you become a student and even notice that.

I don't think you're actually answering OP's question.

@einpoklum When a student borrows a book "for free" at university's libraray the payment for the book was done by the library and funded from government. OP does not need to pay anything extra, no harm is done and no moral dilemmas are created.

This comment is the crux of your answer per-se...

@einpoklum I have embedded the comment in the answer not to rely on an implications: You can borrow it legally => payment was done => no crime committed => no dillemma.

Absolutely don't do it!

I illegally download almost all the books I need for my studies.

Don't be so sure it's illegal. You didn't specify where in the world you live, nor where the books were published, but in some countries it's perfectly legal, and in some other countries it's a gray area, despite opinions to the contrary.

While I'm more than happy to give a middle-finger to the publisher mafia, it does of course mean that the author of the book is not appropriately compensated for their work.

You seem to be assuming there is some damage or loss to the author of someone making a copy of his/her book, for which s/he needs to be compensated. That is the subject of philosophical, political and at times legal debate.

But ... it is well-known that professors do not make substantial amounts of money for each copy sold of their textbook.

No, this is not well known at all; some academics lose money due to publishing books and/or get no money per copy sold. What is, however, generally the case is that Professors are employed full-time and need not worry about their material welfare due to more or less money coming in from book sales.

With that in mind, would it be appropriate to simply send those odd 10 dollars to the author of the book that I am illegally downloading?

So, this would probably not be necessary even from a moral/social/political perspective. But more importantly: It would be quite dangerous, since you would be waving a flag above your head calling to be investigated for copyright violation. Regardless of what such a turn of events will result in, it would mean hassle, stress, expenses and discomfort for you and your family, roommates, friends etc.

If you are a professor who authored a book, how would you feel about this?

I would feel sorry for having put a student of my work at risk of legal action, fine or jail time; and I would also feel sorry for having taken 10 dollars from a likely much less well-off person who probably needs the money more than I do.
... instead, do something else:
You know, "pay it forward":

If you know of a cause the author supports - consider donating to it.
If you're writing some academic material or software - consider making it freely-downloadable, officially.
If you're just an undergrad - perhaps do some kind of volunteer work, like helping high-school students who are having trouble keeping up, with some tutoring. Many universities, student unions and out-of-academic social structures have this kind of volunteer programs, I'm sure you can find one.

this would not be "penance" for your download. On the contrary, it would strengthen the same principle you applied in downloading the book in the first place, which is that knowledge, research, insight should be shared more freely, and that the more-established should help the less-established (e.g. in terms of knowledge).

"Don't be so sure it's illegal." Pretty confident that worldwide things are inclining towards downloading ebooks without paying being illegal, see e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86414/is-it-legal-to-use-sci-hub-in-germany?, which doesn't deal with this exact question but is quite close.

@Allure: Even the top answer to the question you linked to says "There does not seem to be one court case where one was prosecuted for just downloading such material.", and that some legal scholars (and zero court decision) consider it as "probably illegal (as opposed to: "illegal"). And that's in a country of your choice.

That answer is outdated, obviously. It was written in Mach 2017. See my answer, which quoted an April 2017  court case.

Also the ECJ rules for the entire EU, so it's more than just one country.

This is being carried on in the other question, but in brief if anyone's only reading this: the law rules on all copyrighted material, not just films; it also makes no distinction about whether the motivation for piracy is for profit or not.

What? It clearly establishes limits "up to 15%" and "up to 75%", which makes downloading the book illegal. I don't understand what you're saying anymore. I'm just going to ask this on Law.SE and leave it at that.

I link you the Law.SE question and leave it at that. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/33639/is-it-illegal-to-pirate-an-e-book-in-the-eu "Section 60c permits copying only up to 75% of a work for personal research, with some exceptions for smaller works that presumably do not apply to monographs, so it would not permit the download you describe if the download would otherwise be forbidden." I don't have anything more to say to you - I consider the case that it is illegal well established, and you're just grasping at straws.

@Allure: I've removed my comments now that you've linked to the Law.SE question. I think you've phrased it in a loaded way though. Also, your conclusion from the discussion in that question is faulty. That is, the answers there do not establish that downloading a book from SciHub is illegal in Germany; at most, they suggest it is possibly illegal, or likely illegal.

