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$200 For a Bound Textbook That You Can't Keep?
netbuzz writes: "The worst of DRM is set to infest law school casebooks. One publisher, AspenLaw, wants students to pay $200 for a bound casebook, but at the end of class they have to give it back. Aspen is touting this arrangement as a great deal because the buyer will get an electronic version and assorted online goodies once they return the actual book. But they must return the book. Law professors and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are calling it nothing but a cynical attempt to undermine used book sales, as well as the first sale doctrine that protects used bookstores and libraries."
They aren't in it to make the world a better place. They are in it for the money. And so it is perfectly logical for them to take as much as they can get.
Vote with your wallet.
That this will create a generation of lawyers and judges who have a fundamental hatred of DRM.
How will we change the past if we let these kids keep paper books, eh, comrades?
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
I would be laughing at law students and law teachers and lawyers in general, if I didn't know they'd "recoup" that money by screwing me later.
Ezekiel 23:20
I've been looking into going back to school and have gotten a more in-depth look at the academic textbook market and I can conclude it is all a big racket. The price of textbooks is already outrageous as it is -- I don't doubt that they would love to DRM all of them and have students give them back afterwards. Even after looking into the used textbook market, I couldn't find a way to save very much and the price they'll give you for a used but still in very good condition book is almost insulting. You would think we would want to make education more accessible and affordable for everyone, but between textbooks, student loans and other like scams it is a sad state of affairs.
Whilst it might not be for everyone, here I am sitting at my PC looking at my Computer Science books (purchased between 1995 and 1998) and I don't think I've opened any of them in the past 10 years (looking at you "Unix System Programming" by Haviland and Salama, reprinted in 1994).
If I get a DRM free digital version after the course has ended and the pricing is right, then this might actually be more useful than a pile of dead wood taking up space on my bookshelf - most of which is probably long out of date.
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If the schools / banks where on the hook for default then they will push back on stuff like this.
maybe not the schools / teachers as some get so much per book and they put out a new edition each year or more often all the time.
and it's not just law school.
A manufacturer is attempting to circumvent the secondary market by only lending its products instead of selling them. This isn't an end run around the "first sale" principle exactly because the publisher doesn't plan to sell the books in the first place.
What they are trying to do should be legal -- but hopefully it won't work because professors will refuse to assign this textbooks.
As a university faculty member I consider the cost of textbooks whenever I choose one for a course. I try to never require students to buy the book (I'm not always in charge of the course I teach, so I can't always do this), and I prefer books that are available on SpringerLink (whole-book DRM-free PDFs are available to all our students since our university subscribes). I doubt many faculty members will actually assign this textbook.
But they don't have to sell the books. They can just lend them for a fee, and that would be perfectly legal.
Expect scanned and even perfectly good text copies of this book to be on all good torrent sites around the time it's supposed to be released
I disagree that it is ALL of them trying to suck you dry. There are some out there who are interested in providing education over just taking your money. They might be hard to find, but they are out there.
But, let's face it. With all the easily available student loans out there that are federally backed, sucking money out of students is a profitable business. The very program that makes federal loans so readily available has artificially increased the price to the point where a 4 year degree can cost a $100K. My tuition was under 5K a year some 20 plus years ago. My whole education cost under $20K for a 4 year degree. Now we are paying $25K a year, 5 times the price? Something is wrong here.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Oh that is easy. You charge them a deposit, refundable upon return of the book.
Oh wait, this is a law school... You just sue them to get it back...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Easy: You say you lost it. Or just don't say anything at all. I totally agree on the keeping of textbooks, as some "electronic companion" is probably quite useless compared to the book you know where to find things and have marked up.
I think this is mainly aimed at book stores reselling professionally - they might be legally prevented from reselling this book. However, I can't see it preventing student A giving the book to student B in exchange for money. That's usually what happened at my uni anyway - I can't remember there being any "used book" section in the university book store.
My grad school forbade reselling case books, arguing that they were licensed not sold. If you put up a for sale sign on a campus bulletin board it got taken done. So we simply had an underground market as well as simply shared the books. Interestingly enough, while researching an article on the doctrine of first sale I learned it is not as black and white as some would think it is; with lots of variations state to state as well as defining what constitutes a sale.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Ouch!
I paid ~200$/year for a obligatory membership of the student's union, plus rent at a student's village (1000$/month for the apartment I shared with my GF, which was almost 1/2 price of market price for an apartment in Oslo, especially given that it was in a quite nice area relatively close to the university.).
To pay my bills, I got a loan from the Norwegian State Educational Loan Fund. This is a low-interest loan (zero interest until you graduate), where ~half of the loan for the semester is turned into a grant when you pass your exams.
Did your tuition include housing? If so, the cost may be similar in the end - if you do everything on schedule, you would end up with ~40K in loans after 4 years. But then the price levels and probably the expected salary are quite different here.
It's not unprecedented. I don't know the legal details but anyone who's ever been an in amateur production of a musical will tell you that Music Theatre, International will not sell you a script or a score. I believe the statement is that you have rented them. You are warned to make any markings lightly and in pencil and to erase them completely before returning them.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
They will respect the way that DRM has used the law to relieve them from their money. Since they want to make money, they will have learned how creative use of DRM can do that, so they will try and find ways to work for DRM companies.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?