Pearson Says Blockchain Could Make It Money Every Time E-Books Change Hands (bloomberg.com) 123
The chief executive officer of Pearson, one of the world's largest textbook publishers, said he hopes technology like non-fungible tokens and the blockchain could help the company take a cut from secondhand sales of its materials as more books go online. From a report: The print editions of Pearson's titles -- such as "Fundamentals of Nursing," which sells new for $70.88 -- can be resold several times to other students without making the London-based education group any money. As more textbooks move to digital, CEO Andy Bird wants to change that. "In the analogue world, a Pearson textbook was resold up to seven times, and we would only participate in the first sale," he told reporters following the London-based company's interim results on Monday, talking about technological opportunities for the company. "The move to digital helps diminish the secondary market, and technology like blockchain and NFTs allows us to participate in every sale of that particular item as it goes through its life," by tracking the material's unique identifier on the ledger from "owner A to owner B to owner C," said Bird, a former Disney executive.
Avast ye mates (Score:5, Interesting)
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The Right to Read [gnu.org] has never been more relevant.
That’s why it’s called a sale (Score:5, Insightful)
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Some textbooks already come with online adjuncts as a way to limit resale value.
Which should be highly illegal.
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Of course, providing updates to textbooks is a good idea, right?
Reminder, this is about E-BOOKS, not printed books, which are 100% online - what are you even selling when you sell an "e-book"?
Thats like selling songs out of your iTunes library...
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Of course, providing updates to textbooks is a good idea, right?
Yes ... If those updates are actually updates to the material, and not hostile like changing the order of the chapters or changing the end-of-chapter exercises to screw over the used market.
what are you even selling when you sell an "e-book"?
The same thing that was sold to me when I bought it. Why should the doctrine of first sale go out the window just because the book is digital.
Thats like selling songs out of your iTunes library...
Which should be no different than selling a used CD.
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If they want to limit resale then lower the price so a resale is much less attractive;
Or make each book available as a "monthly subscription".
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To sell a "used" e-book, you have to buy it back. Why not simply lower the price to equal the original price minus the buy-back price and time-limit access to the book for whatever period is appropriate, and stop this silly "used e-book" charade?
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Agreed. Why I'd like to know is why so many people here are so hot to defend that shitty practice.
Re:That’s why it’s called a sale (Score:4, Insightful)
Monthly subscription would drastically reduce their revenue too, I presume. Imagine:
* 4 people getting together to get a 4-month subscription for a course.
* People only paying for the book during the last month of the course.
Fundamentally, they're also trying to play nice with the college bookstores, which get a cut of the profit in exchange for using that publisher's curriculum. If the deal isn't agreeable, there are other publishers more than happy to undercut them for a foot in the door. It's all a racket designed to counteract the loss of physical book sale revenue to the schools.
The answer here, of course, is to strip the DRM from all their overpriced crap.
Half the point of a college course is getting a reference book you can use going into the future. I still have many of mine - the useful ones. I still use them.
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It's all a racket designed to counteract the loss of physical book sale revenue to the schools.
Their physical books were a racket too. Obviously new textbooks need made when new knowledge is available, but they made an artform out of obsoleting older editions as quickly as possible.
Re:That's why it's called a sale (Score:2)
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* 4 people getting together to get a 4-month subscription for a course.
Even Netflix can stop that one. Tie the subscription to the specific iPad using DRM, and only allow the subscription to moved a different device a limited number of times per month.
People only paying for the book during the last month of the course.
They already have a solution for this with physical books - Provide online resources with the subscription that are necessary to submit homework which will be graded
Despite any initial lo
Re:That’s why it’s called a sale (Score:5, Insightful)
We are talking about e-books, not physical textbooks.
Every e-book textbook I've seen has DRM.
How can an owner "resell" their license to the book WITHOUT the publisher noticing the DRM change?
