$200 For a Bound Textbook That You Can't Keep? 252
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."
Because they can. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Because they can. (Score:5, Insightful)
yes, except most universities will go along with it and force would be students to buy the books under those conditions or not go into law. This requires more than just voting with wallets.
Re:Because they can. (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Because they can. (Score:5, Informative)
heh, do you realize how many professors require books THEY wrote? Conflict of interest isn't high on the list of priorities to worry about.
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On the other hand $200.00 is not very much for a law school text.
Not very much? Sounds like an awful lot for a book. The most I've ever paid for a college textbook (studying E.E. at a Dutch university) was about $75. I know that legal reference texts can be expensive as they often span multiple volumes (a subscription to Dutch jurisprudence can run close to 5 figures a year), but I don't see why simple textbooks for use in law school should be that expensive.
Re: Because they can. (Score:2)
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Re: Because they can. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Because they can. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Because they can. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Because they can. (Score:5, Interesting)
yes, except most universities will go along with it and force would be students to buy the books under those conditions or not go into law. This requires more than just voting with wallets.
Photocopier. And yes it may be technically illegal. But sometimes a little civil disobedience is necessary. In fact, as a law student, you could make that your thesis.
Unbind the book, it saves time. Then re-bind the book or just hand back a stack of loose-leaf -- your choice.
Re:Because they can. (Score:4, Insightful)
That actually leads to my question about this - what if you lose it? What if you get robbed, what if you are just forgetful and leave it somewhere, what if your dog eats it....
There are a million things that could happen. The article makes it clear that you can mark it up, highlight it, etc. do whatever you want to it - they don't care about the condition, just want it back after. So do they charge you a penalty for not returning this obviously used item that seems destined to be destroyed? Do you have to sign a contract to do so? It seems to me that there must be some penalty there, which they would have a really hard time justifying if challenged - I mean, how much is a used, beat-up book worth?
I also had to kind of giggle at the "lifetime access" to their digital version - I'd want that one in writing, with a refund policy, so in a few years after this doesn't work and they shut down the website, folks would have recourse.
The whole thing is just so shady. The whole textbook business is, really. Just an industry based around exploiting those already being exploited and signing away their possible future earnings to get an education and a chance at bettering themselves starting life in debt.
I was lucky - I went to a college that didn't really use textbooks. We had plenty of books, probably many more than the average class at most schools (8-10 books a class wasn't odd), but very few "textbooks" proper - I don't think any of my classes required one - the science or math kids may have used some workbooks, but I went to a private college that didn't believe in such things and I count myself lucky. It was also small enough that the professors and other students kind of knew who could and couldn't afford the required texts and were completely supportive of sharing, reserve shelves (in fact, just about everything was on a reserve shelf if someone really needed) and any other methods we had to use - because it's the learning that's important, stupid, LOL, not supporting various corporate profit interests.
Re:Because they can. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Because they can. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
The publishers, or the students aiming to become lawyers..?
Re:Because they can. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
The publishers, or the students aiming to become lawyers..?
Yes.
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Vote with your wallet.
Seems like my wallet doesn't cast the vote it once did - and I own a mansion and a yacht.
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and I own a mansion and a yacht.
Huh. Maybe things are improving.
Re:Because they can. (Score:4, Informative)
only $200 for a law school book? (Score:2)
Is this like a fatwallet hot deal ymmv?
One can only hope... (Score:5, Interesting)
That this will create a generation of lawyers and judges who have a fundamental hatred of DRM.
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That this will create a generation of lawyers and judges who have a fundamental hatred of DRM.
This assumes that lawyers (and the judges some of them often become) will be driven by something other than money. Sucker bet, that one.
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That this will create a generation of lawyers and judges who have a fundamental hatred of DRM.
This assumes that lawyers (and the judges some of them often become) will be driven by something other than money. Sucker bet, that one.
In the U.S., my impression is that few judges are driven by money. I hope I'm right.
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In many places judges must run for election, re-election, or, at least, confirmation (California Supreme Court, for example).
Campaigns cost money.
It is a bit of a tossup whether the law enforcement endorsements (any criminal court judge that has, or seeks, one is, IMO, already in a conflict of interest situation) or their money is more important, though.
