With Amazon’s announcement about the Kindle Textbook Rental program, it makes one wonder how many basement hackers are gearing up to swipe content and begin a new career. It isn’t that I don’t think it is a good idea, I think it is a great idea. Besides the whole saving a tree benefit, textbook costs are a big black hole of which you never get a return. Even reselling books is pennies on the dollar and usually you are stuck with them. Almost everyone has a box of textbooks tucked away in their storage area because you just can’t stand the thought of tossing thousands of dollars worth of books. Instead, you move them from location to location, thinking someday you will find someone who can use them.
I digress. Textbook rentals and note-syncing are possibly the best argument for e-book digital rights management, or DRM. Only with DRM can books and metadata sync across devices; only with DRM are e-book rentals really possible.
This interesting topic was found on EpiCenter in their article, “Summer Semester: A Quick Guide To Kindle Rentals and the World of Digital Textbooks.”
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