And I don't understand the value proposition of selling "used" e-books from the publisher's perspective - it is identical to a "new" e-book textbook, just older. All we're talking about is monetizing the long tail of e-book textbooks.
If Pearson wants to get a taste of the used e-book market (whatever in the hell that is), they just need to offer to "buy back" your used e-book and then resell it to another buyer.
OMG, I just realized what they are doing - by reselling "used" ("old", or "already sold") e-books they can keep 100% of the revenue, since the underlying book has already paid the author! A "used" e-book is an e-book you don't have to pay the author for - they were paid with the first sale...
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Good catch. I didn't notice that author screwing tidbit.
The whole idea reeks of publisher propaganda. How glibly they talk of reselling, of things that are not scarce. Trying to hoard knowledge. Trying to control, for profit, access to knowledge that they had little to nothing to do with discovering. Imply that college students would all be thieves of knowledge, though the purpose of college is the passing on of knowledge. We consider that a big part of education, and it is they who are committing hi
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OMG, I just realized what they are doing - by reselling "used" ("old", or "already sold") e-books they can keep 100% of the revenue, since the underlying book has already paid the author! A "used" e-book is an e-book you don't have to pay the author for - they were paid with the first sale...
Excellent point. I suspect authors will want a piece of teh action as well if that happens; and textbook vendors will fight them because, well, profit.
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If the bookseller wants a piece of this action, then they should buy it back from me and resell it on a used market
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If the bookseller wants a piece of this action, then they should buy it back from me and resell it on a used market (this is exactly what many car dealers do, for example).
They used to. When I was in school, the independent bookstores had a thriving used market. Some till do, but with teh advent of B&N running school bookstores that seems to be dying out.
This is just greed (Score:5, Insightful)
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How is this not a grift? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gosh, you get a cut of every private sale? Your books are already criminally over-priced, with marginal changes to each volume requiring the student to buy the latest copy every year. And that's not enough of a racket for you.
Re:How is this not a grift? (Score:4, Funny)
It's the grift that keeps on grifting.
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The universities do it for the kickbacks from the publishers.
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Re:How is this not a grift? (Score:5, Interesting)
I say this as someone who in the mid-to-late 90s had textbooks that still had the USSR on maps.
Speaking of this, I wanted to buy my young daughter a globe to get an idea of the scope of the world and the countries in it. You can't buy one with Taiwan. Except where it's either labelled Taiwan (R.O.C.) or Republic of China and colored the same color as mainland china. Guess where all the globes are made.
I haven't ever found one yet.
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I don't recall what the globe I had growing up said about Taiwan. The USSR was on it. Kind of wish I'd saved it now. I wonder how many schools still have those old maps and globes. I recall them making fun of this on the Simpsons and taking it back to ridiculous extremes for comedic effect and having Prussia on the map.
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Not this again: there is no country called Taiwan - Taiwan is just the name of the island. There are two governments that claim to be the legitimate government of all of China: the People's Republic of China (PRC) government in Beijing, and the Republic of China (ROC) government in Taipei. In practice, the PRC controls the mainland and the ROC controls Taiwan and a few other islands. But, according to their constitutions, both governments claim all of China as their territory.
The reason for this situatio
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I'm aware of all that. I did misremember the names a bit. I'm pretty sure they actually said Taiwan (PRC) or some variation of Taipei.
But after going back to the Amazon reviews it was also that they included parts of India, disputed islands and more also colored as part of China.
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Did they call it "Chinese Taipei" like the ROC team is called at the Olympics? That's a name used to pacify the PRC.
Arunchal Pradesh is claimed by both India and China. Most atlases made outside of India and China use dotted lines for the borders. Indian and Chinese atlases mark it as part of India or China, respectively.
