[DavidKitson]

I wouldn't hold my breath for such restrictions, or DRM, to go away. Sorry. Not going to happen.

My rationale? Because if you've talked to enough people, you'll find a HUGE number of them really, honestly, genuinely believe that the only way to make money out of a book is to restrict all access to it. Make every single person pay for every word they read. And absolutely, no question, may anyone be allowed to copy a book without permission or buy outside of their region. Even second hand book sales are fundamentally wrong to them.

Yep, such beliefs are pretty strong. Especially in the established print industry. They see the Internet as fundamentally evil and would like E-books to be banned ( How do you burn a digital edition? ) - Many accept DRM and region-locks only because they are forced to.

These attitudes WILL NOT CHANGE and WILL NOT GO AWAY.

All that will happen is that not everyone will follow these beliefs. Around here, these ideas are few and far between. Those who read these pages are the more enlightened of course, or they wouldn't be here.

So the sad thing is, that these people are the enemy of electronic distribution models. They will hang on tooth and nail and cause untold damage to the archives of humanity. DRM keys will be lost. E-editions will fall silent to failures in the protection systems that they employ.

Faced with a consumer backlash at such occurrences, these people will employ lobby groups to force government to support these restrictions and so they will continue.

Best thing you can do? Support those who believe in what you want. If you want DRM free, then make a personal policy to prefer DRM free. Likewise region-free. Then only time will fix the damage. That and others supporting similar ideals.

But look at Region issues in video games and DVDs for an idea of how nasty this battle will be. Breaking region restrictions is illegal in many countries. IP laws are already being redrafted to support this functionality and enshrine the protections in legislation.

These fights have been seen before. Remember how Shareware started as a distribution method for computer software back in the 80's? Now downloading software is considered the normal way to get it. Especially the licensed stuff.

And it only took, what, 2 decades?

Expect at least half that for books. They are far more entrenched in the physical world than video games and software ever was.

David.