Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
A more likely scenario is the person who "borrows" the book from the library, knowing that they can strip the DRM and keep it, INSTEAD of buying the retail version of the book. That's most assuredly a lost sale.
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I tend to agree. Library books are (IMO) the one use of DRM that I have no problem with. I wish it were harder (or at least a different process) to remove DRM from library books. In all of the other DRM stripping scenarios, the personal information/software/hardware necessary to remove the DRM, pretty much assures that the purchaser of the ebook is the only one who can (easily) remove the DRM from it. I can easily see a library becoming a free book-store for some (some... not all... maybe not even many). But also, I guess it can probably be argued that a library has
always had the potential to take sales away from authors/publishers regardless of the medium.
And now that they're lending ebooks that are readable on pretty much any device made... I just don't see any really valid reasons for the removal of DRM from library books. Even for simple circumvention of the waiting list/lending period constraints. I understand that many who remove the DRM from library books
do delete them when they are done—and that that "honest" stripping doesn't take any food from anyone's mouth—but I just don't like breaking rules that make sense to me for the most part. And DRM on library books makes sense to me. DRM on books that I've purchased (please, no lectures on the difference between "licensed" and "purchased") doesn't make sense to me.