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Well she sneaks around the world from Kiev to Carolina,
She's a sticky-fingered filcher from Berlin down to Belize,
She'll take you for a ride on a slow boat to China,
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
Steal their Seoul in South Korea, make Antarctica cry Uncle,
From the Red Sea to Greenland they'll be singing the blues,
Well they never Arkansas her steal the Mekong from the Delta,
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
She go from Nashville to Norway, Bonaire to Zimbabwe,
Chicago to Czechoslova
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Your books are already criminally over-priced, with marginal changes to each volume requiring the student to buy the latest copy every year.
Some schools are pretty good about this, though. I remember at City College of San Francisco, you could often pick between maybe three versions of a textbook. Usually, the key was that they wouldn't grade homework; you just needed to learn enough to pass the tests. So what I'm saying is that if each incoming class really has to buy the latest, full-price version of the book, your school is complicit in screwing you.
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Ungraded homework? Sounds like a very rigorous institution.
The issue is teachers like getting free textbooks, and they change textbooks year after year for no reason other than they choose to, and/or the publishers stop offering older editions of their text books.
I thought e-books were supposed to be cheaper, and that teachers would be able to "assemble" their own, custom textbook by selecting chapters from the best books and licensing them for the students... I guess we underestimated how lazy teachers wer
some teachers write the book and get an kick back (Score:3)
some teachers write the book and get an kick back per sale
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That kick-back is usually called a royalty payment and is due generally to any author of any recently-written book. That's how authors get paid for their writing in our current world.
Calling it a kick-back is disingenuous.
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The dark side of tech (Score:5, Insightful)
Giving crappy people more tools to be crappier
said Bird, a former Disney executive. (Score:5, Insightful)
Academic publishing is a disaster (Score:5, Interesting)
From the student side, the books are often overpriced (especially in the US). The restrictions on e-books are crazy, often involving crappy, proprietary DRM.
The thing is: it's also awful on the author side. I have a friend who recently published a book with a major publisher. His "editors" were all outsourced to India, of limited competence, barely spoke the language the book is written in, and had a horrible response time. Getting the book published took nearly a year longer than it should have, and was such a frustrating experience that he has decided "never again". Which is a shame, because it's a really good book.
We need a new model for textbooks. One that let's authors share their knowledge, for a fair price, without greedy-but-useless intermediates.
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My advice..
Write the book, or most of it, first. Then engage a publisher.
My first book I did it that way. It's way easier once you have most stuff typed in and they don't get to form independent opinions.
My second book I started with a contract (they were hot to trot given my first book), I'm still writing. The process is a PITA.
If you're having trouble getting it published, you're writing the wrong type of book. Write a techy book and you'll be fighting publishers off with a stick.
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Write the book, or most of it, first. Then engage a publisher.
How come we need publishers anyways? It's possible to write text yourself and get it printed.. or in the case of an eBook; there are numerous options such as directly submitting to the Kindle store, or eCommerce websites where you can list a product with a digital deliverable that gives customers a download link once they've paid.
Re:Academic publishing is a disaster (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a choice with trade offs,
A publisher will (or should)
Proof Read
Provide an editor who can add value
Get the physical book made
Get ISBN numbers allocated
Distribute the book to online sellers (Principally Amazon in the US).
Provide tax documentation
You can do this yourself and self publish, but the value depends on your goals for the book.
In my case I wasn't expecting a huge audience and wasn't expecting to make a lot of money.
I wanted to:
1) Provide a baseline terminology for the technology. It's all over the place. This is showing partial success.
2) Provide an understanding of correct test methods. Again, partial success. Some papers still get it wrong but some have fixed it.
3) Propagate the correct conceptual framework for how RNG's work, fail or succeed. This seems to have worked well. The book is frequently referenced in academic papers.
4) Raise my profile as the expert in the field. This definitely worked.
5) Generally help you produce a higher quality product.
So two years of weekends spent writing, in return for career success and personal satisfaction.
If I wanted to make more money, I would have self published, kept all the money but sold fewer books overall.
In practice the book was instrumental in getting a significant promotion at work and so yielded more money that way.
There would have been a lot more work if I didn't have a publisher.
