Is Kazaa distribution part of the answer? (was: Python and p2p)

[Carlos Ribeiro]

Cameron,

Being from Brazil, I understand Pedro's plight. Now I have most of my books 
shipped from Amazon, or from 'Submarino', a brazilian e-bookstore that does 
have a good selection of titles; but it was not always like that.

When I was a student - from high school to college - it was not uncommon for 
we to photocopy chapters, or even entire books, for one (or both) of two 
reasons: (1) books were, and still are, *way too* expensive in third world 
countries, and (2) at that time, sometimes you just couldn't find the book to 
buy, even if you had the money. The 'net almost eliminated the second issue, 
but there are lots of poor students that can't afford to buy books (specially 
imported ones, as it's the case most of the time with computer programming).

[For you to understand how bad the situation is, it is not uncommon for the 
teachers themselves to lend a book for photocopying; the ones who should be 
educating to stop piracy are forced to encourage it.]

As for the libraries, there are a few good public libraries, but most of them 
have problems keeping up-to-date with the latest books; and in some cases, 
the number of copies available is very small, while in others, people simply 
disappear with books.

All that said, it is pretty much as Pedro Alvarez stated - an unfortunate but  
realistic fact of life. Now, following for Geoff's suggestion, why not put 
copies of the 'free' Python books available on a P2P network? It would help 
to create a bigger 'mindshare' for Python - people would find material using 
the tool of their choice, and would be able to compare the quality of the 
material, which is really excellent (as Python itself).


Carlos Ribeiro
cribeiro at mail.inet.com.br