@Allure That does sound like more of a problem for the person providing the copies than it is for someone receiving such a copy, and my instinct would be that the downloader would not be at fault but only the uploader, as has often been the case in law (uploaders have been prosecuted before and had heavy penalties). But I do not know enough about the EU nor that specific case you guys are discussing, so I cannot insist on this and only suggest that the law.SE people have made a minor mistake in confusing downloading with uploading.

@Allure Ok, I just read into that a bit more as quickly as I could. Again, it appears that people are suggesting that downloading the files is illegal but then are failing to make the connection as to how or why that text is interpreted that way. They seem to be making the assumption that downloading the file is making a copy, and I think that is not so legally. Logically it's not the case; logically the download is the same as saying "please make a copy and give it to me," and that is different than actually making a copy. Whether asking for a copy is illegal in EU... dunno.

@Aaron: This is getting very far from my answer, which did not regard Germany at all.

Sorry. If the "take to chat" link pops up for anyone, hit it. In the meantime, I've taken it to that law.SE answer. Sorry if I sound harsh Allure; not trying to be. It might well be possible that the download is illegal in the EU now, but that text by itself does not necessarily imply so, despite the answer provided at law.SE (so I've commented there). Hopefully you get a better answer there from someone willing to go into all these nuances.

It sounds like you would be sending the money anonymously, presumably cash in the mail, and that raises another point: receiving anonymous mail can make people nervous.
My instinctual guess on receiving an anonymous envelope would be that it's going to be something unpleasant: a scam, or hate mail, or sexual harassment, or crazy ranting, or (in this day and age) maybe anthrax.  "Money from a reader who pirated my book" is not going to make the top 10.  There's a fair chance that I might destroy it without opening it.
At the very least, for many people, it'll cause them more than $10 worth of anxiety.  If your goal is to do something nice for the author, this seems likely to achieve the opposite.

I assume the envelope will come with a nice (anonymous) thank-you letter that explains what the money is for.

@FedericoPoloni: Sure.  My point is that the anxiety comes before the envelope is opened.  Putting a nice letter inside the envelope doesn't help with that.

It is not appropriate.
Apart from anything else you are putting the Professor in a difficult position. They have a contract with their publisher to distribute the books for a share of the proceeds, in bypassing this arrangement you are effectively making the professor complicit and potentially putting them in breech of contract.
It is also worth mentioning at this point that academic and technical books are expensive to buy because they ere expensive to publish, requiring a lot of specialist editorial oversight and usually fairly sophisticated formatting and tend to sell in relatively small volumes. If the author wanted to put the text up on a website or otherwise self-publish for a lower price they had the option to do so.
Equally ignoring known breeches of copyright can be seen as tacit permission so you may be harming their copyright claim by admitting to piracy and effectively putting them in a position of either condoning piracy of their own work or reporting you neither or which they will particularly want to do.
You could argue that these are trivial concerns and accepting £10 dollars isn't going to cause them any real harm but you are also questioning their integrity by offering them what could well be considered a bribe to ignore copyright infringement, something which tends to be taken very seriously in academic circles.
There are also potential ethical and professional concerns for professors receiving money from students for legally dubious activities.
So quite apart form the legal moral issues associated with the original piracy giving the author money under the counter is then forcing them to make an ethical judgement and probably causing them much more hassle than it is worth.
They would also be very foolish to accept as you are putting them in a position where you could cause them serious harm by revealing the transaction. For example if you told the university authorities that a professor had been taking money to ignore copyright infringement it would at the very least be very embarrassing for them, probably a lot more so than it would be for you. I'm not suggesting that you intend to do anything of the kind but it creates a situation where you could.
Equally while academics may be prepared to turn a blind eye to suspected pirating textbooks by students, offering them money more or less forces them to take a position on the subject.

As the author of a book that has sold quite well, but is no doubt also pirated a fair bit, I would say that receiving a small sum like this in the post would create an ethical dilemma far exceeding the actual value.
(a) should I declare it to the taxman?
(b) should I declare it to my publisher? After all, I now know that you have stolen $50 from them and they might want to take action.
(c) should I inform the police? After all, I have become aware of a crime.
Quite apart from that, converting $10 into my local currency isn't worth the hassle or the bank commission.
Incidentally, don't underestimate the contribution of the publisher to the total value of a technical book. They have delivered a far more useful product than I could have achieved on my own, both in terms of the textual content but also in terms of the value added by effective presentation.

