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DRM Lite for Electronic Textbooks
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sun Apr 23, 2006 03:32 PM
from the better-viewing-methods-needed dept.
from the better-viewing-methods-needed dept.
bcrowell writes "The New York Times reports that textbook publishers are backing off somewhat on the level of DRM used in the electronic editions of their textbooks. They no longer become unreadable after a certain amount of time, as in RMS's famous essay The Right to Read. Even so, most students aren't interested, because the books can't be sold back; the solution, however, may be to make it impossible to return printed books either. No mention in the NYT article of the steady progress being made by free books."
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Like New (Score:5, Insightful)
And even with a slight price difference, (poor) students will always be more inclined to purchase the used-but-as-good-as-new ebooks.
Re:Like New (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Like New (Score:3, Interesting)
Other than a lack of motivation, what's stopping people from buying (or borrowing a laptop with) someone's e-boo
Re:Like New (Score:3, Interesting)
The downside is that you might lose some formatting, and the quality of images decreases (think original = SVG; your scanned copy = crappy png
Re:Like New (Score:4, Funny)
Yep. Them OGR pro grams gork real food.
OCR for math (Re:Like New) (Score:3, Informative)
http://freshmeat.net/projects/ffes/ [freshmeat.net]
Not opensource AFAICT is Infty:
http://www.inftyproject.org/en/ [inftyproject.org]
William
Re:Like New (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no reason for that to be the case. Music, for instance, is trivially easy to copy, and yet purchases continue.
I can see a similar future
Re:Like New (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone
Re:Like New (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry publishers. (Score:3, Insightful)
(at least you have entertainment to fall back on)
Re:Sorry publishers. (Score:5, Insightful)
The thread is insane. It's like that spouse swap where they take two disfunctional families and swap the mother. Both families are screwed up but somewhere in the center is a happy median that's not so bad. But if you think that publishers will eventually say "you're right, we should give it away for free", you're absolutely mad. If writers had to work for free, I'm sure they'd prefer fishing.
On the other side of disfunctional is the professors who insist we buy $100 books that they don't even use. The first couple years of school is always about learning to wait a week to find out what books are actually required and hunt the used book store when they are. But telling the poorest population of a school to squeeze out that extra couple hundred bucks for crap is just cruel.
In the middle is somewhere normal. That's the key to this problem, not the overgeneralized ignorant comments like above.
Used book store (Score:4, Informative)
Personally I held onto most of my textbooks, they contain a lot of useful information that I actually refer to.
Many of my profs would make allowances for people using older versions of the textbook when the changes were small. Fortunately most of the new editions were significant improvements and worth it.
At the same time people complained about the ancient thermodynamics book we used.
Re:Used book store (Score:3, Informative)
Over here in the UK there are two types of textbooks; those that are specific to some course, becoming useless after you've finished it, and those that are more general and retain use as a reference af
Re:Used book store (Score:3, Interesting)
As a college student... (Score:5, Insightful)
More universities need to make things like MIT's OpenCourseWare [mit.edu], or better yet, work together to make one big system.
Also, The Right to Read is a great story -- and is becoming more real every day. Everyone ought to read it, because it doesn't just apply to textbooks, it applies to music, movies, and other media too. Pay special attention to the notes at the end; the summary of the current trends towards DRM is downright scary!
Re:As a college student... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:As a college student... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:As a college student... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been a faculty member for twenty-five years and I've never heard of such a practice. The professor has no business doing that. You should have filed a complaint with the administration.
Re:As a college student... (Score:3, Informative)
As a college professor.... (Score:5, Interesting)
There is considerably more difference between the books than just the homework problems. Part of the problem is the gratuitious shuffling of material within the text book. I'm a professor in Computer Engineering. For the past five years I've been using the 6th edition of one text book for my operating systems class. I have planned all of my lectures to more or less follow the text book so that the reading assignments for the students are clear. I make references to the examples in the text, and introduce new examples of my own.
