Tuesday, August 9, 2005

a really dumb idea: Princeton and a few other schools will be supported heavily drm'ed textbooks next semester - a press release.[...]This uses the Adobe scheme, which is very restrictive. I don't know the specifics on this particular program, but others have books expire after a certain amount of time, limit usage to one cpu and have very limited printing capabilities (normally short selections).(Via tingilinde.) This seems to be designed for a view of college education as studying during the course to make the grade, and forgetting everything afterwards. In that model, old textbooks and notes are irrelevant. But it also reflects accurately the value of many course textbooks: useful for cramming, but useless for real learning. Many students want a textbook for comfort even when no textbook fits the professor's approach to the subject. But comfort textbooks are unlikely to be of any use afterwards. A cheaper, time-limited electronic text may be a better choice in those cases. However, tying rights to individual machines is a disaster. Student computers fail frequently. It's hard enough for a student to deal with the complications of losing their computer at the busiest time of the semester, let alone trying to transfer their rights to a replacement computer. Update: Peter Suber also comments on this. 5:26:02 PM