Quote:
Originally Posted by French
So let's say I put it aside and say, "I resign myself to forever only buying books from Amazon (or free books from Amazon)". Does anyone ever worry about 3 or 4 or 5 years from now, if all the money they've spent on a "proprietary" format will just be wasted money because they will no longer be able to access those books?
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1- You can buy DRM-free ebooks for Kindle. People do it all the time. They even get to transfer them wirelessly.
2- DRM'ed ePubs are as reliant on ADOBE as Kindle books are on Amazon. Neither is likely to vanish or anything but if that worries you, the odds are about the same. The issue is the use of DRM, not the *flavor* of DRM used.
3- If you *really* care about being (theoretically) locked-in, you can either learn to do deDRM (Google is your friend, there) or only buy DRM-free, or stick to paper-DRM.
4- Yes, there are books you can't get on Amazon. There are also books you can *only* get on Amazon. There are also regional restrictions. It's not a perfect world and the Big Publishing Houses are making it less perfect by the day by pursuing policies that make exclusive ebook publishing deals make perfect economic sense. Things will get worse before they get better.
5- You can buy reader devices that let you access any DRM'ed ebook from any vendor. Amazon, B&N, Sony, the independents, the national champions. Anything. They're called Tablet PCs. Smartphones. Android Webpads. Many more are coming.
It is early in the ebook industry.
Things will get better but not overnight. In the meantime we get to pick our poison and keep our fingers crossed that eventually a rational DRM regime will emerge. Just don't hold your breath.