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In the U.S., my impression is that few judges are driven by money. I hope I'm right.
I wonder, are there many poor judges?
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Not hatred, respect (Score:3)
Doubleplusgood! (Score:5, Funny)
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I would be laughing... (Score:5, Insightful)
The textbook industry... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The textbook industry... (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep having conversations with my students where I explain why they shouldn't pirate books, or at least should make sure that the authors are getting paid (for instance, buying a legal copy then pirating / cracking it if it has DRM to get a useful one.) ...and yet I have a lot of trouble trying to work up enthusiasm for telling them not to pirate textbooks.* Particularly problematic, as I've shown a few how to torrent. (Heck, I've shown faculty members how to torrent.)
* As opposed to professional reference books.
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I keep having conversations with my students where I explain why they shouldn't pirate books, or at least should make sure that the authors are getting paid (for instance, buying a legal copy then pirating / cracking it if it has DRM to get a useful one.) ...and yet I have a lot of trouble trying to work up enthusiasm for telling them not to pirate textbooks.* Particularly problematic, as I've shown a few how to torrent. (Heck, I've shown faculty members how to torrent.)
* As opposed to professional reference books.
I'm not a big fan of copyright infringement, but I do wonder why you would pay good money for something you're going to have to break the law to use rather than just breaking the law to use it without paying first...
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Ethics. He ants the author t get something.
I only assume he has never stepped foot into a library.
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Ethics. He ants the author t get something.
I only assume he has never stepped foot into a library.
If the author wants to get paid, they can surely produce a product that can sensibly be used without breaking the law...
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Last I head, the applicability of laws relating to whether transfer of medium for personal use had not been tested for ebooks. (Not, I'll admit, that I'd hold my breath for a good outcome in the current climate regarding such things.)
The problem of course is that I do seed torrents.
Re:The textbook industry... (Score:4, Interesting)
This was my stance for a while, though my workaround was to buy hardcopies of the book and then pirate a softcopy (mostly for reference books which I didn't want to haul around). And then I decided I didn't want to devote the space or weight to the hardcopies.
It's not ideal, but there are too many authors whose work I really like some of whose work is under DRM. (And it's all fine to rant at the authors, but until they're really quite popular they aren't really empowered to fight this on their own.) So I am very loud about preferring non-DRM'd books, and will buy them preferentially. And I do not share non-DRM'd book I have legally purchased... and seed torrents of those I pirated. It sucks, but it's the best compromise in my specs.
Interesting you say that (Score:4, Interesting)
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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They are forcing the students to return the books, and you think the electronic version is going to be DRM-free? Ha!
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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)
I've referred to my calculus text several times over the years, along with my discrete and combinatorial mathematics stuff.
For CS specifically, I've got a big white Algorithms and data structures book, "A book on C", a couple on relational databases and relational calculus, and a book on design patterns, and a book on complexity theory I've referred to.
Sure I recently sent my
This is what you get with guaranteed student loans (Score:3)
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.
You'd think that a law publisher would (Score:2)
have bothered to research the law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
Some other publisher attempted to impose a license upon the books they sold and were slapped down over a century ago.
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Not if it's a Slashdot law book! ;)
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Some other publisher attempted to impose a license upon the books they sold and were slapped down over a century ago.
If you read the citation you provided, you'd find this information therein:
I.e., a shrink-wrap license.
This has little to do with copyright law (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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it won't work because professors will refuse to assign this textbooks.
Oh it will work, who do you think WRITES the books? Yea, you guessed it, the professors write the books....
I have a number of college books on my book shelf that where written by the professor who taught the course, or by his boss. I even had one professor who made a big deal out of the fact that he wrote the book and that you needed to keep it forever. I bought a used copy and sold it as soon as I could...
Re:This has little to do with copyright law (Score:5, Informative)
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In two words, you're wrong .
Not to start a nuclear war with a professor, but those are three words.
