No more hunchbacked lawyers

By Gabriel Pittaluga, Pittaluga Abogados

All of whom had studied on Uruguay´s University of the Republic Law School had suffered on some moment an intense back pain caused by dragging to classes a big pile of books, usually really heavy like the Civil or Commercial Code.

But now, thanks to technology, backaches will end. On Monday 10 April the National Direction of Publications (IMPO) officially launched the first Uruguayan web site of college e-books, created to prevent copyright infringement through illegal photocopying. Among other features the web will boast a highly advanced software, product of American company Adobe that is used by no more and no less than Google.

The plaftorm is quite easy to work with: book covers will be in different mosaics, users can click on them, add them to their shop cart and finally proceed to make the payment, which is done with any international credit and debit card and with Uruguayan credit card OCA. After successfully completing the purchase, the buyer will receive an email with the link for the e-book download To protect authors´copyrights, the downloaded file can´t be forwarded or printed.

One of the most interesting news for law students is that book texts are completely converted to e-book code, allowing them to perform word searches or look for specific pages and chapters, all of which makes studying much simpler and faster.

Besides all this, in the near future it will be possible to rent the e-books, avoiding a total purchase and therefore higher costs. Suscriptions are also being considered, a method by which paying a monthly fee will grant access to all titles.

The backs and shoulders of the future lawyers will be more than grateful for this new technological possibility.