If you use Paypal, you can receive as little as $1 in pretty much any currency and still get at least a half of the sum on your account after the commission. (a), (b) and (c) would still apply though.

Understand that you are not negotiating a price with the author, you are giving them an arbitrary amount of money which doesn't entitle you to legally use the books you've downloaded. What you do is essentially a gift and I suggest you label and treat it as such. Giving a gift makes it clear there's no obligations for the receiver for accepting it (like granting you a license to use the pirated book) which they wouldn't be able to fulfill. Small gifts also have no impact on taxes (AFAIK in US gifts are only taxed when they exceed $15K/year), so there's no good reason to refuse them. Especially if you tell the author that you'd like to thank them from the great book they have written, without specifying how you obtained the book.
If you phrase your money transfer as "Here's $10 for your book which I got from a site so-and-so", then strictly speaking, the author will not be able to accept your money. You clearly sound like you're paying for a service (granting you the rights to use the book), which the author will most probably not be able to provide because that would be forbidden by their contract with the publisher. The only reasonable thing the author can do is to refuse your payment.

Saying something is a gift isn't enough to make it a gift. If I stopped paying my gardener or cleaner but made occasional gifts instead, the taxman wouldn't be sympathetic.

If you mow your lawn yourself, you absolutely can gift money to your gardener without any worries. What the OP does is exactly a gift: they don't expect the other party to do anything for the money they're sending.

It is clearly a payment in recognition of the work done by the recipient, rather like a tip given to a hairdresser as thanks for a job well done. If it were common practice for professors to earn significant income this way, I'm sure the taxman would treat it as income.

@MichaelKay Actually, a tip to the hairdresser is much more likely to be subject to tax than money sent to a professor in recognition of their book. As long as the hairdresser does your hair, you have a business relationship with them. This is not the case of a professor who wrote a book you like, unless the said professor also tutors you or sells you their books directly.

You clearly don't' understand even the basic premise of the situation if you think they stole the book. They're not denying anyone access, it's not stealing. And that's not just pedantry (essential in question of morality, ethics, and law) but also a very important element of the analysis. Copyright is not a natural right but is a right granted by the demos, a right which has been wildly perverted from it's original form; but is nonetheless the key element in the analysis from the legal side. You might as well have answered a question about a cake by saying "don't make it with PVA".

@pbhj Point taken, though I can assure you I understand the situation pretty well.

You got a textbook illegally, without paying, but you are thinking about giving some money to the author. That puts you ahead of many people.
The implementation is not too good. If you send $10 to the author, that is income to the author, which needs to be declared if the author wants to stay legal himself.
I would recommend that you figure out how much the book was worth to you, and donate that amount of money to a charity.

Sorry, that is just a "feel good" act that doesn't address the problem in any way. Of course it is good to donate to charity in any case, but not just to make yourself feel better for a wrong you did.

@Buffy: Nirvana fallacy. Illegally copying books and then donating money to a charity is not as good as paying for the books, but better than illegally copying books and not donating money to a charity.

Hmmm. So, I take an IPad from the Apple store without paying. Then donating half its value to my favorite charity makes it ok? Or taking a 50 cent candy bar from my corner store and then dropping a quarter into the Sunday collection plate. Fine? Is there a fallacy of "pretend ethical behavior", I wonder? FWIW, I think my Toyota was greatly overpriced and the dealer has some policies I don't like. Hmmm.

@Buffy gnasher didn’t say it “makes it okay”, just that it’s better than OP’s proposed action. Sounds correct to me, and closer to being an answer to OP’s actual question than what you wrote (which is also mostly correct). And to answer your question, donating half the value of the stolen iPad to charity doesn’t make it okay, but it’s preferable to just stealing an iPad. How does this rhetorical question advance the discussion exactly? Everything you’ve written here only addresses the question “is it okay to illegally download books?” rather than OP’s actual (and different) question.

@DanRomik, no, you are not correct. Everything I've written here is that it is unethical to unilaterally break a social contract, substituting your own terms, taking something that isn't yours and benefitting from it without compensating the producers (both authors and publishers) who have expended resources in its creation. It is an insult to creators. I haven't discussed legality. Others here seem to be trying, like the OP, to find a way to make it sort of ok, when there is an obvious, clean, and simple solution. Purchase a legal copy. Other "solutions" are just self delusion.

@Buffy thanks, that last comment clarifies your position a lot.

