Thread: Amazon, B&N, Kobo: iOS aps to be pulled in June
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Old 03-04-2011, 10:30 AM   #457
Worldwalker
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK View Post
Personally, if we were talking about necessity items produced in child-labor sweatshops, I'd agree, but IMO an inconvenient business policy limiting ones luxury media consumption does not morally justify civil disobedience.
I don't see DRM removal as civil disobedience; I see it as merely using the product you bought in the way you paid for.

But I also see it as voting with my wallet in favor of DRM-locked ebooks. A publisher would just know that I'm buying them, not what I'm doing afterwards. From a publisher's standpoint, they look at the numbers: "We sold 1234 DRM-locked copies of such-and-such a book this quarter." I'm not going to make that 1235.

To some extent, this means I still buy pbooks when I could have bought ebooks of certain titles. But then again, I'm a cheapskate anyway, and when faced with $7.99 for a pbook or $10+ for an ebook, I'll find the shelf space. Mostly, though, it's led to a shift in reading: I'm buying more books from DRM-free publishers like Baen, I'm finding more interesting authors whose books I hadn't read before on Smashwords, BeWrite, etc., and I'm catching up on classics I've always meant to read.

And for the people who say "if readers can get books without DRM, they'll just copy them and never buy another book" ... well, I'm fond of Robert E. Howard. I have several of his novels in the illustrated Zebra editions. I also have the Cosmos collection, because the paperbacks are a handy size. And I've been lovingly collecting the Del Rey trade paperbacks -- the latest one just hit the bookstores a couple of weeks ago -- of his complete works. Plus, of course, I have electronic versions on my ebook reader, conveniently available from ManyBooks. (and there's a nice all-in-one-volume Conan collection I've had to force myself not to buy, because it's big, and I can't justify expending shelf space on a book I have at least twice in paper already) No, I don't claim most people do things that way. I'm not entirely sane when it comes to collectible books. But it does happen.
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