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the copyright-intensive industries’ profit margins on average grew by 3.98%, while the other industries’ profit margins on average decreased by 0.75%. The high level of profitability of the copyright-intensive industries suggests that the copyright system serves these industries effectively, and that they are not in need of special government assistance in the form of new legislation or law enforcement resources.

In 2012, McGraw-Hill’s profit margin was 25%; Wiley’s was 15%; and Pearson’s was 10%. Moreover, the profit margin of firms in the publishing sector increased on average by 2.5% between 2003 and 2012.

The publishers might complain that government funding for the creation of open textbooks constitutes interference in the free market. This argument overlooks the fact that the government is the buyer in the textbook market. In K-12, school districts — government entities — purchase the textbooks directly. In higher education, government subsidizes the purchase of textbooks through support for financial aid. Because the government already is the buyer, it is completely consistent with free market principles for the government to seek the best product at the lowest cost.

The Affordable College Textbook Act, introduced by Senators Durbin and Franken on November 14, 2013, would accelerate the development and adoption of open textbooks. The legislation would authorize the Secretary of Education to make grants to institutions of higher education “to support pilot programs that expand the use of open textbooks in order to achieve savings for students.”

Not for profit organizations in general – charitable organizations, organized religion and education – get tax breaks because they are in service not of individual profit in the bold capitalist tradition of American business and upward mobility but for the society at large. 

Since about the election of Nixon, the United States, fueled by corporate interests, has moved not in an exact straight line but in an overall progressive march away from notions of community and service ever-increasingly toward individual rights, albeit largely organized in the form of the for-profit corporations.

you may not be familiar with the costs of scholarly publishing.  Almost unique to higher education, these costs not only cripple the institutions – given the needs of academic libraries to serve the institution’s missions – but also the students, who have been socialized to pay exorbitant rates for textbooks and other academic published materials.

Specifically, I think there’s a huge opportunity for bookstores to offer optional print-on-demand to students when faculty adopt OER in place of commercial textbooks.

Here’s the insane part: the college bookstore actually makes more pre-tax profit on the $18 print-on-demand open textbook than they do on the $150 publisher biology book, while earning the same per-book percentages for overhead and personnel.

He compared the future of the overpriced textbook to that of the encyclopedia, that is, extinct like the dodo bird.

publishers are, "using litigation to protect an antiquated business model."

The  big textbook publishers' business model had been to regularly offer slightly revised editions at ever higher prices. Even when transitioning to digital the publishers keep the huge price tags by utilizing time-sensitive add-on software.

For students, a textbook reserve system is an encouragement not to buy textbooks

At the root of the textbook problem is an in unfair economic model in which end consumers (students) must purchase textbooks chosen for them by intermediaries (instructors) who are insulated from textbook costs

instructors who, unfortunately and perversely, have been disincentivized from taking serious, concerted action about textbook costs thanks, in part, to the existence of textbook reserve systems. No need for an instructor to worry about students’ ability to afford textbooks when, “There’s a copy in the library.” Let them eat cake.

Although publishers sought to bar the uncompensated excerpting of copyrighted material for “e-reserves,” the court rejected all such arguments and provided new guidance in the Eleventh Circuit for how “fair use” determinations by educators and librarians should best be made. Remanding to the lower court for further proceedings, the court ruled that fair use decisions should be based on a flexible, case-by-case analysis of the four factors of fair use rather than rigid “checklists” or “percentage-based” formulae.

thoughtful analysis of fair use and a rejection of highly restrictive fair use guidelines promoted by many publishers.

The court agreed that the non-profit educational nature of the e-reserves service is inherently fair, and that that teachers’ and students’ needs should be the real measure of any limits on fair use, not any rigid mathematical model.