E-book solution not as clear-cut as suggested

TO THE EDITOR:

The column in Friday’s edition of The Daily Tar Heel (“Download this,” Jan. 22) extolling the virtues of e-books missed some very crucial points. While e-textbooks might be cheaper up front, there are a lot of problems with the licensing of these books.

Amazon has shown in the past that even if you pay for the books, you don’t necessarily own them. Amazon forcibly removed George Orwell books from Kindles because of a licensing dispute.

Other routes are even less attractive. CourseSmart e-books only give a limited license to use their texts. Once the course is over, they take the text back so that a student can never again use it without paying for another license. There is no resell value. There is only the student, left with nothing. Not only that, but students have to download CourseSmart’s own software to even open the e-books.

New editions that come out every semester will not become a thing of the past with e-books.

The publisher will simply sell the new edition in e-book form, without any student recourse to sell older editions other than (ironically) Amazon. E-books have great potential, but don’t be fooled into thinking they are the beginning of the end for textbook publishers.



John O’Connor
Junior
Political Science