[abbaZaba]

So I am studying for two final exams tomorrows and I get an email through Penn State's course management system from another person in my class. She is offering a study guide she put together. "Great!" I think. I've been in classes before where benevolent people have shared study guides they have put together and it's a great help. In this course, the teacher has put together an outline for us to go along by but this student has filled in the outline with previous course notes (our professor puts all his lectures online in full).

I click her link to view the study guide but it takes me to a Notehall.com website where I have to sign up. Ugh. I sign up and try to view the document but it says I need "credits" to view the whole thing. I click around a bit and with a little digging realize I have one "free" view of the whole document. being the intrepid mac user that I am, I quickly Print this to PDF and have a full copy without any restrictions.

This girl is trying to make money off this study guide! I find this appalling. most of us aren't on notehall.com so less tech-saavy people would probably either pay the $5 she is asking or not use it at all. I'm all for the sharing of information and I really don't agree with how this girl is trying to make a little extra cash. Yes, she filled in the outline our professor gave us, but we have all the notes; he provided them to us. all she did was put them together in a condensed version.

I'm tempted to share my PDF version with everyone just because I don't agree with her money making tactic, but I will probably hold off.

What do you guys think about this?

[Kevin Bogues]

I don't know what penn state your talking about but i went to PSU main campus in State College and not only is this common, there is an entire store dedicated to it.

Nittany Notes

I actually used them for a few classes, 14$ helped quite a bit during finals week

[abbaZaba]

yes, I know about nittany notes (I go to University Park) and I've used them many times before, but she's selling them over ANGEL. at least with Nittany Notes you're guaranteed that the person taking the notes has a certain GPA. her way is much more expensive. if she's so inclined to sell notes, why wouldn't she just be a Nittany notetaker?

PLUS she's trying to distribute them in a way that hid the fact it cost money. when I clicked the notehall.com link, I had no idea that I would have to potentially pay for them. even so, her way also makes it much easier to copy and distribute them freely (as I thought about). at least with nittany notes you can't photocopy the physical paper they give you.

I guess it just irks me that she advertised them over ANGEL without informing anyone they'd cost money. I can't tell you how many times before a test, someone offered up their notes over ANGEL, then someone else did, and so on until we all helped each other out. I guess I'm more altruistic in this sense.

plus she keeps sending multiple emails. that coupled with the fact she's hiding that they actually cost annoys me.

[bstone]

This sounds suspiciously like spam. Unsolicited attempts to get you to sign up and purchase something.

[scaught]

Originally Posted by abbaZaba 

plus she keeps sending multiple emails. that coupled with the fact she's hiding that they actually cost annoys me.

Add her email to your junk filter.

If she makes money off this, good for her.

[-Q-]

You could report her to your school's IT group for sending SPAM.

But if she went through the trouble of assembling the guides, I have no problem charging for it even if the information was "freely available." She should probably be more straightforward about the cost, but I see no issue with trying to make money for the work she did.