Slashdot Mirror
E-Reserves Under Fire From Publishers
RackinFrackin writes "Publishers Weekly has a story about a copyright lawsuit lodged against several faculty members and a librarian at Georgia State University. The case, Cambridge University Press, et al. v. Patton et al., involves e-reserves, a practice of making electronic copies of articles available to students. From the article: 'Rather than make multiple physical copies, faculty now scan or download chapters or articles, create a single copy, and place that copy on a server where students can access it (and in some cases print, download, or share). Since the practice relies on fair use (creating a single digital copy, usually from a resource already paid for, for educational purposes), permission generally isn't sought, and thus permission fees aren't paid, making the price right for students strapped by the high cost of tuition and textbooks, as well as for libraries with budgets stretched thinner every year.'"
You got really lucky then. 100 dollars was on the low-end of the book spectrum when I was doing engineering and maths 6-8 years ago. Hell the book for Reals was like 100 pages long and 6 inches by 9 yet cost around 100 dollars. It wasn't uncommon to spend 500-800 a quarter if you bought stuff from the bookstore. And this was all undergrad (although good undergrad is probably the same books as a crappy masters at some schools.)
You sir must be an idiot. Always buy used undergradute books. $215 for a new one or $50 for a used one on ebay.
The only difference is usually the questions aren't in the right order, And if your unlucky the chapters might be too. This can be tricky when the prof says turn to page blah, because you have to look at the index, But doing this once or twice is easily worth $150!