I thought long and hard about which way to go. In going with a publisher, you have to also go along with the dropping of some control over the product and be ok with it. I concluded I didn't care and I wanted the book out there and available more than I wanted complete editorial control.
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Why do you need an employer? You don't, many people don't have one. But a lot of people prefer to have someone take care of the taxes, accounting, licenses, coordination, planning, etc.
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Doesn't matter. Universities can't monetize that in $500/semester extra revenue per student; they won't use those books as a result.
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It does matter.
I regularly teach graduate level courses and make a concerted effort to use freely available or very cheap used materials. I love the OpenIntro books and use them when I can.
One of the professors I regularly work with has written two books and made them freely available (markdown source too) via github.
This is a relatively large public university and nobody bothers us about the texts we choose for our courses.
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Yeah... how about no? (Score:4, Insightful)
He left out the part where he explains how anyone but him has any interest in this happening.
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He left out the part where he explains how anyone but him has any interest in this happening.
They also left out if the original authors would benefit.
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Guess we found blockchain's killer app (Score:2)
Seems that a digital WriteOnceReadMany public ledger is pretty good for tracking ownership of various digital products. Even better that a bunch of other people are willing to run all the infrastructure in the name of chasing block bounties.
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Selling used e-books... How does that happen WITHOUT the publisher's permission and the ability to transfer DRM/license to a new owner?
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Lol right. I doubt very much Pearson would enjoy paying for transactions on a proof of work blockchain. They already mantain a conventional registration system. This is just some exec blabbing about the new hotness that's just a series of biz-speak words he's heard other people use.
I work in K-12, and let me just say... (Score:4)
There's a special place in hell that awaits Pearson executives.
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Follett at least in the past made there sales reps rent there laptops / software / etc for commission only work.
Shear arrogance... (Score:4, Insightful)
What makes them think they have the right to derive more profit from something that they've already sold?
You sold it to someone, it is theirs to do with as they please - wether they choose to resell it, keep it, or even burn it.
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You sold it to someone, it is theirs to do with as they please
Unfortunately No.. These days, according to the digital content stores - when you "purchase" an eBook: You are not actually buying that book.. Instead, you are buying a License to use it with their service in the form that it is provided to you for solely your own personal use (and with some other restrictions).
This technically allows the publisher to Revoke your purchase at any time by disabling the book, because you haven't purchased the b
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It's an e-book - just try and sell it without their assistance...
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You sold it to someone, it is theirs to do with as they please - wether they choose to resell it, keep it, or even burn it.
You "own" it the same way you "own" the music you bought in the Apple iTunes store - can you sell your old Sir MixAlot singles to someone else now that you've "outgrown" his music?
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Read the Harry Potter books. This is precisely the way goblins think about economy.
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The DMCA trumps the First Sale Doctrine because of how it was (intentionally) structured. You can't legally break the DRM, so you are completely at their mercy. You didn't buy anything - you paid for a limited license.
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Shouldn't that be "sheer arrogance" or is this an attempt at subverting expectations?
First Sale Doctrine (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see how this would survive a legal challenge - the publisher has no rights to profit from a resale, nor restrict it in any way. This is well established in the United States, and I think most other countries have something similar.
It goes back to the 1908 copyright law, established as 17 U.S.C. 109(a). To wit:
"Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106 (3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord."
There's no clear law on digital assets in the US, but it generally understood that as long as the "original" is what is being transferred and the initial purchaser no longer retains access to that, the the doctrine will apply. It hasn't been tested in US courts, but the E.U. has defended this clearly.
This is also why "tricks" such as licensing and such are employed rather than purchase agreements. As a licensee the laws under ownership no longer apply, and only those covered under the license apply. We're quickly moving to a world where you own nothing but some restricted rights of use.
So, do you own that book, or just the license to read it? It will matter - Libraries already are struggling with this today, and it won't get better for the consumer.
