Part of the The Cost of Revenge
Written by Chadrick Kelly. Posted on July 28th 2008
If I’m completely missing the point of unequivocally separating news and opinion, Randall Stross missed the bus altogether in his article “First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry”. The title itself almost reeks of arbitrary contempt.
College students are frugal people. Between work and school it’s not easy trying to make a living while attending and studying for classes. Especially when you’re paying $200 for a book that’s going to be outdated the very next semester. Comparatively between work and school, students are already short on time, energy and patience when it comes to managing financial resources; competing with studying and working, competing with teachers and employers - this group of people have four years of hell with the hopes of graduating with a degree and making a life for themselves.
You almost want to sympathize with students; or you can just as easily tilt the argument beyond fair limits and call it “revenge” when some students take it into their own hands to share textbooks.
Stross completely takes the subject and stretches the argument beyond acceptable barriers, and reduces an entire crisis down to an unnecessarily harsh simplification. When you consider the only tangible quotes in the NY Times article comes from publishers, and not a single active quote comes from either students or Peter Sunde (owner of ThePirateBay.org - the medium students are using to distribute these files), it’s hard to take this article even slightly serious.
Journalistic integrity or not, I’ve got to disagree with everything in that article - I just need that closure only revenge can give you.
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