School could very well distribute DRM-less texbooks (iBooks works as a regular eBooks reader, and I expect the ibooks 2 format is just EPUB3 with a few extensions), though I really doubt publishers will ever be on board with the idea.
The DRM would also be added by the ibookstore, so you should be able to get a non-DRM'd ebook out of the author application thing: a commenter noted he'd exported an ibook, changed the extension and had no trouble loading it into a non-apple ebook reader (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3485150)
Yes, I agree - Many public schools charge a 'book fee' each year, for textbooks. Just roll it into that - who cares if the textbooks are shared then, because each student is paying for it, regardless. And if it is in a non-proprietary format, that would alleviate the other concern of lock-in.
But one article mentioned that students could not resell the books - which implies DRM.
Outside of high school and into college, the publishers obviously want to prevent reselling/sharing of the books.
This has been the biggest problem with ebooks in general in my mind. Kindle books are DRM'ed, I couldn't sell them once I'm done with them, which keeps me buying physical books.
So I see it as the problem that really needs to be figured out (and is why I was hopeful for bitcoin at one point, it seemed to have a DRM system that allowed for transfer of ownership).
Apologies if this is slightly off topic.
> Kindle books are DRM'ed, I couldn't sell them once I'm done with them
You couldn't really sell them either if they weren't DRM'd: who'd buy a C-c C-v for a used "digital book"?
DRM could actually enable resale (or some sort of renting), if the DRM schemes supported it: buying a DRM'd book for $15 gives you a license to its content, reselling to the publisher revokes your license and lets you get some money back, and you can transfer the license to an other owner for a subset of the original price (with the publisher taking a cut of the trade for incentive).
Let's say a textbook is $15, you could resell it to the publisher for $7, or "trade" it for say $9 (with the publisher taking $1 or $2 on top).
Now here comes the rub: what's in it for for-profit publishers, especially publicly owned ones? Nothing, instead of selling two licenses they've now sold half a license, or a license and a fraction of one. Why would they bother unless they're forced to?
I'd rather have better-priced ebooks to start with.
> which keeps me buying physical books
Only works if 1. you want to resell them (I've yet to re-sell one of my books, couldn't care less about resale value) and 2. you lose less by reselling it than the price of the ebook (pretty likely considering you can often get the bloody physical book for less than the ebook in the first place).
The DRM would also be added by the ibookstore, so you should be able to get a non-DRM'd ebook out of the author application thing: a commenter noted he'd exported an ibook, changed the extension and had no trouble loading it into a non-apple ebook reader (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3485150)