Last spring the publisher issued a 7th edition. I took one look at the book and realized I would have to completely revamp my course.Material was presented in an entirely different order, and in some cases the presentation of the material was substantially different. I requested the bookstore to order the previous version (buy out the old stock). Unfortunatey, the publisher only shipped the new edition. I had explicitly filled out the form for the book store to buy back the previous edition. So I ended up with a class with mixed old and new editions. It turned out the be a mess. I kept the same outline of classes since most of the students had the old edition and I updated the reading lists on my course web site to give the page numbers for each class in both old and new editions. Even so I constantly got complaints from the new students about how they were constantly confused because I kept skipping arround in the text (which, from their perspective, I was). So now I face a dilemma. Since the balance will shift to more new editions (7) over old editions (6th), I have to spend many hours this summer revamping the course to match the new textbook. This will benefit the new book students and the students who buy the older book will be disadvantaged because they will have to jump all over the book. If I require the new book, then I get students like you who claim that the only reason I do this is because I'm in bed with the text book representative. If I allow the old book, then students will complain that I don't follow the textbook and that there is no point in buying it at all because it is too confusing. I'm damned if I do, and damned if I don't.
Absolutely not. I have never recieved any benefit from a publishing company other than the free copy of the book that they send when it first comes out. That free copy then becomes my reference copy if I choose to adopt the book. There is some revenue if the prof is the author of the book, but since my research area is not Operating Systems, it is unlikely that I will ever write an OS book. I would advise you to think before you make such claims, it makes you look like you really don't know what you are talking about.
Re:As a college professor.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As a college professor.... (Score:5, Funny)
I would suggest that you tell them to suck it up. If anybody is going to need to learn how to handle out-of-order execution, it's Computer Engineers, no?
Re:As a college student... (Score:3, Insightful)
My understanding of the process is that the p
Re:As a college student... (Score:4, Informative)
However, the books I have bought I wouldn't think of returning. Why would I want to sell the book back (for a small fraction of the cost) when I can keep it and refer to it later on in the future.
impossible to return books (Score:4, Informative)
Stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I won't pay a dime for an ebook in any format other than PDF (or an alternative that I can view/print/copy in Linux). If they insist on using a format that can only be viewed in Windows, I'll hang on to my money and snag a "cracked" version online (even if that means downloading a jpeg image of each page; I have a couple books like that!).
Bottom line: the people who don't want to pay will find a way not to. The people who do pay will start thinking twice before their next purchase, since they're basically paying to be inconvenienced.
Returning text books (Score:5, Insightful)
So I don't really see how the ability to return books is a big reason why readers prefer physical books over ebooks.
Re:Returning text books (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Returning text books (Score:3, Insightful)
What I would do is try to sell my books to another student, so they'd get it cheaper than buying it used from the bookstore, and I'd get more for it than selling it back to the bookstore.
I aced one math class us
Not even numerical analysis. (Score:3, Insightful)
Even that has not changed much in 30 years. Fortran 77 is still used and the techniques are the same as they were when Newton and
Re:Returning text books (Score:4, Interesting)
Why I don't use them (Score:4, Insightful)
~5000 hours of open courseware coming soon (Score:5, Informative)
They're working to release this as courses in Moodle format (which exports to IMS-LD) over the next year. Since these are "battleship"* lower division, high enrollment courses with top quality content, this may dramatically change the market of educational conten.
More: [open.ac.uk]
* Dr. Jason Cole, Keynote, Moodle Moot Savannah 2006
Basic textbooks should be free and electronic (Score:4, Insightful)
And I am aware there are open source style e-textbooks becoming available, and more power to them.
People always ask why there should be cheap, low power ebook readers. This is why. The world needs them to teach its children without popping for several thousands of dollars per student to enrich paper mills and book publishers. And there's the small matter of losing our forests to this idiocy. Global warming is caused by an overabundance of CO2; the solution is TREES, as many as we can plant. That, and not killing the microplants living on the surface of the world's oceans, which produce half of the photsynthesis activity, but I digress.
But we're cutting more down every year. More parking lots, more gated communities, more cattle grazing lands, nore and more books and newspapers and magazines and laser printer paper. We need green growing things, STAT. And ebooks. Screw the market, some things are more important than making Bill Gates or whomever is used to making money even richer. Mandate the things by law. We need to start making a lot of things mandatory by law with a view to surviving the upcoming weather changes.
We've no problem with volunteering our troops or people in other countries to die as a sacrifice. Will we even volunteer a small a thing as giving up our paper books to save the world, or is that too much for our hidebound conservative asses?
