This is probably a legal matter but it also affects English Teachers.
The Series, Jump. A series of grammar exercises with delightful characters and puzzles and questions that were entertaining and not too difficult.
If you know the series and you love it.
After using it for a number of years they just pulled the plug. Bookman books, my supplier who also I guess helped publish it told me they just decided to withdraw it despite the fact that there was a very strong demand for it but the requests just fell on deaf ears. They tried suggesting other books but none was as put together as well as the series.
Maybe you guys know a replacement series.
But in this light what would be the legality of me just printing off copies for internal classroom use of my own set.
Itâs not available at any price despite a lot of people including myself willing to pay the price.
You may say I should contact the publisher and try to work out a small license agreement but Iâve never heard of such a thing. If you have examples please let me know.
Okay whatâs your opinion? Any similar series that you know of? What would you do?
I will preface this by saying that I am not a lawyer and anything I say is not legal advice and should not be taken as such.
To quote an (education) college professor: âas a student, always cite your sources. As a teacher, STEAL EVERYTHINGâ.
My feeling on using copies of textbooks and workbooks generally is that if itâs coming from a major textbook supplier (like Oxford, Cambridge, Nat Geo if getting quality TV materials from abroad, ćș·è» in TW), they can shove it. (Especially ćș·è», since they require public students and schools in TW to buy their books, but then they go and run their own private school for rich Taiwanese people that doesnât even use those books.) If itâs coming from Teachers Pay Teachers, etc. âlittle guyâ makers, respect them and pay for the materials to show them that you appreciate their work. If itâs an out of print textbook and youâre making copies (but not charging your students a materials fee!), I wouldnât think too much about it.
Iâve had students bring me anthologies of Reading A-Z books (like all the books from one level, printed in one bound book) that their parents bought from their cram school. Iâve had Taiwan Chinese language schools sell me PDF scans of textbooks for the same price as the ebook. Those moves, I consider to be immoral. Printing a copy of a workbook page as a worksheet, from a workbook that you already bought? If youâre not charging your students for it⊠itâs still technically a violation of copyright law, but the company itself would have to go after you for that, and I canât imagine itâd be worth it for them to do so, especially if itâs an out of print book.
If you plan to use a portion of it, just write the source somewhere on the copy and you should be fine
Who owns the copyright? Might be the author, in which case you could just ask for permission to use the out of print materials
I have something written and available online that a few times a year I am contacted about from some company in Japan. They ask for permission to use my materials and I say âyesâ, because it feels nice to know that something I made so many years ago is still valued and used to help people learn
Does the series cover sentence fragments? Asking for a friend 
Oh, please. Iâve from Joisey, central Joisey. people in north Joisey donât put oil in their cars, they put Earl and they donât flush the toilet, they flush the turlet. Anyways⊠out side of english exercises and really serious to be graded writing, I donât do grammar. I just correct other peopleâs.
But thank you for the advice, I will try contact the author responsible. Why do they want to push a strong seller out of the way? Canât they just publish it as long as there is a demand? Canât they move it to electronic form with printable rights.
Anyway, Iâll just use portions⊠One lesson at a timeâŠ
Could be lots of reasons, maybe the publisher doesnât own the copyright any more, maybe the new books have online supplements, etc.
Whatâs in it for them?
Iâd still say, find out who owns the copyright and also try contacting the author
But whereâs the fair use come in. I use movie scripts from the web. They are âfor educational purposesâ. I agree people should be paid for their work. But what really makes me loose respect for the whole system is 1. They wonât take my money even if I wave it in front of their faces because the item is out of print or I live in the wrong effing region.
(I was a strong copyright defender preferring to buy DVDs to streaming them. And I bought DVDâs from everywhere, all unique material that wonât be found in different markets.
I had a multi system DVD play or my favorite manufacturer would give me the codes to take care of the region. Every two to three years my dvd player would burn out and Iâd buy a new one. Iâd call the engineer for the codes and they where happy to give them to me. Until one year, Multisystem DVD Players where made illegal in Taiwan. The engineer that year was terrified to tell me the codes.
MY DVDS. MY DVDs you donât tell ME how and where I can enjoy my dvdâs . I had hundreds of dollars in DVDâ s that I was barred from watching. I had to invest in a Chinese product to be able to watch my DVDâs only on my computer. Taiwanese like the bag ban, the straw ban go nuts then grow tired of nonsense, In a year and a half, I was able to buy most Taiwanese brands of DVD players that were multi region/system again. But that was a terrible year.