One thing that they did at my university about 5 years ago to disrupt just this. A group of ex-students (I think) setup a container outside the main entrance, a

One thing that they did at my university about 5 years ago to disrupt just this. A group of ex-students (I think) setup a container outside the main entrance, across the street. There they bought old textbooks from students that just finished a subject, and then sold it back to the students using it the following year. Obviously the books changed slightly. But they kept change lists, so you always knew if you had the latest info or not. Sometimes, even the lecturers did this. E.g. "If you have ed4, it's on page 400-403, otherwise it's page 389-392 on the latest edition, etc".