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Same here. I had just one prof who used his own book in his course. He simply gave the draft doc file to the class and said that buying the book is optional. I went to his book signing. He said that these academic books were rarely worth the time costs (since they cater to niche fields and so few get sold) and that his friend who writes fiction makes waaay more. Writing a book to him was more of an honor and about cementing his prestige in the field.
Now, the publishers might be profiting; I doubt that the p
Re:This has little to do with copyright law (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
That sounds like an end run to me. When something looks like a sale, feels like a sale, and smells like a sale, it should behave like a sale, including all of the rights and privileges associated with ownership. And at those prices, this sure as hell looks like a purchase to me, rather than a rental. Unfortunately, we live in a world where the very idea of ownership is being undermined by EULAs, licenses that can be rescinded at any time, and moves like what AspenLaw is doing here. How long until the first sale doctrine stops applying to any form of media at all, regardless of whether it's digital or physical?
Re:This has little to do with copyright law (Score:4, Interesting)
But wait! There was a contract that said I was only leasing the car. I have to give it back. Other than that piece of paper, the transaction looked like a sale, felt like a sale and smelled like a sale. That would make it a sale, right? I don't think the courts would agree.
I pay a fellow a "down payment" for the keys to an apartment. I pay him a certain amount every month. After 20 years I own the apartment outright, yes? (That's longer than many mortgages.) Looked like a sale, smelled etc... but I signed a paper that says it was only a rental.
I go to a mall. I hand money to a fellow behind a counter and he hands me a pair of shoes. That smells like etc. I go to a bowling alley, hand some money to the guy behind the counter and he hands me a pair of shoes. But that's not a sale?
Unfortunately, we live in a world where the very idea of ownership is being undermined by EULAs, licenses that can be rescinded at any time, and moves like what AspenLaw is doing here.
They're being quite up-front in their terms. It's not a surprise at the end of the term to find out the book has to be returned. Do car leases, apartment or house rentals, or the existence of lending libraries also undermine the concept of ownership, or are they simply alternatives to outright ownership?
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a car lease certainly feels different than buying a car. even if you're comparing buying on partial payment(with a big pre sum as you're implying with the bucket).
but if the book is sitting on the shelf.. and the student goes and grabs it and takes to the till and walks home.. but yeah, it's unlikely to go down that way, since more likely the book is forcibly sold/rented to the students while they sit at class and it is told to them to rent the book or fail the class for not renting the book.
now, in a situ
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When I lease a car, I pay less than if I were paying off a loan. I can also offset any concern of depreciation at the end of the lease period by selecting a new car and making any appropriate payment adjustments. If I really like the car, I can buy out of the lease. Can I do any of that with this textbook?
When I rent an apartment, I don't have to worry about maintenance, renovations or yard work. That's the landlord's job. What's in it for me when I pay $200 for a book that I don't own?
When I rent bowl
Re:This has little to do with copyright law (Score:4, Insightful)
This is technically incorrect. Put aside that its a bad investment for a minute and think about this: While I'm not a car person and couldnt give two shits about what I drive, to some its an amenity they enjoy, like a big screen TV or a computer. To use an analogy people here would understand, these people are the kind of people that get a new computer every 2 years because they have to have the latest and greatest, and to them, those of us in old clunkers are like the geezers who have a 10 year old comp that's 'good enough.'
The cost of ownership between lease and own for someone who gets a new car every 3 years is relatively break-even assuming reasonable mileage, mainly due to rapid depreciation and the interest cost associated with the car loan. The big difference is that the owning cycle has more upfront costs to get ahead of the equity chase. That seems counterintuitive, but let me explain. Say you purchase a $30,000 car and put the same down as you would have on the lease, lets say $4,000. In 3 years that car is worth around $18,000, so you have to pay at least $8,000 in 3 years just to break even to buy a new car at full price, which comes out to $230/mo with interest included. Everything over that payment is technically a down payment on a new car in 3 years. On a 5 year loan, the monthly payment would be between $500-$600/mo. The lease for the same car is going to be around $300/mo. Technically you pay a little more for the lease, ~$50-$70/mo, but as you can see the upfront cost is lower. This means you can predictably drive a nicer car continuously for less money on your monthly budget at the cost of spending a little more on the tail end of the 10 year average.
