Quote:
Originally Posted by mmiesi
I have recently bought Kindle from amazon store. I did it for two main reasons: it has the best value to money (nice design, WIFI, free 3G, software), and hopefully it will provide support and frequent updates to it's software and Amazon platform as a whole. What I would like to see is for Amazon to trust more it's customers when they are buying books online and offer books in DRM free formats as well. There is well known opinion that DRM is very onerous/burdensome? to customers and it doesn't solve the real problem of piracy. Many publisher already provide books in many DRM free formats ( http://oreilly.com/ebooks/). There are many books that reading in AZW format is not so convenient (technical, computers, programming, books that have many side references). As the technology evolves (bigger screens, new formats, etc...) it will allow displaying it on the device without need for reformatting the paragraphs. I would like then to read my book as it was published in the original. For that reason I decided to not purchase any DRM books from amazon store, not unless they officially state they will support DRM free books and other popular formats allowing displaying original layout of the book, and buy them somewhere else where possible.
If you want to make a change, please let Amazon know at kindle-feedback@amazon.com |
Amazon already allows publishers to sell books without DRM, I think Amazon has been quite clear that it doesn't oppose dropping DRM - their MP3 music store has done well and they've never used DRM.
It's up to publishers whether or not they put DRM on their books.
You can tell whether a book is DRM-free by looking for "Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited" on the product page. I found a random example of this on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Innocent-e...2981522&sr=1-6 (
same book on Amazon.co.uk)
Amazon offers less favourable terms to authors who want to self-publish and don't use DRM, but I'd expect that if the consensus among publishers was such that DRM was no longer being used that would change.
As for the "original layout of the book", DRM has nothing to do with that. A book sold by Amazon without DRM (or a book where you removed the DRM) could be converted into a wide variety of formats and used on different devices with different software.