Skip the books and make your own notes (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, and this idea that selling revew copies raises prices? Nice try publishers (cheaper alternatives should lower prices, not raise them). Don't send out unsolicited review copies and then tell me how to use them if you don't like what it does to your profits. Because I will sell them at a big discount online.
Is this just an American problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
The rest of the time general texts, internet resources and lecture materials covered the gap... so what's the big problem elsewhere?
Re:No, it's a world wide problem. (Score:3, Informative)
from the looks of his homepage url it looks like he is here in the uk. We don't seem to h
I am a college professor (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My own horror story. (Score:3, Interesting)
Make the schools pay for the books. (Score:4, Interesting)
But why should students do this at all? As one law school textbook author has suggested, [nytimes.com] why not include the price of textbooks in tuition? As he notes, "It's easy for prices to drift upward when the person choosing the product doesn't really care how much it costs."
Yes, tuition would have to go up accordingly, but once the textbooks came out of the school's funds instead of the students', professors would have to justify their textbook recommendations, instead of putting down a bunch of "required texts" that they refer to only lightly, if at all. Perhaps if such a scheme was in place, schools would find that it is in their interest to push digital textbooks more aggressively to keep down the costs of maintaining an inventory of textbooks from semester to semester.
High cost of books? (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, when one thinks of a text or referece book, this represents an incredible amount of effort on the part of the writers and editors. Gettting everything right is hard. For examples, the cheaper computer books are full of significant errors and misprints. Even reilly has a tough time getting it perfect, and these are often mid priced books. I am just now reading a Ruby book from them and in the first few pages is a passage that is either awkwardly presented, or an example is missing. Sure, if I am just reading it for fun that is acceptable, but since I tend to be somewhat serious in my computer stuff, I want the real things. So I have little problem paying more for something that is correct. When I was working computers, $80 for a good book was nothing compared to what is saved me on my jobs.
Now as far as school is concerned there are three issues. First, the writers have to be paid. These are often proffesors that have a skill of writing things down in such a way that a student has a good chance of understanding what is going on. They also provide relevent problem sets with solutions. The publisher has to be paid, without whom we would not have a book, as someone probably had to front some money. We also need a store, so publishers can ship limited quantities of books to certain well known locations for students to buy.
Now, here is the rub. College textbooks are not neccesarily that expensive. As has mentioned, at least some of the books can be bought used and sold, whcih means that any one book, at least at the lower levels, is unlikely going to cost more than $50. Second, books can be shared. Find someone in to go halfsies. And third, I had very few proffesors that actually demanded and checked we had the most recent version of the book.
So, what can be done. I think the publisher should sell electronic versions of the books that expire after one year. The books should be 1/3 the cost of the orignal book. Second, the univsersity should be able to buy an affordable site license to the book so that it can be read on any library computer. Finally, the reissuing of books for the purpose of stopping reselling must be halted, though this may not be such a big issue as with reselling no student will be stuck with more than half the cost.
My gut feeling is that most of this has more to do with the expectation of the student rather than the cost of the books. Books represent an opportunity cost to most people, not an investment. I think when someone buys a book, they are thinking of the beer that they cannot afford. OTOH, when someone buy a bag of chips and a coke every day for a week, they do not think of the book they could have bought. School is about education, and sometimes we have to give something up to become educated. On problem I see with the modern compulsary public educational system is that they parent and kids expect everything to be given to them. Clothes, books, supplies, transportation. Now some of this is appropriate, and much is needded. However to be educated one needs to begin to take some responsibility and sacrifice at leat a little. If that measn that a student does not get a new clothes, or a car, or even prefered meal, perhaps at the college level that is ok.
One last thing. Some of the increase in books relate to student needs. For instance when i was in college, the Physics textbook transitions from a simple black and white print with line drawing. This was a cheap book to produce, and for the amount of information was very reasonable priced. However, presumable due the MTV generation, it became a much more expensive book with color drawing, color photos, and the like. There was no more physics in it, no better teaching, just fancier and more expensive graphics. Go figure. Students paid more money and perhaps sac
Re:High cost of books? (Score:3, Insightful)
When did you go to college? Most
Re:High cost of books? (Score:3, Informative)
10% goes to researchers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re-sell a new unlock key (Score:3, Insightful)
Impossible to sell (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, I bought an art history text book for $120(!). This was a brand new book, and its first semester in use at my school. Partway through that semester, the department decided they did not want to use the book anymore. Not only did we not use the book for anything in class or for homework, but nobody wanted to buy it - the university bookstore would of course not take it, and nobody else seemed to want it. I finally sold the book 3 years later, at like-new condition, on Half.com for a whopping $10!
