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We are thinking about buying new textbooks for our students. Is there an established practice of buying digital copies of books for students? I expect that e-books should generally be cheaper and we might also be able to save money on delivery.

If the school were to purchase 10 copies of some particular title (e.g., this condensed matter physics book), would it be possible to loan these e-books to one set of students for some period of time (2 years), and later use the same licensed e-books for the next set of students?

Edit

I'm asking is it legal to give the same e-book file to multiple student generations, given that the particular licensed copy is only used by one student at a time.

If it is legal, I'm interesting in the established procedure for doing so. Are there any special considerations for different vendors or for different e-book formats?

Buffy
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Adobe
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    This will depends on the country also. Many of the questions here implicitly assume the USA. It would be better to make that explicit. – Szabolcs Dec 11 '14 at 18:54
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    @Szabolcs: I think it depends on the producer of the e-book: wither it allows you to some how share a file with students or not. I don't think country interfere with this. – Adobe Dec 11 '14 at 19:37
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    Actually what is legal and what isn't depends on the laws of the country. The fact that a publisher doesn't want you to do something does not directly imply that it is illegal. There are many interesting examples in this article (which doesn't answer your question, just an interesting read). – Szabolcs Dec 11 '14 at 20:37

5 Answers5

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Generally speaking, when you purchase digital content, you are usually purchasing a license for said content. You will have to read the license to find out what the terms are. For example, here is the general license agreement for the Kindle store. It states that as a general rule:

Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense, or otherwise assign any rights to the Kindle Content or any portion of it to any third party

which would prohibit the scheme you suggest in the general case ("unless specifically indicated otherwise").

Similarly, for books sold in the Google Play store, the license terms include the following:

You may not lend or co-own any of your Books on Google Play purchases with another person.

The specific license terms can vary by content distributor, publisher, and individual book.

In cases where lending is permitted (e.g. some Kindle books), it's usually very restricted - for ordinary customers. Libraries can purchase licenses for some books that are more permissive for lending purposes. You should consult with your university librarians about what options are available to them.

You may be able to find an appropriate book for your purposes with a permissive license that allows lending (maybe even some open educational resources, if you're really lucky), but this will probably take some work.

ff524
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  • I see -- buying e-books is not an option. But StrongBad has a nice workaround: if one buys a 10 iPads or Kindles (cheaper!), and buys e-books for each device, one can lend a device to a student for a whole period of study. – Adobe Dec 11 '14 at 11:29
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    But libraries (more or less routinely) acquire licenses for electronic content. AFAIK these are special licenses, not the same as the end user license (if you hand out the content, you're not an end user after all). – cbeleites unhappy with SX Dec 11 '14 at 11:51
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    @Adobe Although I don't know about Apple's user agreement, this definitely not allowed under Amazon's (the ebook is owned by the buyer, not by the device, thus renting/distributing a kindle with the content would be the same as renting/distributing the ebook) – David Mulder Dec 11 '14 at 18:23
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One of the problems with how software is licensed, is it is not always clear when you are violating the EULA. After consultations with our library and IT department, we bought a large number of iPads that students can borrow from the school. We have loaded these iPads with a number of useful books, including our core textbooks. The IT and the library felt the issues with iPads were less than with lending the ebook directly or using laptops. The issue with laptops is that each user would generally have a separate and private account while for an iPad there is only one account. Your best bet is to talk to someone else and get them to sign off on it.

