Remember Sandisk's BookLocker (http://www.sandisk.com/retail/booklocker.asp), the USB stick with integrated DRM for carrying electronic student textbooks, we mentioned (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3392) earlier this year? According (http://www.golem.de/0506/38923.html) to German Golem.de, the stick is now ready to hit the market under the name "FlashCP".

Based on the Cruzer Mini USB drive from SanDisk, the FlashCP is divided into two distinct memory areas: An open zone for the student's files, and a secure zone, which is used to store copyrighted content. The secure zone cannot be accessed by the student or operating system. Content is stored on a trusted server network using AES encryption. When the content is downloaded to a FlashCP device, it is encrypted with that device's unique hardware key. The server also keeps track of the number downloaded electronic textbooks. Publishers can get up to date reports on the number of electronic textbooks available and sold. When deployed at schools, school administrators and librarians can see how many books are in use and how many are available for lending to students.

Although yet another proprietary DRM is not really the stuff that my dreams are made of, at least in future our little tykes can bring home schoolwork without toting heavy books or knapsacks.

The thing is that the value of our text books are partly in that we can sell them to the next person who takes the class - if we don't need them for reference.

Are these DRMed eBooks going to be priced accordingly? Probably not. They will probably charge just as much as the dead-tree version.