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Easy, they don't sell you a textbook. They instead license to you some software with the textbook content, and the right to access the content for the period of the license. First sale law avoided.
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They tried the "we're not selling you the book, we're only selling you a license" dodge back in the beginning of the 20th century. It was such an obvious attempt to game the system that the courts threw it out so hard it bounced twice. Which is not, alas, a guarantee that they won't get away with it this time. "It's software, that makes it different."
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They'll put some animated diagrams and shit in it and say it's transformative, if necessary. I suspect it won't be, though.
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They tried the "we're not selling you the book, we're only selling you a license" dodge back in the beginning of the 20th century. It was such an obvious attempt to game the system that the courts threw it out so hard it bounced twice. Which is not, alas, a guarantee that they won't get away with it this time. "It's software, that makes it different."
And, in fact, it did turn out different - in Autodesk v. Vernor [wikipedia.org], the 9th circuit determined that purchasers of AutoCAD were licensees, not owners, and therefore the first sale doctrine didn't apply and those licenses could not be resold.
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I guess this all boils down to the sales agreement. I don't know that my digital books didn't come with a "unlimited lease" clause that would prevent reselling.
I think it's absolutely bullshit and should be illegal but that doesn't mean such language may does not exist on the sale of digital assets.
All the more reason to shun digital ownership (you don't) and get a physical copy.
Re:First Sale Doctrine (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see how this would survive a legal challenge - the publisher has no rights to profit from a resale, nor restrict it in any way. This is well established in the United States, and I think most other countries have something similar.
Except we've pretty much exempted e-books from First Sale Doctrine already.
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So, do you own that book, or just the license to read it? It will matter
It ought to be both - Selling a license should compel publishers to deliver the copy of the work with the sale that can be used with that license and becomes property of the licensee, Because it's impossible to exercise a License without possessing a copy of the work.
This ought to be some sort of warranty issue with the way Items are presented for sale on websites.. "Fine print" should Not be able to convert something described
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Yeah, the DMCA is an intentional end-run about this and it's terrible that it passed in the form that it did. Yes, you are legally entitled to sell your copy of an encrypted ebook. But the new owner can't use it in that form without violating the DMCA, so it doesn't really matter.
Then there's the ebook store. If you give away your "only" copy, the ebook store would have to revoke your access to downloading it again to fulfill the rest of the obligation.
Re: First Sale Doctrine (Score:2)
And none of that money... (Score:5, Insightful)
And none of that money would go to the author(s).
I don't write textbooks (well, I wrote a couple of computer manuals back in the day), I write fiction, but I have no problem with e.g. used bookstores reselling my books, so long as they're passing on the original copy.
Once again (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just another reason why real books are better than digital. In addition to usual reasons such as not needing a battery or worrying about running out of power, a physical book is yours to do with as you want.
If I want to loan my book to someone, I can do it without anyone else knowing about it.
If I want to sell my book to someone I can do so without anyone else knowing about it.
If I want to give my book to someone, such as for a gift or as a thank you, I can do so without anyone else knowing about it.
Once I have purchased that book I am free to do with it as I want short of claiming I wrote it or republishing it. Once I own it, the publisher no longer has any say in what I do with that physical book.
This proposal, if implemented, will absolutely kill book sales at libraries.
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Turns out companies going out of business and taking my access away is more likely then more home burning down. Who knew.
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A fair chance if your house burns down you lose your license keys, or whatever digital media tools you relied on. Maybe not, if you're marginally competent at handling that stuff.
Of course, ethical e-publishers could restore your access. For a fee. You might be able to buy those lost paper books, maybe even at a discount from original price.
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You mean Kindle books.
So long as you keep your Amazon account active, they persist.
Unless Amazon removes them, which they have in the past, for disclosed reasons including lost rights due to litigation, expired rights that were not permanent from the owners, and disputes with other rights holders.
More than 99% of Kindle books are licensed, not owned or conveyed.
