Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
True....but how much would you pay to repurchase the same books for a different reader after your current reader dies?
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And it doesn't even require the death of the reader. My first reader supported Mobipocket DRM when I bought it. I happily purchased books way faster than I could read them, until I had something like 200 DRMed titles (some that I had read, but many that I hadn't). Suddenly, I get the "good" news that my reader would support ePUB DRM instead of Mobipocket DRM as soon as I downloaded and installed the new firmware. This would mean all the books I'd previously purchased would no longer work on my reader. Granted, I did have the choice of not upgrading the firmware, but then I have the potential problems of lack of support and no access to other improvements to the reader. Not to mention the fact that the original Mobipocket DRM was getting harder and harder to find. So, I was left with three choices - 1. Stay with the existing firmware and lose access to customer support for my reader, and have drastically reduced selection of books available to me, 2. Upgrade the firmware and lose access to over 200 books that I had purchased, many of which I hadn't even read yet, or 3. Find a way to merge options 1 and 2 and get the best parts of both.
Fortunately I was able to figure out how to liberate my existing Mobi titles (it was a lot harder then than it is now!) and didn't lose any. I did learn a valuable lesson though, and now every title I purchase is immediately stripped, just to prevent this type of situation from happening again - and since I have now moved on to a Kindle, it would have happened again if I hadn't removed the DRM from all those purchases.
I would never support or encourage piracy or sharing/distributing ebooks illegally, but I strongly encourage everyone I know who purchases ebooks to remove the DRM as soon as possible.