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Textbooks With EULAs
overshoot writes "We all knew it was coming, didn't we? Now Princeton University and nine others are introducing DRM'd textbooks. For a 33% discount, students get a 5-month node-locked e-book instead of all that glossy paper. Maybe Congress should just get it over with and change the law to allow EULAs on printed works?"
The Right to Read
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
So, any money on how long before the DRM is cracked, and the textbook is "Available now, on a P2P Network near you!"
Selling old books was a nice source of cash for me at the end of each semester. Buying used books at the start saved a lot too. I'm not sure a 33% discount will be enough.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
The hardcopy version lasts years. The electronic copy is 2/3 the price and only usable for 5 months.
Fifteen years after I graduated I still refer to old textbooks from time to time. If you don't want to keep it you can always sell them after use, and probably recover more than a third of the original price.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Paying 2/3 retail for a book you can't mark in, underline, or ceremonially BURN after the class is over?
I tended to use books a bit longer than 5 months as reference for later work for example. I think that Princeton is a bit short sighted on this one. The idea I thought was to educate people in how to use material, not in how to cram everything in your head so you do not need the book anymore, apparently since you have the material in your posession for only a limitted amount of time, you will have to remember it all , and if you have to remember it all anyway, why not just copy it (They do make you remember it (out of study perspective), so it is in your mind, so what is the difference with a hard or soft copy, or are you not allowed to remember it either once you have to return your e-book? (tricky laws those copyright laws).
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Ok so what of the academic ideals of spreading knowledge and learning?
You must be new to the US - welcome!
Here, we do whatever we can in the name of corporate profit. This includes screwing the students, which we have been doing since the advent of education.
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Sounds to me like a really well thought out idea.
1. Arrive at uni and buy E-books (profit)
2. Months in the course starts
3. Books 'run-out'
4. Re-buy book. (profit)
5. Course finishs
6. Book run-out again
7. Exam timetables come through
8. Start revising
9. have to buy books again (profit)
a bit of a change to the normal list, but 3 times the profit!
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
There was a period, from about 1945 to 1980, when University education was essentially affordable, even at priveleged private schools. Supporting yourself (eating, finding a place to live, etc.) was more of an issue than paying for the education itself.
So, no, higher education has not *always* been a for-profit activity. However, in the absence of popular activism and resistance, and insistence on education as a fundamental right, not to mention a devotion to higher principles among the people engaged in the educational endeavor itself, that is what it will become.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Here, we do whatever we can in the name of corporate profit. This includes screwing the students, which we have been doing since the advent of education.
No, here we do whatever we can to get professors tenure, and to make sure that every insane book that they think you should buy is part of the curriculum. Never mind DRM'd e-books, just look at the texts that you have to buy in good old fashioned paper format. Why does a book like that cost $100? Because they only print a very small number, because everyone knows that the only audience FOR that professor's expensive hard bound book is going to be the students that he says have to buy a copy. The actual publishing of the book is costly, but it wouldn't happen at all if there wasn't an artificial market set up in academia.
Or, you could look at it another way. Say the books ARE worth $100. Who should be paying? The student, or taxpayers? It's pretty much one or the other. Which corporate profit, by the way, are you referring to... the university presses that are woven into this entire incestuous little ecology? It's a completely false economy that could only exist in a college setting. If it can be made to be cheaper by using e-books, so much the better.
BTW, don't forget that a paid-for-by-the-student education, including students buying their materials, goes back long before this country ever existed. Your little US=Bad rant is a little short sighted. Obviously one thing you didn't read was one of those expensive history books.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Time-limited access to a book is a known concept, that's what libraries are for.
Back when i was in college, library access for us students was free, and non-students paid a modest fee (you could call this a flatrate). You could borrow a book for a month and have that period extended (if noone else requested that copy) to up to three months. After that you had to return it, but could re-borrow it a day later.
Seems to me as if DRMed textbooks would compete with libraries. But if the customers have a choice between a) buying the book at full price, b) having DRMed access to it for 5 months at 33% discount, c) borrowing it from a library for 1-3 months for a small flat fee, this product seems vastly overpriced to me.
So, to be successful, these books will have to be a lot cheaper. After all, the market will determine what their price should be.
Explain, please, how the introduction of this DRM e-book diminishes or eliminates availability of the following:
First, let us not try to gauge any impact on existing media, but rather the future of media if this becomes the norm.
