This is utterly crazy. One hopes that students will realize the foolishness of this strategy and stick to "old fashioned" textbooks that are far more user-friendly and enduring than this half-brained DRM scheme.
-rick http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=4658 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. ...and the PDF Press Release from the Publishing Company: http://www.digitaltextbooks.net/cgi-dts/pressrelease.pdf You are a subscribed member of the infowarrior list. Visit www.infowarrior.org for list information or to unsubscribe. This message may be redistributed freely in its entirety. Any and all copyrights appearing in list messages are maintained by their respective owners.
