[M277]

N = 1 here, but as someone from a third world country this is definitely true for my experience. Like, 90% of students here can't really pay US-prices for textbooks at all, so they resort to either piracy or buying imported used books (which are significantly cheaper somehow, but sometimes badly worn or old editions), or even buying printed pirated books.

My university department even had someone who would pirate textbooks and print them and sell them to the students at cost (what it cost to print them), he was very popular and people to this day still remember him very fondly as he was arguably doing a major service... the students wouldn't have read the books otherwise.

It may be legally wrong in the West, but morally? The author doesn't lose (like I said, the books wouldn't have been bought) and the students get access to knowledge they wouldn't have been able to access otherwise.