It's only getting worse, as well. Publishers often make the textbooks incredibly flimsy, especially for classes with huge enrollment stats (read: 101 level electives in science and the like). My geology textbook, although uncharacteristically well-written and enjoyable to read, is very poorly constructed. The glossy pages get creased, folded, and torn with just the slightest page-flip, and the binding is already falling apart after light home use (I don't take it to campus). Very scary how much damage has been done to my book, considering how I go out of my way to treat all my books with care.
It's pretty obvious that many of these books are purposely designed to last barely the 16 weeks of one semester, to ensure that they are less appealing for second-hand sales.
All in all, a very disgusting racket. The university and the publishers work together to screw students at every turn. No surprises here, but things are definitely not getting any better...
ahh the US textbook issue (Score:3, Insightful)
can't your lecturers be bothered to provide sufficiant supporting rescources with thier courses?!
i'm coming to the end of my second year doing electronic systems engineering in the uk and so far my textbook count stands at
bought: 0
borrowed from my tutor: 1
borrowed from the library: about 4 or 5 not sure exactly
As a student, let me just say, Ebooks suck (Score:4, Informative)
Take code examples. Reading through explanation of the code in a real book, I can keep a finger at the location where the code is and occasionally glance back at it.
Scroll wheels, while a wonderful invention, do not offer near the usability.
Oh and lets not mention that, unless I have a dual monitor setup (like I can afford that, not to mention find space for it, since square footage is always at a premium), working on code while looking at examples in a book is nearly impossible.
Oddly enough, Unix man pages have none of these problems.
Oh, and ebooks suck for everything else academic in the world as well[1].
Math? I hardly need a monitor clogging up my workspace. When I do math, I push my screen back and pull out the pencil/paper.
Science? See notes about math. For higher level science classes that require working on a computer, see the notes about programming and e-books.
You want the ultimate evidence that e-books suck? I can pirate almost ANY required textbook for my courses in e-book format for free, but I still BUY the textbook. Ebooks suck that much.
Oh and lets not even mention accessibility. I have to be ON my computer? Or connected to the net and logged into a given website? Screw it. Give me a good ol' fashion bundle of dead paper.
Ah, being a CS senior, it is not like I use books anymore anyways. Google and Wikipedia have most of what I need, and most Unix things I can grab from man pages.
Given how textbook publishers (and school textbook stores) like screwing over the students, all of this DRM crud is not surprising though. Just this quarter, I found out that my university's book store is charging $80 for a book that Barnes and Noble has for $30.
[1]Giant unsubstantiated statement.
Article completely misses the point on prices. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask yourself this how many chemistry 101 texts do you actually need ? Pascal plus data structures, algorithmic complexity ? Electricity and magnetism ? Strength of materials ? These are subjects that have been done to death !!! What you have is a captive market in students, and professors looking to supplement their income.
Textbooks should be the cheapest books of a type you can by. The traditional markup on a paperback book is between 400 and 500 percent hardbacks are similar. The reason for this is that its hard to predict winners and books that dont sell are destroyed in mass. The process is called striping, the covers are removed from books and mailed back to the publisher. The reason books are stripped is because the publisher doesn't think it worth the shipping cost to have the book back.
Textbooks don't have the problems of regular books. A publisher knows in advance exactly how many books to print within a few percent. The bookseller if they know the books are going to be used next term can just keep them and adjust their order accordingly.
The only reason textbooks are pricey is that STUDENTS HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO BUY THEM and that publishers are willing to bribe professors to get their books used.
Just Compare the price of a schaums guide on a subject to the cost of the textbook.
Re:problems in educational publishing (Score:3, Funny)
Wasn't he a contemporary of Socrates? As I remember, he was known for taking a lot of time off from work.