@Buffy It may improve your answer to edit in some form of your last comment to Dan.

@Mr.Mindor, thanks. I guess I need to do something like that.

It was worth a handshake, a hug and heart-felt gratitude.

@Buffy I have seen several instances of this "violating a social contract" thing come up (at least one of them probably from your answer), but there is a problem with that: OP has no such contract with the publisher or with the author. OP has violated no contract. I am not suggesting that makes it ethically ok (at best it's just rude, at worst it is insulting and rude and not compensating others for their work as you say), but it is doubtful that any contract has been broken.

@Aaron, I was speaking of the implied social contract that we treat one another openly and fairly. Not a formal signed contract.

@Buffy I have heard people speak of such before, but I think it is an error to call it a contract. Whether tangible, metaphorical, or otherwise, to call it a contract implies a deal was struck. I have no deal with anyone and refuse to acknowledge any such deal or agreement. I'm not a jerk because I'm not a jerk, and I do what is good because it is good, not because of any social obligation I have to anyone since I have no such social obligation. It might seem like a nit, but I think the distinction is important as contract implies a lot. I'm under no contract of any sort, implied or otherwise.

@Aaron. Then neither is anyone else. Wild West Rules.

@gnasher729 Good suggestion. The OP wants to measure the harm they morally consider to have produced, and compensate it. If the moral concern is "authors may not earn enough money to make a living and write more such books", the appropriate charity would be one which helps authors with insufficient means. Alternatively, a charity like the Internet Archive or a local library, which promotes reading and therefore the expansion of the market for authors.

If someone illegally took your intellectual property and decided for themselves how much they should pay for it, and on what terms, would you be happy with that?  I suspect not,  in which case you probably shouldn't do it to other people.  The golden rule ("do unto others") is a good basic start for academic ethical issues, and it applies to the publisher as much as to the professor.
Edited to add.  If I were the author, I would not want to be sent money for my book, other than via the publisher to whom I have presumably already transferred the copyright in return for payment, as accepting it would be a violation of the "golden rule".

You cannot "take" someone's "intellectual property". https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html

@nemo there is no such think as "proof by Stallman".  That is one persons opinion, not a fact.

Then you might want to improve your answer by using a less charged language.

@Nemo there is nothing "charged" about the language used in my answer (I could have used "stole" rather than "took").  Stallman might think you can't take someones IP, but that doesn't make it true.  Ask musican who's work has been plagiarised.

As many people have already mentioned, you want to absolve your guilt of pirating a thing by sending a meager amount of money (that you can afford) to its creator.
I would say, don't do it. Don't send money to the creator.
The legal/ethical concerns have been addressed in other answers/comments. I download pirated books too. They are very costly and I can't afford them as yet. So, if I like a book & it really helps me in my project/work, I leave a detailed review
of the book on Google, Amazon et al. I also mention it to my friends in my social circle.
Basically, I take up the role of an advertiser for the book/author. My review/recommendation can attract more people to this book & some of them, more ethically inclined then me, will choose to buy this book from the publisher.
Piracy is a very complicated topic. One way I try to uncomplicate it is by advertising it (the thing that I pirate) to more people & leaving detailed review & rating on the internet. There are no legal/ethical hassles to you or the creator with this approach.

Yeas and no. It comes to the typical "for exposure" argument. No: Of course you can give them exposure, but if this only means more pirated copies, this is no adequate payment. Yes: OP seems to have pirated the book and does not want to pay the full price, so a review is better than nothing at all. but he should not feel like he paid it back by leaving the review.

There is a financial aspect you should also consider: these professors will receive unexpected money they need to somehow

declare or not
explain the provenance of, if someone (tax office, financial fraud groups, etc.) asks them

Both cases are probably over the top for 10 USD (and you will likely be only one to send them the money) but can be stressful to them.
Send the money to a charity instead.

By this logic one should never tip in a restaurant. The poor servant will have so much trouble handling this unexpected money.

@DmitryGrigoryev: tip money is cash (at least where I leave). A wire transfer is completely traceable. But of course, as I mentioned, 10 USD is not worth the worry - I added the answer for completeness. (the condescending tone of your comment is not useful)

I think a reasonable answer would be to create an anonymous email account and ask those authors this question. That said, I wouldn't worry about any full (tenured) professors' going hungry, nor would I worry about the publishers, who have an obscene profit motive with hugely inflated costs (and a very wasteful business model). There is a reason why there is huge consolidation in publishing: it is a capital intensive, highly profitable business. If you've got money burning a hole in your pocket and a desire to make a contribution, then find some way of puting that money toward the book purchases of someone less able to afford them.

