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Originally Posted by LucidDreams
Removing the DRM carries technical, ethical and possibly legal issues.
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Lying about your country of residency and support eligibility has no ethical issues to you? It does to me.
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Make no mistake, people aren't bending the rules when they remove the DRM, they're breaking the rules.
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Not always so.
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But those that are not comfortable doing this it's an issue and they're locked into Amazon, so to speak.
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Disregarding the fact they are not locked in, even if you just mean they can't buy from the few other DRM general booksellers, my point is I have seen no evidence that any significant number of Kindle users feel hampered by only buying Amazon. Amazon seems to have everything they want along those lines and there is no reason for them to shop elsewhere.
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All other major eReaders support the ePub format, along with public libraries.
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And yet,the greater number of complaints of restriction come from those users sorry they can't buy from Amazon.
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Sadly, the average consumer isn't aware of all this when they're in the market for a eReader.
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Nothing sad about it for the vast majority, it seems, as it represents no loss or inconvenience of any kind, it seems. Hence the Kindle's continued success and popular satisfaction among it's users after 3 generations. This, again, is my point.
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Originally Posted by LucidDreams
The problem arises when one decides to buy a different brand eReader at some point in the future. How will they get all those books purchased at Amazon onto their new Kobo/Nook/Sony eReader? In other words, Kindle owners that buy books from Amazon's store are "locked" because of their proprietary eBook format (even though it's mainly mobi with some slight changes) and DRM.
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The same problem would exist for users with an Adobe epub library who then buy a Kindle. But in practice it rarely seems to be a problem. Partially because of the reality of DRM stripping, but also because all those books are perfectly readable on computers, iphones, and other devices, so no one is ever really locked out on either side, and also because it rarely seems to ever come up as an actual problem I did see one mention recently of someone considering switching from a Kindle to a Kobo and wondering what to do about their Amazon books. One. So, again, my point is, it seems not to be big issue the vast majority in practice.
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Think of it like HD DVD vs Blu-Ray. Of course you can strip the DRM and convert between file types but as I've mentioned in my last posting there are issues with that approach.
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I did mention I'm hoping Amazon chooses to support ePub, right? I agree universal standards would be nice.
But in the case of HD DVD (and Betamax before it) the two standards DID cause a fracture the market and cause inconvenience for consumers, so they pushed, and one format prevailed.
In the case of Amazon vs ADE ePub ebooks, most folks just aren't significant bothered, or negatively affected in anyway, so, my point again, it's just not proving to be a real issue.
ApK