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Originally Posted by dos
Is this some kind of DRM thing? Why can't I have Kobo format books on my device from more than one store? Kobo makes a lot of big talk about how they're committed to openness and letting a user do what they want with their purchases but for some reason we have to put up with annoyances like this...
*waits for the Kobo Defence Force to come and tell him to just use ePub*
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Warning: this post includes some wild speculation
Imagine that you are a member of a book club with eight members. Each person has his or her own Kobo reader, and each person has a Kobo account or a Borders account--whatever. If the Kobo could somehow sync books from several different accounts, then it would be possible for the eight book club members to take turns buying a single book, and then just let the other members of the club include that book in with his or her own. In eight months, each person could buy only one book yet have eight new reads. So from that perspective it surely could be said to be a DRM thing.
Now, that being said, is there a way that Kobo could verify that the Taming with the Kobo account and the Taming with the Borders are, in fact, the same person and somehow link the two--well, perhaps they could. The part missing from this happy circumstance could very well be financial.
Although Borders owns a percentage of Kobo, they are not one company. It is probably not to either Kobo or Border's advantage financially to make this kind of thing happen. The ability to sync from one account only can be a powerful reason to buy from only one bookseller--and Borders wants it to be Borders, whilst Kobo wants it to be Kobo. Heck, I would love it if the books I buy from Sony could sync, too, while we are at it.
Financial considerations aside, perhaps Kobo and Borders (in the US and Australia) and the other financial partners will, at some point, decide to have a common sync function for all the Kobo associated stores, but I'm guessing it is not all that high on anyone's list right now.
Here comes the ePUB defense part: Fortunately, there are other ways to load the books, so even if you can only sync with one store, you can still buy your books from two, or three, or four.