The only answer the author can give without getting themselves on legal trouble is to tell you to abide to the law and legally purchase a copy of the book. Otherwise, they would be advising you to break the law stole from their partner (the publisher). In fact, jeffmcneill's reasonable answer seems a great scheme to fish for material to blackmail authors.

This is in fact wrong. There are many responses to the question which do not "advise" anyone to break a law. The fact someone is claiming they have done something illegal in no way requires that a person simply has to parrot back the simplistic formulation of "legally purchase a copy of the book". Examples: Donate to charity, buy a book for another student, etc. Obviously an author in a contract with a publisher is constrained on how they can distribute their works, but that does not mean they have their ability to speak freely stripped from them.

If the profit margins were truly unreasonable, then there would be a good business model for a new publisher to under-cut the competition by publishing text books at a significantly lower price.  So either the free market is failing on this one, or the margins are not that unreasonable.

@DikranMarsupial your either/or statement seems correct, but it’s worth pointing out that, first, the free market often fails to be efficient (among other reasons, because it is less “free” than we imagine), and second, established academic publishers enjoy all sorts of advantages over less established ones that could well allow them to maintain much higher profit margins and make it difficult for the new publishers to undercut them. For example, authors might prefer to publish with very well-known publishers because of the high credibility and prestige that comes with doing that.

"free markets" are definitely not free and there are many, many confounding factors that go into academic textbook pricing. For one, the person who selects the textbook (professor/lecturer) is not the end-buyer (student or parent), so there is very low price sensitivity. In terms of the industry, book publishing is highly profitable, capital-intensive, and a "hit-driven" business, which means the more titles and back-list, the greater profitability. This drives industry consolidation which means less choice. There are many other factors as well.

@Dan Romik these days it isn't difficult to publish teckbooks via e.g. Lulu or LIghtningsource.  I suspect the reason they don't is lack of sales due to lack of advertising/promotion.  But that is one of the things commercial publishers provide.  If a publisher has high prestige, that is what part of what we are paying for.  Having said which I have been working on a programming textbook for my students for years, which I intended to release free as an e-book and on paper at essentially cost as I know students have a limited budget.

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text:
Difficulty getting published in top tier journals?
How much harder is it to get published in a top-tier journal (ACM, IEEE) compared to a small second-rate conference?
Is it an unrealistic goal to try to publish my 1st paper in the #1 journal in the field?
Is it likely such a journal will accept my paper if I am proposing a hybrid method that combines methods used by other papers? Or do I need something completely new and ground-breaking?
Does the fact that the 1st author will be a student (undergraduate) will reduce my chances?

The main obstacles are that the paper must be: good and interesting research, on-topic and appropriate to the venue, well-written, and of the particular type and flavor that the venue reviewers will be interested in and welcome, with contributions to the field that are clearly argued. It's not really easy for anyone, and everyone gets rejections a non-trivial amount of the time. But if you are dedicated, work hard, and do good work, the result will often be of value regardless of how any one review cycle ends up, and I think you'll learn more for having had an ambitious goal.

top-tier journal...compared to a small second-rate conference — What a strange comparison.  Why not top-tier journal versus second-tier journal, or top-tier conference versus second-tier conference?

@JeffE because I have the (maybe wrong?) impression that publishing in a conference is easier... Any input on the question will be really appreciated! You never know, maybe a few words will end up changing my life!

Oh, yes this is a misapprehension. In Computer Science there is a conference culture, where conferences are the premier venue and journals occupy a very different "cultural space" (generally less important, but they have their special uses). Most fields are journal-centric (most of the social sciences, humanities, many of the natural sciences, etc), which encourages this misunderstanding, but in Computer Science things just don't work the same way. Part of the practical difficulty in research is understanding the systems and culture you are working in, which is very hard when you are new.

I'll only also note that this varies within sub-fields, and gets pretty complicated in fields like Human Computer Interaction where security specialists might often publish in law journals, technical contributions might be best for certain specific conferences, and "broader significance and impact on the field" become the major criteria with some top conferences (and in many areas no one cares at all about journals, while some still publish in them occasionally depending on their particular agenda). You ultimately have to get to know your field and its unique set of norms.