In short, yes a lease is a little more costly but the difference is much smaller than 'far more' and is useful for someone who treats a car experience as an enjoyment and not a mode of transportation/investment. Car dealerships make relatively little on leases and mainly use them to secure a used car base, they make more in financing interest on new cars and sales of used cars. The salesmen are typically reluctant to focus on offering leases for this reason.
As a note, I absolutely abhor wasting money on cars and will prob drive my paid off car until it falls apart. Just playing the devil's advocate. I have worked with what I like to term 'car people' and they have a completely different mindset when it comes to cars than I do. I think its a giant waste of money, but they think the same way of all my tech stuff. To each their own.
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Car leasing is a contract between you and the owner, and part of the terms of the contract states that you have to return the car at the end of the lease. You aren't returning the car because it's a lease, you are returning it because you signed a document stating that you agreed to return it (or face predefined penalties)
The only way this could apply to books is if the bookstore required you to sign some sort of legal document before giving you the book.
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Other than that piece of paper, the transaction looked like a sale, felt like a sale and smelled like a sale.
That's where you and I differ. Regardless of the paper, I don't think your examples look, feel, or smell like sales at all. Consider what a purchase normally looks like: money changes hands and a buyer takes ownership. In that order. Moreover, it's not just a random amount of money that gets paid: it's an amount of money equal to the value of the item.
In the case of your car lease, few people would confuse your "small bucket of money" for the actual price of the car, which could very well be an order of mag
Books aren't in lease constructions usually (Score:2)
You come up with valid rent/lease constructions that by themselves don't feel a whole lot different from sales constructions. However, all the examples you give, come from markets where you have multiple options to buy the exact same product and also have an established market for lease/rent constructions.
While there are text book rental constructions, these do feel, present and act very differently compared to a sales construction. Not only that, you can get the same books "for keep" if you buy them, usua
A consideration for professors (Score:4, Interesting)
Barbara Streissand (Score:3)
took a page outta MPAA/RIAA playbook (Score:2)
sounds like the cable companies (Score:2)
Where they force you to rent the box at price over 1-2 years that can add up to it's real bulk price.
Also if you have lost, not returned, burned up in a fire they want the full price of a new box.
and you can't buy the box or use one that was not returned and one that someone even payed the full price for.
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Not true. By law they MUST allow you to use your own tuner and can only charge you a small monthly fee for the CABLE CARD you need to decode their encrypted signals. Silicon Dust sells such tuners, as does a number of "cable card ready" TV makers. You can even get DVR devices to do this too.
Don't rent from the cable company... Shesh.. But I guess folks cannot afford to buy $500 worth of equipment all at once just to watch cable, so they pay though the nose by the month and never own anything..
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still have to rent the cable card and some systems even or used make you pay for the tuning adapter for SDV systems.
and that cable card rent can add up.
I think that Service Electric was one of the few system that let you / still does let you BUY IT FOR about $125. Others make you pay $3-$5+ mo to rent it.
http://www.sectv.com/aspEquipC... [sectv.com]
Purchase CableCARD for a one-time fee of $125.00 and receive a one-year warranty on the CableCARD from the manufacture so you never have to worry about rental fees again!
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This assumes that your request for a CableCARD results in something besides a blank stare, followed by "what's a cable card?"
Must be a racket. (Score:2)
When I was a computer savvy high school student back in 1994, I was fed up with having to lug 60 pounds of books to and from school every day (we had lockers, but weren't allowed to use them). It seemed like a really trivial concept to provide PDF documents of the books to those students who opted in. Hand me a CD at the beginning of the term and be done with it.
Here we are, some 20 years later, and the idea has still never been done in a reasonable way. The only logical conclusion is that educators are si
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Using technology is not a good idea, because it's fragile.
Students are not careful with their material, so paper books are much more robust than LCD screens.
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I would imagine most teachers wouldn't want to be staring at a sea of laptop lids and backlit faces.
PDF books might make sense in a computer class where there is already a screen in front of you, but in my experience, people tend to goof-off and not pay attention when they have their laptop in front of them.
