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DRM Lite for Electronic Textbooks

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the better-viewing-methods-needed dept.

bcrowell writes "The New York Times reports that textbook publishers are backing off somewhat on the level of DRM used in the electronic editions of their textbooks. They no longer become unreadable after a certain amount of time, as in RMS's famous essay The Right to Read. Even so, most students aren't interested, because the books can't be sold back; the solution, however, may be to make it impossible to return printed books either. No mention in the NYT article of the steady progress being made by free books."

3 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Re:problems in educational publishing by ScrewMaster · · Score: 2, Funny

    sobaticles

    Wasn't he a contemporary of Socrates? As I remember, he was known for taking a lot of time off from work.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  2. Re:As a college professor.... by Jerf · · Score: 5, Funny

    Even so I constantly got complaints from the new [Computer Engineering] students about how they were constantly confused because I kept skipping arround in the text (which, from their perspective, I was).

    I would suggest that you tell them to suck it up. If anybody is going to need to learn how to handle out-of-order execution, it's Computer Engineers, no?

  3. Re:Like New by CaptDeuce · · Score: 3, Funny
    Modem OGR programs can put out plotters and text myth very lithe karma 6 sonny of them can hankie science and math content just as ea. sly. Otter than a lack of mili nation, what 1s slopping people from buying (or burrowing a leapt up with) someone's e-book & fuming a screen snapper tOCR? Save the out pull to a PDE 6 you ire do me. You don't even have to pry and cock their protest lion shorn en... Or am I missing smelling hero?

    Yep. Them OGR pro grams gork real food.

    --
    "Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein