Quote:
Originally Posted by bbusybookworm
....
Most text for education is not avaliable in digital format. What little is, is in PDF, and that too iften DRM'd or password protected. Even The Illiad, which appears to provide a resonable PDF experience is not that great, and the price premium is huge.
....
|
Well the Iliad price can only be categorized in a certain context. For general literature sure it is expensive. However, for students paying as much as $100/book it is only about 8 books worth!!! So for edu market it is probably not that expensive.
DRM is the problem, indeed. However, poor students are the most productive copy protection breakers. When I was a student I had no means to buy any expensive software then sold (things like programming languages and such). I did purchase Borland's stuff like Turbo Pascal that was reasonably priced.
So many of these overpriced DRMs textbooks will be copied one way or another. Thus a student can easily purchase Iliad when it pays for itself after a single year worth of text books.