@BrianDHall Thanks a lot! Seems like I have many thing to learn...

I've co-authored a paper on a top-journal. The first author was a PhD student. The paper was so strong that it was even on the cover page of the journal.
That was the first paper for both the first author and myself.
But ...

The paper was authorised very closely with some experts in the field. Those experts knew exactly what to write, what to analyze and what not to do. It's a domain knowledge that a student wouldn't possibly have. They knew how to conduct a good research project.
We wouldn't been able to publish to the journal without the experts.
The study was indeed interesting, and attempted to solve some very practical problems. Thus, it was not something you read and throw away. It would cause impacts to the field.
We had softwares, web sites, cool graphics to backup the paper.
There was nothing special in the statistics and methods. Absolutely nothing new. But how it was analyzed was simple to follow and solid. Again, the experts knew exactly how and what to do.

You have better chance if your study attempts to solve important questions. Talk to a professor if you need advice.
Unfortunately I don't see you have much chance if you don't have anything truly interesting.

Very helpful! So your point is how important a good presentation of the information is! Maybe if I read many-many papers from the journal I can understand what they are looking for?

@NET_GUY Maybe. But you might need help from someone who has published onto those top-journals. Experience is important.

Is having a word class professor from a somewhat different field enough? Or I need someone from the exact same field?

@NET_GUY You need someone for the field. Someone who has published on a top-journal and understand the field.

How much harder is it to get published in a top-tier journal (ACM, IEEE) compared to a small second-rate conference?
Depends on the journal and conference.  For example, ACM SIGCOMM/MOBICOM will be much harder to get in than a lot of the top journals in IEEE/ACM.  By the way, a lot of Editor in Chief writes a 'summary' of how their journal has gone for a given year.  He/she usually gives you the acceptance ratio and you'll find that it is usually higher than conferences.
Is it an unrealistic goal to try to publish my 1st paper in the #1 journal in the field?
Perhaps, but this very much depends on the area and who you have on your team.  Like @SmallChess said, you need experienced co-authors.  They will help you  pose the right problem, advise you on the methodology that is considered the norm in community and presentation.
Usually, a junior researcher will not tackle a significant problem.  This is due to the lack of knowledge and also he/she doesn't have many tools to mount a good attack on a significant problem.  Consequently, his/her contribution will be small and thus makes it harder to publish in top places.  Having said that, there are 'junior researchers' who are the top of their field.  Then they are no different to a seasoned researcher.
Is it likely such a journal will accept my paper if I am proposing a hybrid method that combines methods used by other papers? Or do I need something completely new and ground-breaking?
Maybe yes or no.  Does it yield a surprising result?  It's about contributions.  If your contributions are not significant, then maybe no.  So think about how significant your contributions are before trying.
Does the fact that the 1st author will be a student (undergraduate) will reduce my chances?
People always assume the first author is a student.  So they look at the second, or third author. :)

I agree everything in particular the last point. Usually it's the last author that matters.

To add, if an author is famous, I expect a certain 'standard'.  If the paper comes off as bad, then his/her reputation takes a hit.

Write your paper.
After it is done, seek out a leader or luminary in the
field to be a co-author
Submit or have your "co-author" submit the paper
????
You are now published in a top-tier journal!

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text:
How much work is preparing a MOOC-ish course
I have been offered the chance  to prepare and deliver 4 undergraduate courses. There are to be forty 15 minute videos per course all to be written and presented by me.  It seems they will in the first instance use the video for their current undergraduates but may then  roll them out as part of some future MOOC-ish course.
My question is, does anyone with experience of producing this sort of material have any suggestions for how much work it is likely to be? I know how much work preparing a normal lecture course is of course but I don't have a good feeling for how much more work making the video lectures is. Ultimately the university wants me to say how much money I would accept to make the courses.
This related question from 2013 is sadly without any concrete answers but maybe there is more information available these day?

This video about online learning quotes a figure saying that it takes up to 20 times as long to produce a MOOC as it does a normal course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmi3NK39g3c

Please avoid acronyms, or at least spell them out the first time.

I have a couple of strong opinions on this:

Just because many MOOCs are built around video does not make them a good idea. See this article by Lorena Barba for one example. It is hard to use recorded material well, as I've found from my own experience.
Preparing high quality videos is a job for an expert. If you don't know enough about producing the material to estimate how long it will take, the answer is too long.

