We have a decision to make re books. Now that we have to stop cutting down trees for human consumption (make furniture, houses, paper, newspaper, book, etc), we cannot keep on printing books on paper, i.e., no more hardcover or softcover textbooks. What is left is e-books. Are we happy with e-books?
E-books will be the in-thing of the future and paper printed books will be something nobody would want to do anymore (which is sad).
Are we familiar with e-books? Can we cope?
What does it take to create e-books? Practically nothing except the usual copyright licensing, ISBN, hosting and online marketing. Students just need a PDF Reader program.
But we have a problem when things are made available electronically. And that is, only one medical student needs to purchase an e-book and that can be shared with 200-300 students in a class.
So, what is the point of publishing then? Even if publishers try to enforce a code on e-books (download and upload or further re-hosting), there are means and ways of hacking and getting past the problem.
Students stand to benefit from e-books but lecturers suffer since they cannot earn royalty from illegal replication of their e-books.
Any comments from students?
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