Textbooks With EULAs 743
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?"
Stallman was right up to this point ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Learning? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sad sad sad...
Ah, the joys of copy-protection... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I think EULAs are a crock, and the issues of liability and usage they may or may not cover should be dealt sensibly in some different way. Possibly, in the case of software, by companies taking some responsibility for their products. In the case of DVDs, I don't think there should be a license of any kind. But maybe that's just me...
So much for selling used books (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a bad deal to me (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Frist Post? And What a DUMB idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Use of text books for longer than 5 months (Score:5, Insightful)
33% discount?? (Score:3, Insightful)
And how long until the electronic version is the ONLY version available? A few years?
The best thing my compSci program did was standardize on regular computer texts (O'Reilly) that will be reused for years (or until the next update) rather than already outdated overpriced textbooks. Llama, Camel, UML in a Nutshell, Java Definitive, Interface Design and others still are used on an almost daily basis. Meanwhile, the $120 C textbook collects dust on the bottom shelf.
Open Source Textbooks (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, Spitzer, when you're done reaming the music industry for payola, why not take a crack at textbook publishers? (Yes, the pun was intentional)
Re:Learning? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Electronic version = better index (Score:2, Insightful)
If I were filthy rich, I might consider buying one of these things in addition to a real paper version. Some of those 800-page physics and biology texts don't have the best indices in the world, and frequently your mind recalls an interesting turn of phrase from the section you need to look at, but you can't remember what page it's on. A searchable electronic version would put you in the right place instantly.
Re:Five months? (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Learning? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Keep your hands off my reference library (Score:2, Insightful)
Even though textbooks are frightfully expensive, the loss of personal history isn't worth 33% off. Even though some information becomes obsolete, basic principles have lasting value. To me, these EULAs are only an admission that the product being purchased doesn't have lasting value. I think that's more true about the publishing executives and lawyers who come up with these ideas than it is about the books themselves.
Re:Ah, the joys of copy-protection... (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe this [com.com] is the case youre referring to.
And yes, ebooks have been cracked, and will be again. Particularly when you foist them upon a young, rebellious, smarter than average, and technologically savvy demographic group.
This bright idea is doomed to failure, and I for one am going to enjoy watching it go down in flames.
Re:Difference. (Score:3, Insightful)
I can understand they don't want their work copied so the illegal distribution part of DRM is understandable. The illegal use part of DRM is totaly fucked up though. These books selfdestruct in 5 months?!? Music bought on iTms may only be played on apple aproved hardware?!?
Where went our consumer rights in this digital world? These schemes makes owning something of the past. Licencing is the new world order, or as I see it ju another word for good old fashion renting.
Re:It's NOT a new idea - saw it in the 1980s (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well, why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh wait... Maybe they should just allow copyright and trademark law to allow them protection instead of saying I can't watch my DVDs however I like.
Backlash (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:not Princeton, only the bookstore (Score:2, Insightful)
They are given near exclusive rights to sell the schools merchandise and work with the instructors on books. Rarely do you see more than one competitor off campus selling the used books. The non affiliation means they can waste good money on stupid souvineer crap like cheesy light up pens, and they also carry a lot of the medical and art supplies for those students.
Affiliation is always there with a campus book store sitting in the student union.
Re:And for a dollar more (Score:1, Insightful)
1. Buy ebook for full price
2. Sell it to students for 35% discount every term
3. Get the ebook back at the end of the term
4. goto step 2
I marvel Princeton's money making tactics.
Way to expensive for what you get. (Score:3, Insightful)
Given those restrictions, there's still books I'd consider buying as E-books, those I'm fairly sure I'll read once and forget about. But even then I'd have to get a *lot* more than 33% discount, that's a total joke. It means the e-book is still a lot more expensive than buying a used book, or buying a new book and selling it when you're bored of it.
Re:Learning? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Learning? (Score:3, Insightful)
The publishing industry is going to love DRM, and I don't blame them. They saw the music industry get screwed over by wide-spread cultural acceptance of piracy, the movie industry then went through the same thing and now the book industry is about to experience the same thing.
Simply put, if people can steal something in a risk-free easy way, most people will do it. Therefore if you don't like DRM figure out a way to make it unnecessary. I'll give you a hint: the answer doesn't lie with it technology, nor does it involve sitting back and hoping evolution will figure out some new way for content-producers to make money, convenient though that'd be.
The only kinds of comments I'd want to see on a story like this are:
Perhaps unsurpisingly, it's far easier to make pithy comments about profit and community than read ecomonics textbooks.
