We admire Princeton not only for its beautiful campus and its myriad of creative minds, but also for its courage to embrace new technologies. Starting in the fall semester, the school will offer digital textbooks to its students in partnership with Missouri-based MBS Textbook Exchange Inc and various textbook publishers. The student only needs to pick up a barcoded textbook card (see attached screenshot), activate it at the cash register for usually 33 percent less than the new-book price, and
go online for a one-time download of the textbook in PDF format.
Alas, the e-books are encoded in DRM which pretty much spoils the potential success of this pilot project:
- Textbook is locked to the computer where you downloaded it from;
- Copying and burning to CD is prohibited;
- Printing is limited to small passages;
- Unless otherwise stated, textbook activation expires after 5 months (*gasp*);
- Activated textbooks are not returnable;
- Buyback is not possible.
If this hasn't scared you off already,
click here to read the rest in the press release.