removing DRM- is this legal?

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Average of 10-12 hours of overtime for teachers? That means 10-11.5 hour workdays. This can happen on occasion (and has to be granted by an overseeing organization if it's for a longer time), but it's certainly not unpaid. That's illegal in the Netherlands. If a company is structurally causing employees to work 10+ hours extra a week without paying extra (excep for the special high level positions as mentioned), they'll be in trouble at some point.

I'm not sure what the situation is like in the UK, which is where that data is from. From what I've seen, from within Canada, many schools do no provide adequate planning and assessment resources. Teachers are expected to make up the difference, which is where a lot of that unpaid overtime comes from. To make life even more fun, teachers often have to purchase classroom resources out of pocket. That includes books and consumables for student use. Here is an article relating to those expenses in the U.S.:

http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/...materials.aspx

I've seen figures more than double that within Canada. I'll try to dig up the reference later.

Legal? I was told by one government official that teachers don't have fixed hours of employment (even if the contracts stipulate such) because things like planning are not considered part of the job. That is true even if the teacher is told to do the planning and told how the planning must be done. Now it is entirely probable that they feeding misinformation, but how many workers have the time or the money to pursue such matters. How many workers can afford to risk their job to fight for their legal rights?

[Katsunami]

Planning (and making) lessons is not part of the job?
Having to pay for resources using your own money?
Working 10 hours extra a week without payment?

No wonder nobody wants to be a teacher anymore.

In the Netherlands, as a teacher you eventually earn less than you could have earned when working for a company, but there are some advantages, such as more holidays, higher starter salaries (but a lower cap), much more schooling options than you'd have in most companies, and last but not least, *way* more freedom as you have in most companies.

(I've been a teacher for a short while, so it could have changed, nowadays.)

[NickyWithNook]

My kids' teachers have to either get us as parents to donate supplies (like paper, pencils, crayons, chalk - EVERYTHING) or they have to buy the supplies themselves. In an affluent school district like mine, parents donate what is needed, but I bet I spend over $100 on stuff for schools every year, and not all parents have the money to do that. Teachers don't make a lot as it is and I can't imagine why they're expected to pay for this stuff. When my parents were teaching (they've been retired for a long time) classroom supplies were provided by the school. Teachers take pay cuts in a lot of districts because the schools lack money, and they also have more work-related expenses than they used to.

[Katsunami]

Heh. Over here in the Netherlands, we see news headings like this, right below one another on the news websites:

"Government cutting X million from schools."
"Government to change public transport for students from gift to loan, saving Y millions."
"Department of Foreign Affairs grants (X + Y) * 2 millions to <insert country with known highly corrupt government here>."

It makes me want to do some bad things to people who make those kinds of decisions.

To get back to the topic of DRM and/or stealing: yes, with regard to those decisions, I feel like the government is "stealing" our education by cutting those funds, and giving them away to countries whose governments' officials will just pocket all or most of the money for themselves. (Public Transport passes are important for students here, because most cannot live close enough to their college/university, because there isn't enough housing available in most cities. Room prices are already up to €400 a month for a 4mx4m room in some cities. That's 75% of the rent of a decent apartment in some smaller cities.)

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Planning (and making) lessons is not part of the job?
Having to pay for resources using your own money?
Working 10 hours extra a week without payment?

As far as I can tell, things vary a lot between schools. For example, some time is provided for planning and assessment. It is sufficient for schools where students are performing near grade level and when the school has resources that reflect the ability of their students. The thing is, that breaks down when schools have multilevel classrooms or classrooms where students are performing well below grade level. Those are the cases where teachers have to create multiple plans based upon small groupings, and develop or acquire their own resources. That is time consuming and the teachers are expected to do the extra work without extra compensation.

In the Netherlands, as a teacher you eventually earn less than you could have earned when working for a company, but there are some advantages, such as more holidays, higher starter salaries (but a lower cap), much more schooling options than you'd have in most companies, and last but not least, *way* more freedom as you have in most companies.

Those benefits hold true in Canada, though there are some very high costs associated with teaching if you end up teaching in the wrong school. With schools being pressured to integrate students of all abilities into age-grouped classrooms, that situation is quite common. With schools being told to do more with stagnating budgets, while simultaneously being pressured to follow high technology fads, that situation is quite common. (To give you an example: my last school told me to buy chapter books and novels for students out of my own pocket, while spending thousands of dollars on interactive whiteboards that students were not supposed to touch.)

So yeah, the whole system is a bit wonky.

[NickyWithNook]

Oh yeah. That reminds me. Take "chalk" off my list of classroom supplies and add "whiteboard markers."

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

The law basically says you can't obtain it from within the country (since it is illegal to distribute within the country) and you can't import it from outside of the country. That pretty much means that the software is illegal to possess, it is simply a matter of who is going to be charged.

No, it doesn't follow possession is therefore illegal.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Heh. Over here in the Netherlands, we see news headings like this, right below one another on the news websites:

"Government cutting X million from schools."

Oddly enough, today the US got the news that for the first time ever, per-student school spending has gone down. For all the griping you hear (and localized reductions) the 30-year trend in the US has been to keep on throwing ever more money (overall) at the educational establishment even though ever-decreasing fractions have been filtering down to the teachers and students.

From NBCNEWS.com:
http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2013/...time-ever?lite

Part of the problem is the ever-increasing costs of textbooks.
Nobody has ever managed to break *their* DRM.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Oddly enough, today the US got the news that for the first time ever, per-student school spending has gone down.

Judging from the curve on the graph, I'm guessing that the funding per student has been going down since at least 2009. Keep in mind that the data isn't adjusted for inflation. Using the numbers on the graph, education funding rose by about 25% between 1992 and 2001, but only 10% between 2001 and 2011. The guess of declining funding since 2009 is based upon the curve of the graph since numbers aren't provided.

Part of the problem is the ever-increasing costs of textbooks.
Nobody has ever managed to break *their* DRM.

One way to control those costs are to avoid changing the curricula and changing teaching fads every few years.

[booklover6]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

About the only conjecture is that vendors can use the data collected to surmise which books have had DRM removed. We know that these companies collect data about what and how we read. It is something that people can easily verify for themselves. At least some of that data is used for marketing purposes. Again, it is something that you can easily verify for yourself by looking at marketing materials from the vendors. None of that is conjecture. All of that is fact. You would be a fool to believe otherwise. What we don't know is the depth of the data collection and data usage. It may be a case of what we see is what is happening, or it may go much deeper. We simply don't know because the process is opaque. The possibility does exist though.

That makes me glad that I rarely, if ever, connect my ereaders to wifi. I really don't want to share my data.

[cromag]

Originally Posted by booklover6

That makes me glad that I rarely, if ever, connect my ereaders to wifi. I really don't want to share my data.

And, for the same reason, I convert so I can read on an ereader that doesn't even have wi-fi.

[Howlingwolf]

Originally Posted by ApK

This may be part if the confusion. You did not read the post correctly. It had nothing to do with DRM. It was a slur against the argument that "breaking the law is OK as long as you don't get caught.".

(Which is also basically what I was objecting to, BTW.)

Precisely.

Although I must admit it wasn't actually intended as a slur or an insult as such. More of an observation.

In the many years I spent as a serving police officer in a large costal town, I arrested dozens upon dozens of petty thieves and in almost every single case the first words out of their mouth were "I'm sorry" or some variation thereof.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Howlingwolf

...In the many years I spent as a serving police officer in a large costal town, I arrested dozens upon dozens of petty thieves and in almost every single case the first words out of their mouth were "I'm sorry" or some variation thereof.

But they are sorry...for getting caught.