Piped that for you. (Score:2)
| sed 's/blockchain/an exceedingly-inefficient public read-only database/g'
"Participate in" (Score:2)
what?!?! Share Books!!! NEVER! (Score:2)
rent a book (Score:2)
If you rent a book, the landlord might evict you.
What value are they adding to the transaction (Score:2)
you already sold that license on the first sale (Score:2)
you already sold that license on the first sale so there is nothing more you are entitled to in the resale.
well, you could get a cut on the cost of the digital support of the copy, which is virtually zero. enjoy.
also, you are full of shit, mr bird.
One account per textbook? (Score:2)
Unless the publishers time-limit access to the textbooks (or lock them to a specific piece of hardware, which would cause all sorts of mayhem), the solution is simply to use a separate account for every book.
Then you can sell the account instead of the book. Joke's on the publisher then, because the digital book won't degrade over time like the physical one would (except for the gratuitous revisions they make to force people to buy new versions every year).
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They're generally readable in any browser. Screenshot each page, and you end up with a folder of screenshots that you can feed into a PDF converter.
Then just send the PDF to everyone in the class for their share of the cost of the account (in cash) plus a bit extra since you did the work.
Userfriendly.org (Score:2)
Userfriendly.org once had some beautiful comics about this type of behaviour.
I remember one where the "Death" guy came to one of the engineers about not having paid for software. The engineer retorted with "But I already paid!", upon which the Death guy ominously reacted with "Yes, but only once..."
That was during the start of the subscription model hell.
First Sale Doctrine? (Score:4, Insightful)
To get around that, perhaps Pearson only licenses their electronic books rather than selling them. If so, the CEO shouldn't be using the word "sale" in the context of this blockchain idea.
Maybe copyright terms are different in other countries? Still the US is a pretty big market.
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To get around that, perhaps Pearson only licenses their electronic books rather than selling them. If so, the CEO shouldn't be using the word "sale" in the context of this blockchain idea.
Shhh... Never interrupt someone when they're making a mistake. As long as Pearson continues to refer to the transaction as a 'sale' or a 'purchase' of the e-book, they're prevented from implementing this by the First Sale Doctrine.
Pearson develops reputation for being cockwombles (Score:2)
"we would only participate in the first sale" (Score:2)
Properly so!
https://www.justice.gov/archiv... [justice.gov]
The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner. The right to distribute ends, however, once the owner has sold that particular copy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The rationale of the doctrine is to prevent the copyri
OK, let's talk (Score:2)
I find myself amused and appalled by the aggrieved tone of the quote. You don't get a cut of resale? Cry me an ocean. Neither does any other manufacturer of any product. That's how we treat literally everything one buys (as opposed to rents). You sell it to me and I can do what I wish, including resell it.
But OK, let's talk. You want a cut of resale price, which means I'm getting less when I resell it. Fine. Cut the original price since I'm buying a less valuable product. If not then, no, I'm not interested
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Or you buy it from a bookstore, and then when your younger friend starts, give it to them, as you've passed the year and moved on to a more advanced textbook, nobody makes a profit, and society gets another nurse.
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Once again, how did the author profit from the first sale? And how often do they profit from subsequent sales?
In music and theater, this is sometimes termed 'royalties'.
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Uhm... I'm guessing the Publisher will charge like 80% or more of the cost of the original book at resale, there will be no more than a trifle for the person reselling, and you could get at most a 10 - 20% discount, because why wouldn't they?
The resell is competing against them selling for 100% price. The only way the resale makes economic sense for the publisher to support is if It is causing people to buy the
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They can do that now without blockchain.
All they need is to ensure that it can only have online access and can't be cached locally.
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WTF? Textbooks aren't the reason college graduates cant pay their student loans, that's just stupid.
Tuition is $20-30K/semester at many universities, and text books add what, $500-1,000/semester, depending on subject matter?
You are barking up the wrong tree.
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