This is not really just one tangent, but really a series of them that spurred on from one single stream of thought. With Amazon and Macmillan recently going at it, there has been a definite feeling that the power is now held by the publishers. Macmillan has been spearheading the charge to return to something akin to the UK's Net Book Agreement (no, not talking about small laptops). From 1900 to 1997, in the UK, book sellers were not allowed to sell books for anything below cover price, and if they attempted to, they would have all books by that publisher removed from their store. It was later thrown out due to being non-competitive. In order to get some of the publishers on the iPad bandwagon, Apple offered them the ability to more or less set their own prices. With the publishers being upset at Amazon offering eBooks at prices cheaper than what they feel the books should be marked, and this reminder of how the UK founded operated for nearly a century, Macmillan made it clear that they wished a similar agreement with Amazon. Now how firmly they made this request is up for debate, but obviously it was firm enough for Amazon to pull every Macmillan book from their site. This only lasted for a few days before Amazon saying that it infamously "capitulated" to it. (By the way, Webster's defines it as "to surrender after negotiation of terms" or "to cease resisting").
With this going on, the amount of power publishers once had and seem to be regaining reminds me of how much they already wield in the educational text arena. As you probably already know, school books are insanely expensive. I was looking at some of the books I need for this semester, and the cheapest of the lot is a collection of mostly public domain writings, for $70. They collected stories for free, printed them, and charge $70 to students who mostly are forced to buy it since they are typically unable to find out the contents of the book until after purchasing it. For my math class, the book is $170, and despite already having the previous edition which contains the same text, I am forced to buy this new one. After reviewing, the only apparently difference is that they changed up the order of the problems, so what was #21 on page 304, is now #28 on page 304. The "meat" of my old book is now useless.
As most of you would know, I am a proponent of the DRM-free movement. While I understand that content owners wish to protect their property, we as the consumers have rights too that must be respected. DRM inherently neglects the rights of the user, by limiting what the user can do, despite what is legal for the user to do. When I was looking at purchasing this semester's books, some offered an eBook option. Upon looking at the available ebooks, I noticed they were all in differing propietary DRM formats. All of these formats required use of a reader produced by the DRM company, and could not be used in any other reader. Worst of all, was that despite the ebooks costing nearly as much as the paper copies, some had time limits. After a certain date following the purchase, these books were no longer readable. Have a few classes use the same book? SOL unless you want to repurchase it each semester. If I am paying them money, why should they tell me how long I can use it? Who is looking out after my rights?