- libraries, which are generally cost-free to the user, can provide access to books, magazines, technical/medical journals, and the Internet
How do you lend someone a DRM'd eBook without defeating the purpose of DRM? How do you handle licensing issues when before the library could only lend to as many people as it had physical copies? If you restrict the total number of copies, what happens to people who don't "return" the DRM'd copy? etc etc
bookstores selling inexpensive new books (e.g. paperback)
Again, this is current way of doing things. The new way would be via eBooks. Publishers are not likely to reduce the cost of their $100 book all that much regardless of the fact that it costs nothing to reproduce, plus there will be DRM which I'm sure they will add to the price even though it costs them nothing extra.
bookstores selling used books, often at a small fraction of the original price
With eBooks there is no such thing as "used" anymore. eBooks will not wear out like a physical book will. All copies are new copies even if the DRM license is somehow recycled to a new user.
information available on reputable web sites (for access issues see Libraries)
That information is not a replacement for a textbook, unless the book author or publisher has created an online version. Web sites are great supplements, but when the professor tells you to read chapter 5 for the test next week a website isn't going to help.
Not that DRM'd eBooks make any difference in that respect, so I'm not entirely sure why you brought it up.
People that want to learn will find a way. Whether that learning takes place inside or outside the halls of academia depends on the individual.
Ah, that's why. Too bad universities also offer things you can't find easily on the "outside" - like access to laboratories, materials and other facilities and equipment, direct communication with people knowledgeable in the field (professors, lab technicians), and accreditation recognised by potential employers (or clients if you plan to work for yourself).
No one is required to buy the e-books, so your classist argument falls rather flat.
No one is required to buy the eBooks... yet. Or rather, they are still offering the printed versions because they want to see if they can get away with all electronic versions without too many headaches. If they can sell you a printed book for $100 (With like $70 profit) they will gladly sell you a $80 eBook for nearly $80 profit, since cost of duplication and distribution is virtually nil. You'll buy it because you'll save $20.
I wouldn't be all that surprised if they just closed the book stores and sold you the eBooks directly, adding the cost to your tuition. ("Sure the tuition is more expensive, but at least I get free* eBooks!")
=Smidge=
holds up liquor store
Except that the punishment for holding up a liquor store is probably less than that for violating a cheesy DRM scheme. And chances of getting parole are probably better too!
I know this is redundant...
Richard Stallman's famous parable
Does it go on forever?
As full disclosure, a member of my family works for a book publisher. I don't speak for anyone or any company. I just speak for my own opinionated self.
There is no doubt that the cost of textbooks is completely unreasonable. While the publishing industry has to take its share of the blame for that, the publishing companies have several difficult problems to get around when trying to make a profit selling intangible information.
First, and slimiest, are professors that sell free examination copies to used booksellers. Sometimes profs order exam copies JUST to sell them to the itinerant bookbuyers. (These are the guys you see wheeling a big case on wheels around your profs' offices, flush with cash) This is completely unethical, but widespread.
Second are used book distributors. Profs expect a lot of support for these expensive books. They need desk copies, supplements, web site support, test banks, etcetera. The publisher has to support the book in use, even if the students are buying used text books. The used book dealer provides NONE OF THIS. They only value they add is storing the book during school breaks and driving it from one place to another.
So for an edition that comes out once every three years, the publisher has ONE CHANCE to make a profit - the first all-new run of the edition. Everything else (packaging with extra materials, sell-through, custom pub) is a rearguard action to try to stay afloat until the next edition.
You see, the value in the book isn't in the part that the used-book dealer sells. He's selling information that he didn't produce, support, or add to at all. The used book industry is essentially a giant leech on the butt of textbook publishers.
If there were NO used book industry, or if there were some sort of royalty paid for each resale, most textbooks could be almost as cheap as trade books.
Also, publishers don't like book coops, but don't mind them nearly as much. Because students sell to each other and there much less exam copy corruption.
DRM might be a fair way around this, but the DRMed e-book should be cheaper than a used book, IMO. It only makes sense that if there's NO resale value, that you should only pay for the info, not the media + resale value. To those that suggest they should sell DRM-free e-books, that's simply suicide. Let's be realistic - 90% of college students are not going to pay for a book they can just copy. My relative has seen students photocopying entire textbooks. (Even though the cost of copying was close to the cost of a new book.)
Publishers definitely need to step it up and figure out a way to make a better, cheaper product. They are a very old and traditional industry. (some might say hidebound) But they are generally good people trying to do good work. They will eventually adapt, authors will get paid, and prices will go down, one way or the other.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
If ebooks become accepted as teaching materials, then this is a prime time for someone to jump in and disintermediate the marketplace, as the barriers to entry (presses, distribution) have just been dramatically lowered.
Someone should start a publishing company with the idea of a) furnishing inexpensive books to education, and b) of offering writers of said books a fair split. Go to the top minds in a field and ask them to write a textbook. Tell them they'll get a 50/50 split on each book sold if they write it and help promote it.
Then sell it for $10-20 DRM'ed. iTunes has shown most people will accept reasonably fair DRM if it occurs at a reasonable price. And a $20 book is a much easier pill to swallow than a $100 one.
If the current crop of publishers get too greedy the market will punish them for it. Heck, there's probably someone in India right now wondering how to put a bunch of their PhDs to work...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.