Aspen Casebook Connect Textbooks Must Be Returned At End Of Class, Cannot Be Resold | Josh Blackman's Blog

"If you are a professor, please consider signing this petition to oppose Aspen’s policy. I recently received a bizarre email from Aspen, the publisher of the Dukeminier/Krier/Alexander/Schill/Strahilevitz Property casebook I use. In short, the next edition of the book will be have to be returned at the end of the semester, and cannot be resold. This temporary usage comes with a permanent digital version. In effect, buying the textbook gives the student a license to use the book for a single class, as well as a digital version. And it’s the same price! Of course, students are not going to actually return the book (BarBri offers a payment to incentivize that), but the book stores will not be able to legally resell it. This will instantly dry up the reused market for casebooks. This has shades of Amazon Kindle or iTunes. You do not actually own the title, and cannot resell it, and only use it at the discretion of the publisher. What is bizarre, is that here, we are talking about an actual, physical book, rather than anything electronic. I suspect many (most) students will be entirely unaware of this until they attempt to resell the book. Adding to this irony is that this is a Property casebook! This would make for a fascinating case study by itself. I was planning on switching to the new edition of Dukeminier, but I may stay with the previous edition (which is excellent!) for another year. Here is the entire email ..."