Oh, one last thing ... for those who think it's impossible to make unbreakable DRM I have a reality check for you: the music industry missed the boat and had no DRM, they got totally screwed. The movie industry did have DRM, but they messed up and there was a weakness in the key generation algorithm - still, it kept them protected from casual piracy for several years. The digital TV companies got it right: most use DRM with no cracks available and have done for years. Given hardware control, as you'd have for any mass-market ebook readers, I see no reason why "unbreakable" DRM cannot be produced. Not provable unbreakable of course, just hard enough to break that nobody bothers, like DirecTV has.
Re:Learning? (Score:3, Insightful)
But knowledge (and that is what text books are about) that build the foundation for our society should not only be free (as in speech) but be affordable to anyone who wants to aquire it.
The idea that this knowledge should be kept behind lock and key in order to "ensure" that pubslishers are well off is just outright stupid. It does limit the access for the common person to this knowledge and thus (in the long run) will damage society as a whole.
Instead of trying to give Publishers more money, why not have the universities produce the textbooks and put them Online. The Transmission of text is easy to do these days, with virtually every student having a notebook having those with them isn't an issue either. They want to print them? Let 'em, who cares? It is about spreading knowledge, or have I misunderstood something about the educational system?
Like Borrowing from a Library, only more expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Sounds like a bad deal to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"privileged few"? (Score:5, Insightful)
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=
Re:Stallman was right up to this point ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK seems not to have this problem. This is one of the (comparatively few) areas where the USA would benefit from taking our lead.
Actually, there are many proffessors in the USA who will stick with one book and keep requiring the exact same version (saves on having to re-write course notes and such). This was in the Engineering courses, though.
From experience, it has been the freshmen level "101" courses that this occurs in (chem 101, bio 101, phy 101) and some various writing courses. I did not come across any upper level engineering courses where the books changed all that often. In one case, a professor was going back to an older version because she like it better.
So, it's not all the courses that have this, just the ones where the used market gets flooded every year. You know, those classes that everybody has to take where you're probably not ever going to use the books again unless you are majoring in the subject.
Sounds like the way to go. (Score:3, Insightful)
Open Source Textbooks are already here. (Score:2, Insightful)
You must never have seen Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. Course material can easily be made from it's contents and it's already better than most texts.
Profs and schools get major payola from the textbook publishers. That's why the prices go up and up and you never schools publish their own texts, which would save students a fortune.
No they don't and that's not the reason. Writing a textbook is a work of love with few rewards for a professor. Textbook publishers have their pick of material and don't need to reward anyone. The mechanics of dead tree publishing don't work out for small runs, so you won't see any but the largest and most well known universities printing books. Electronic publishing is another mater and I expect that to become huge.
Re:33% discount?? (Score:3, Insightful)
The best thing my compSci program did was standardize on regular computer texts
Your course standardised on a particular text? Am I the only person who has a problem with this entire concept? The course is supposed to teach you a particular area, not the contents of a given book. If you need extra material, you should be free to choose which book you feel gives you the best perspective on this. I generally find (there are one or two exception) O'Reilly books to be badly written, incredibly badly edited, and often badly structured, so I'm glad my course didn't standardise on them.
My undergraduate program had half a dozen books for each module that were recommended texts, but they were not required reading. If you needed a bit of extra help, then they were good places to start. A university degree is about learning how to learn things for yourself, not being told `this is the book that contains the knowledge you need for this tick-in-a-box'.
Re:EULAs on books (Score:2, Insightful)
Hopefully this isn't going to succeed (Score:2, Insightful)
I think other people are going to object to buying a book that they know is going to effectively cease to exist after an arbitrary time limit. Especially because an actual textbook has value. It can be resold, or it can be kept. This gives more choice. Choice is valuable.
Re:Five months? (Score:3, Insightful)
And think of this: with the moderating effect of the used textbook market gone, the sky's the limit for textbook prices. The $500 book is a-comin'.
And think of this: the entire publishing cost for the paper book is gone, which means the book becomes pure profit. And they will raise the prices over and over again...
Re:Or... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Five months? (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Five months? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
Richard Stallman's famous parable [google.com.au]
Defending the Publishers (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
RFID Clicker (Score:2, Insightful)
Whatever happened to raising hands or asking questions?
Crack And Print (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Five months? (Score:1, Insightful)
Like we weren't getting ripped off textbooks before, this is even worse. We're paying for something that doesn't actually exist and that we don't get to keep. To whose benefit? Not mine.
Re:EBooks are a failure... get over it (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest flop of the whole thing was they wanted to sell the books at hardcover prices. No one bought them.
Paying $130 or even $300 (when they first came out) for the gadget isn't any big deal today - look at iPod costs, laptops or whatever, but you have to have a resonable benefit to buying the ebooks for it. Say an early release (they tried getting people with releases a month before hardcover) but it would also have to be a savings, I'd pay $2.50-$3 per book in electronic form. I'm not paying $25 for a book in electronic form.
For back catalog books it was worse. It was cheaper for me to order the paperback from Amazon and pay shipping than to get the electronic one.