I have worked on MOOC-like courses in the past and my experience is that they're considerably more time and resource intensive than standard in-person courses. I also believe that the idea that you'll save time through re-use is generally wrong, if you want good engagement with students. I think there is a lot you can learn about pedagogy, presentation and your field by working on and collaborating with a MOOC, but you've got to put in lots of time - my estimate is that setting up a MOOC style course is more than twice the effort of a standard course, and if you're recording video to a decent standard I'd raise that multiplier considerably.

Thank you for the link to Lorena Bara's article - it, and the comments accompanying it were hugely helpful.

How much time it takes depends heavily on how much production support you have.  I found that, including editing time, it took between one and two hours to record each 10 minute video for a course.  If you're recording that many videos, you'll want to budget in (or make sure the university is providing) hiring someone to handle the production side of it, since that will save you a considerable amount of time.
But even so, it takes many times as long to record a video as it does to prepare the corresponding lecture.

Thank you. The university has already done a number  of these so  I am assuming they will provide technical support.

Just a caution: that level of technical support will most likely be pretty far from the level of a Hollywood A-studio, or B, or, ... so do NOT depend on them for sense. Especially not pedagogical sense. These days, the video-producing sub-units of unis are often economically "independent", which means primarily that they get no help from the uni, so have to make a dollar... and, for your interests, will be cutting corners at every possible moment. Against the interests of both you and your students. Unfortunately.

I haven't run a MOOC, so I cannot comment on how much effort that is. However,having recorded many lectures at the Texas A&M television studio that are available on youtube (see http://www.math.colostate.edu/~bangerth/videos.html) I can comment on the effort related to recording:
First, it's an enormous effort if you intend to record and edit videos. Given that you're the expert on the subject, it's likely that editing would fall onto you, and you will have to estimate 2-3 times the length of the videos just for editing -- in your case, that would be 2-3 weeks.
The alternative is to just have a single cut for each video. That's the way I went. Most of the time it goes well, and occasionally you just have to start again from the top. Not all that big a deal -- if you stumble or something goes wrong, you just have to make it into a joke and move on, all while on camera.
Second, if you can't edit, you have to get it right. That means that by and large your slides have to be meticulous, and you need to know exactly what you want to say. My estimate is that it takes you 4-6 times the length of the lecture to get to the point where everything is in place, both on the slides and in your head. So, preparing 40 hours of lectures will take you 4-6 weeks of preparation. This is much more than a regular course because for a regular course you can fill in gaps from your background knowledge as you stand on the whiteboard, and you can read off the faces of your students whether you need to go into more detail or not. No such luxury when in front of a camera -- it has to be complete, and at the right level, on first take.
Third, there is of course also the time you actually stand in the studio. I've found that I record for maybe 3 hours a day, but certainly no more -- it's tiring to talk to yourself for longer. So I got 3, sometimes 4 lectures (at 30-45 minutes each) in per day, at most. But there's breaks between recording, time to set up, time to break everything down again, so you may spend 50% more time in the studio than just the time to record. A total of 1.5 weeks in your case.
All in all, it's a lot of work to record a semester's worth of material in the studio, even if (as in my case) you have fantastic studio staff doing all of the recording and production work.

Thank you. This is exactly the sort of practical information I need.

In addition to the other useful answers and comments, I must interject that, ... in addition to the point that creation of such stuff will take many times more than is obvious ... there seems to be a tendency of some part of the "university entity" that attempts to exploit the naivete or idealism of (especially young) faculty to create such things. For example, at the point that I realized that I might want to have some control over a similar "intellectual property" that I was solicited to create (on the basis of a popular "live" course I'd given), and inquired about the relevant arrangements, the university honchos simply stopped responding to email. (Wasn't a tragedy, because I was getting tired of the gig in some regards...)
That is, beware of the situation that you accept a modest, one-time payment for creation of courseware that can be used indefinitely. (All the worse if you agree to an obligation of responding to email ... gratis.) Giving up your IP rights to such a thing is at best injudicious... all the worse if you are a temporary hire, terminated after getting the thing going, with modest compensation, while the "univ" can play your video in perpetuity (whether or not the set-up is good for their students).
So: beware. But, still, if you have enthusiasm for doing the thing, and are not too-badly disserving yourself, it would be educational, possibly usefully for your future endeavors. But it'll take all your time, yes.

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