"Steal this Book": Students and Textbooks

[Crossposted from my eHistory web site]

One of my favorite technology sites, http://lifehacker.com has an article on "how to save money on textbooks." The comments are more illuminating than the article. Students discuss how they scan (and share) textbooks, download them via torrent sites, and so on. Apparently this doesn't work too well with high school students because the illegal e-book crowd gets busted when the teacher asks to see their textbook. Oops.

As for me, I'm adopting a free e-book developed by the University of Houston. The site is rich and a PDF reprinting is a lot easier than stealing books or waiting to see if the prof is really going to used it. I make it a point to assign questions from the textbook, along with questions from lecture material and supplemental readings. If I were a student (I'm on the evil teacher side), I'd be teed after buying a $150 book that the professor didn't use.