Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
*Amazon* doesn't want DRM on books anymore than Apple wanted DRM on iTunes music. DRM offers no benefit to Amazon - it just makes things more complicated for Amazon and for the customers. Amazon will happily sell you non-DRM'd books today, in fact, if that is permitted by the copyright holders.
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For a long time, Amazon insisted on applying DRM even for those publishers who didn't want it. A number of small publishers mentioned this a couple of years ago. Presumably, Amazon's claim was that the big publishers required it and it was too much hassle to provide different options for each publisher.
I'm not sure if that's been changed even now--self-publishing allows you to set or not-set DRM; publishers have contracts that may have different terms. I haven't heard recently if Amazon's publishing contracts have changed to allow publishers, not individuals, to offer non-DRM'd ebooks.
DRM offers *incredible* benefit to Amazon--uncracked Kindle books can only be read on Amazon's software, and not on the ereaders designed by their competitors. You can't read DRM'd ebooks from other sites on the Kindle, which means Kindle owners (who don't strip DRM) have to do their buying of bestsellers from Amazon, not the competition. DRM does a lot more to force customer lock-in than prevent piracy.