My wife is in school now and it seems that the publisher uses a unique ISBN for each school the books are marketed to. This is to hamper inter-scholastic used book trading. Her accounting bundle of one text and one workbook were $190. Overall, she spent over $600 on textbooks we tried to find online and couldn't. And its not just that the books are expensive, but they aren't that great quality either. She is required to have the text and do problems from them, but for one of her classes, is getting more value out of a little $10 reference book than the $125 text book.
When I was in school some of the (mostly) foreign students got a nifty idea.
1.) Pool money together to buy the book.
2.) Photocopy it -- this is the tricky part. nowadays we can scan it. The students would take turns scanning in the book. photocopying it will cost $20 or so for a few hundred pages.
3.) Return the book and disperse money back to people in step 1
"... 1.) Pool money together to buy the book. 2.) Photocopy it -- this is the tricky part. nowadays we can scan it ..."
In most cases you didn't even have to buy the book, simply look it up in the library or class copies. Simply borrow the book and copy it. It was laborious and I didn't do this for all classes but some texts are simply not worth purchasing for the value they give. Others are priceless.
"... Reproduction rights? ... This is like someone else borrowing your code, copying it and using it himself or selling it to third parties without paying you. ..."
In an academic context where I learn from books that are hard to get, expensive and I only use small portions or where this is a secondary text? Now if I was using ideas from textbooks to make serious money then I'd probably purchase the book. Two completely different scenarios.