Some of the classrooms at my college have windows in the back of the room, facing the hallway. Every time I walk past one of those rooms, every single laptop screen has facebook on it, while the teacher
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Sure, okay. Granted, when I had the idea, you could still register pretty much most generic nouns as a domain name, though, what's to stop a student from just printing out the few pages they might need in class? That way you could take notes on the material itself without having to worry about paying for the book.
Universities have to enable this (Score:2)
It's the universities and teachers who choose what books the students must use. They could:
1) Boycott this publisher.
2) Act indifferently.
3) Enthusiastically join with this publisher.
Follow the money. I'm guessing it will be 2) or 3) above, depending on the deal the publisher strikes with the university.
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It's the universities and teachers who choose what books the students must use.
When and where I went t school, the universities and teachers couldn't tell you that you had to use any book. They would tell you which book covered the curriculum as taught, and you were free to pick any book you wanted that could ensure that you got the questions right. That would normally be the recommmended books, but some chose to go with 1-2 year old books to save money, and some who took the class just to get a rubber stamp on what they already knew, went bookless.
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mmm, I think I bought one textbook (and a few books on techincal subjects not directly related to my degree) during my whole time as an undergrad in the UK (electronic systems engineering at manchester), between good quality lecture handouts and a good library buying books just wasn't needed most of the time.
Nothing new (Score:3)
extra douchey (Score:2)
I remember this scam... (Score:2)
When I was a student there was sadly no such thing as pirated books. What was really infuriating was that each class would require you to buy 4 or 5 books. You'd take the class and only open 1 or 2! And then you'd find out that one of the books was authored by your professor!
I quickly learned not to buy any of the books. The first day the professor would ask us to take it out I said "opps! forgot that one in my dorm!" share with someone the first day and pick it up on the way to my dorm. I recommend this st
Scripts and scores for musicals are the same way (Score:3)
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.
errr... what about the $200? (Score:2)
Is that like a renting fee?
It Really Takes a Lot of Nerve (Score:2)
Fortunately for you, most of you have never been in law school (I like to tell prospective law students that there are more amusing prisons in the mountains of Peru.). So you have had no reason to look at a law school casebook.
The name casebook distinguishes them from textbooks used by students in other fields. A casebook consists mostly of the reports of the decisions of courts (most often appellate courts) in actual decided cases. The case reports (thus the name cases) are usually edited to remove materia
Re:University is just a market anyhow (Score:5, Insightful)
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 $25K a year, 5 times the price? Something is wrong here.
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That's why I am a fan of this idea:
http://business.time.com/2013/... [time.com]
Please don't turn this into some giant ad hom against Warren, stick with the idea.
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Ouch!
I paid ~200$/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 int
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$100K for a 4 year degree is a cheap school now. Take a look at college ROI charts [payscale.com]. Top schools can easily hit people with a bill over $200K today.
Re:What happens if... (Score:5, Funny)
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...
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like the cable box that will be $699 a book.
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I see a trip to the custom stationary store to fix that one, assuming a photo copier wouldn't work...Assuming you could find similar paper....
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I had a prof like that too... although he didn't try to claim that the blank book was a textbook, but a notebook. Three times through the semester, he wanted to see our notes, and he graded them.
And at least it didn't cost very much... way less than $10, which itself is more than an order of magnitude less than what I'd spend on books for most of my other courses.
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So you had a teacher that not only required you to take notes (which is pretty rare already) but required them to be in his special notebook?
What happened if you didn't take notes, or used a different notebook?
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If I had a teacher try something like that I would immediately complain to the administration.
If that didn't work, I would start counterfeiting his "textbook" and giving it away to all his students.
It's not copyright infringement if there is no content to copy. Even the teacher's name on the cover is fair game, since you can't copyright a name (you can only trademark it, and that costs money, unlike copyright)
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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 ca
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They say that you can mark it, highlight it, etc. But unless someone is going to put bookmarks, post-its, and highlighting in the electronic text in EXACTLY the same spots as you, the electronic version is not as good of a reference item as the text that you used to learn the material in the manner that works best for you.
--The FNP
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So they are "leasing" information that is already public domain? how is that even legal?
That's like some random person charging admission to a public park