All these companies seem to miss the idea that people have some notion of fair play. If you get less, and it's obvious with the electronic versions you are getting less (no shiny disc or bulky book), then the public will expect a savings equal to whatever they percieve the cost of the physical part is + physical distribution costs.
And to tip it over, it has to actually be less than that, it has to also make up for the hassle of a new method of doing things + any losses of the new format, like loss of resolution, color pictures, or underlining.
Re:EULAs on books (Score:3, Insightful)
I was referring to books -- the things with paper pages.
We're already well down the first three steps as case law in the USA. I await with fascination the progress down the rest of the way, which is doing the "boil the frog slowly" act. The content cartel is being cautious about getting too close to that last step because they're (perhaps rightly) afraid that if the courts start comparing movies and music to books too soon they won't support the lock-down of movies and music -- or even software.
DMCA Violation (Score:3, Insightful)
That makes clocks a "circumvention device" under the DMCA. The RIAA and MPAA hereby order everyone to stop using time.
Just the start (Score:2, Insightful)
Selling Used books (Score:1, Insightful)
Sale vs lease (Score:3, Insightful)
If they don't transfer ownership they can require whatever they want.
Re:I think there is a market for maybe five comput (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the difference is that eBooks have been tried coutless times over the past 5-10 years. The technology is there (how complicated can you make reading a book?). My point is that it's not a "new" technology by any stretch. They've not taken off for *many* reasons. Yes I read a Slashdot post about a "new" revolutionary "eBook" company every few weeks it seems, and of course, they always flop. And not just kinda' flop... I mean *really* flop. I was wrong it my original post... it was $3.2 million in the last quarter. Still... that's a *tiny* amount. A single grocery store will do more business than that. I know that I, as a businessperson, wouldn't even bother with a market that tiny.
Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:Learning? (Score:3, Insightful)
My problem with the ebooks is the implicit expiration. That might not be a big deal if the books were far less than their physical counterparts (say, 15-30%), but to charge nearly the cost of a used book is a bit outrageous. I have many books from my undergrad years which I still reference on at least a monthly basis. Some were bought used, and some are not in the best of shape, but all are good references. I suppose I'm lucky that the basics of structural engineering has not changed much in the last 50 years.
I applaud your efforts to provide good resources to your students, even if it requires trading close to the line of fair use. It requires effort (time) to do so, even if actual money doesn't change hands. I tend to do the same for my clients, somewhat liberally reprinting sections of various codes which apply to them. Asking someone to buy $500-$1000+ in code references for a single project is a bit much.
Re:Learning? (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously the economics involved are complex and some of the responses to these harsh economics are also liable for complaints. There are many reasons that Academia is a funny kind of market place. Some of it is blatant inefficiencies but most represent tradeoffs that include considerations typically outside of pure market calculations (rightly so I think, and this is what might make it appear yet more inefficient).
University presses are a great example of this. They exist and are often (but not always) partially subsidized by the University because some worthwhile knowledge isn't profitable.
The OP was probably over the top in attributing it to evil corporations. However, in many cases, it isn't clear that the solution is more exposure to pure market forces.
But then, I'm no economist so what do i know...
Re:Opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)
Writing a traditional textbook is limited to ~ 4 authors because it'd just be too hard to track otherwise, so when you're expecting on average 250 pages from each person you couldn't really ask them to do it for free. On a project like wikibooks, however, you can get contributions from hundreds of people (for example, one member of academic staff from each university in the UK contributing to a particular subject and you've got 10 pages each, maximum, for a 1000 page textbook). I'm still studying for my degree, but I'd be happy to draw diagrams for such a project (for instance).
Now that'd be useful and since many of the people writing it would be the people teaching it they'd know of it's existence, rather than giving their students overpriced reading lists.
To your original point about people being willing to accept DRM if it's priced low enough, what you forget is that the demographic of purchasers here is 90% made up of people capable of doing a degree, not 90% people who get music on iTunes using an iMac, stick it on their iPod and it just iWorks quite possibly without them even knowing about the iDRM on it - frankly I think it'll be harder to fob students off (although considering the apathetic bunch that most students are they'll just appear on
Re:Opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, there are no end of self-proclaimed experts who believe that they totally comprehend a subject, and are more than willing to spread their misunderstandings among others.
Examples abound here on /., but for fun, trying going someplace like the Digital Photography Review "professional" forum and asking about, say, the effect of a 1.6x crop factor on DOF and watch the twisted reasoning fly. Yet these same people are wikibook contributors.
As to the DRM-literate comment, I think you forget that the vast majority of those attending college are studying business, law, medicine, english, math, history, and so on. They are not CS majors.
Re:Defending the Publishers (Score:2, Insightful)
GPL (Score:2, Insightful)