StrongBad
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    This is certainly an interesting way to be kept in mind. – cbeleites unhappy with SX Dec 11 '14 at 11:49
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    Neither librarians nor IT professionals are qualified to provide legal council. You should ask a lawyer instead. – Philipp Dec 11 '14 at 17:12
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    @Philipp while I am not a lawyer, while the university may be at risk, I am pretty sure the risk to an employee is limited to negligence. Having IT and the library sign off on the plan, makes whoever is responsible in the department (and I am not sure who that would be) not negligent. – StrongBad Dec 11 '14 at 17:32
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    Although I don't know about Apple's user agreement, this definitely not allowed under Amazon's (the ebook is owned by the buyer, not by the device, thus renting/distributing a kindle with the content would be the same as renting/distributing the ebook) – David Mulder Dec 11 '14 at 18:23
  • @DavidMulder there are a number of universities, big and small, doing this and I have never heard of one being sued. – StrongBad Dec 11 '14 at 21:18
  • @StrongBad Just because something isn't allowed doesn't mean that a company can risk the bad press of suing universities ;-) Especially if there is even a remote chance that their EULA would be found illegal (various countries have library related laws which right now do not cover electronical books, if however a judge would suddenly decide eletronical books are just normal books as well... that would open quite a storm) – David Mulder Dec 11 '14 at 21:43
  • @DavidMulder I'm not sure about your school but at mine the librarian is extremely well versed in the terms of the licensing for textbooks, including e-books. It never hurts to get a lawyer involved but I consider a librarian to be a professional (with formal education in the topic) who should be open enough to say when they are out of their depth. – earthling Dec 12 '14 at 09:05
  • @earthling Well, we have a 'couple' of ebooks as well, but those are purely scans of old books (a lot of which we own ourselves, but don't want students to touch) and some other resources we acquired though special partnerships (these ebooks are only accessible from workstations in the library and can not be used or accessed outside of the library in any way). And as far as librarians and their knowledge of copyrighting goes... I have so far been unimpressed (they were actually making invalid claims about public domain works for awhile)... but that might well be different at your institution. – David Mulder Dec 12 '14 at 09:18
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    @DavidMulder Might be different. We actually have a pretty full-featured e-library (books, journals, etc.). – earthling Dec 12 '14 at 09:31
  • @earthling Ah, yeah, I wasn't counting things we had access to through subscriptions, so yeah, we have access to a huge number of journals as well and some book-like publications can be found in that list as well, however that's quite a different thing from normal books to put it like that. I mean, finding the works by Locke or an introductory text on minowski spacetimes are for me the kind of things I would call normal books (and where the second category is hard to get legally licensed for lending), whereas papers and the like are 'just normal subscription matter'. – David Mulder Dec 12 '14 at 09:40
  • @DavidMulder Please take extended discussions to chat. Also see this related question that I just asked. – StrongBad Dec 12 '14 at 09:47
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My guess is that your best chance is to do this via your library (not as institute).

Here's is a localized answer for ebooks and libraries for Germany:

Source: http://www.bibliotheksportal.de/themen/digitale-bibliothek/e-books-in-bibliotheken.html

  • The UrhG (German copyright law) has explicit rules for content on physical media. Besides printed books this also covers CDs and DVDs.
    Roughly speaking the idea is that a library is allowed to lend out books on physical media. The loss of the publisher because of a larger number of readers for the book is compensated by a so-called "Bibliothekstantieme" ("library royalty").

  • The problem with ebooks is that they are not covered by those "physical" library rules. This means that libraries negotiate individual licensing contracts with the publishers.

  • The university library ebooks I've used so far were restricted to reading from university IPs, some even to computers at the library. Look&feel of the procedure were similar to electronic journal access.
    Talk to your university library, I'm sure they know how to deal with that. They'll probably also be able to give rough guesstimates about the costs.

  • There exist public e-libraries, e.g. Onleihe is an network for ebooks of public libraries mainly in the German speaking countries. They know for sure how to deal with this, and something the like probably also exists in your country.

    The mode of this is described (I haven't tried it personally) as very similar to traditional library use: there is a number of copies available, if they are all lent out you have to wait until one is "returned". You get access for a restricted time and then the reading license is returned and you cannot open the book any longer.

cbeleites unhappy with SX
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To know whether the device workaround is legal, you need to figure out if the ebook license is owned by the individual or the account.

If it is owned by the individual making the purchase, it should be able to be transferred to a different account. If losing access to an account (on Amazon or Kindle or whatever) also loses you access to a license that is purchased and owned, then it belongs to the account. Not you. Giving the account to someone else to use should not count as distribution as long as the written material isn't copied, emailed, printed, etc.) However, you would need a lawyer regardless of what you do. Laws are just chess pieces businesses use to play for the most amount of money possible. You need your own chess player to protect your interests.

Amber
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The situation may have changed in the last five or so years since the question was asked. But, currently, in the US, libraries are able to make agreements with some publishers for just this purpose. There are limits in the agreements, as you would expect. I don't know if the limits would make it hard to lend a title for a complete term. Most library lending is for a couple of weeks, but there are exceptions.

Have a local library explore this with publishers.

Buffy
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