The most objectionable and outrageous trick major publishers do is to regularly bring out new editions wherein they deliberately change the the chapter and exercise numbers, this then almost renders older editions useless for any student who has one cannot easily follow what's going on. When the teacher says go to exercise number '123' and their book says '89' an inordinate amount of time is wasted chasing up fellow students with newer books to help identity it.
This not only seriously disadvantages poorer less well off students but also it's wasteful on resources as older books are just dumped as the consequence and become landfill.
In my opinion, publishers who are caught doing this ought to be blackballed by universities, educational institutions, etc. in that they not recommend those textbooks for their courses.
On topic, I can believe that lax IP laws were a factor in the rise of Germany as an industrial powerhouse. And I'm far from convinced that America's strict laws benefit more than a very few.
My German is good enough to understand 'schwartzfahren' but I'm not sure of the significance. Presumably, you had gotten yours for free. Right?
It was a while ago, but I'm pretty sure the semester-ticket was free with matriculation.
In Germany, as a general rule, you didn't need to buy any textbooks. The professor would lecture, the exercises were handed out printed and were fully self-contained (not "Exercise 12.3 on page 114"), and there were any number of relevant books available in the library. If the professor sold his own book, people in class would get a "Hörerschein" and get it at a further discount from the already low price (say $20 instead of $30). Student clubs would sell "scripts" containing the lecture material, summaries, and formulae.
A 2006 article [1] suggests US students need to spend around $1000 per annum for text books. (The article compares the text book market to the prescription drug market.) In Germany, $1000 covers tuition including the "Semesterticket" (pass for the entire public transit system, state wide), and probably all the books you need.
I mean, if even The Economist complains about textbook prices [2], then you know there's a problem.
[1] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED497025.pdf
[2] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2014/08/16/why-textb...