I think we should be really clear that our concern is less about the past costs of academic materials than about protecting us from exorbitant future costs. Mr. McTeague's point about access and copyright--you can go before the Copyright Board--is certainly taken, but that isn't the only point we have where we can project into the future what creators will be asking for.
They want to be paid for printing a digital copy of something you already have in your possession. They want to be paid for sending a digital copy to a colleague via e-mail for any reason whatsoever--it doesn't matter if it's an infringing use. They want to be paid for storing a digital copy on a hard drive, which actually happens any time you ever open anything on a computer.
They want to be paid for posting a digital copy of a copyrighted work to a secure network, which is often personal use in this age of cloud computing. They want to be paid for projecting an image on a wall during a presentation. They want to be paid for showing another person a digital copy on your own computer; and they want to be paid for posting links to digital copies, regardless of whether they're freely available on the Internet.
Those are the concerns we have. What is the future of this? We think these education exemptions protect us from this highly unreasonable future.