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Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
Whatif? That is your paranoia speaking. Whispernet is a free service, no subscription, nothing. You get something for free, and you think it should stay free forever. Look at cell phone companies here in the US. It used to be (just last year) that you could get flat-rate unlimited internet access from about everybody. Today you have download/upload limits and very expensive overrage charges if you do go over your limit.
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Yes, it may be paranoia. I've seen it happen to other products. "Buy your Mp3's at ..... and stream them to any device you have!" *Bam*, company goes broke. Every hip streaming guy lost his entire library. I still have mine, created from bought and downloaded (drm-free) files, or ripped of CD's myself. Therefore, I will never trust anyone's cloud, archive, Whispernet or online-only solution.
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Your coin rules. Buy from Amazon as long as the tools exist to remove the drm, and to convert to a different format. Once you cannot do that any more, go elsewhere. Same with ePub. The ePub format itself won't (likely) be a problem, but the DRM. So once you cannot strip the DRM any more, stop buying from that shop. You already won't buy from the iBooks store, correct?
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Very true. As long as Apple does not allow me to sideload non-market apps on the iPhone or iPad, I'll never buy them. If drm can't be removed from iBooks, I won't buy them. If the Kindle had not supported sideloading of (converted) ebooks, I wouldn't have bought it, despite it being the best hardware out there, according to reviewers. If the next Kindle still supports sideloading, I may get it, otherwise I likely won't. Despite the Archive, and Whispernet, I use Calibre.
I actually make it a point to immediately locally capture, de-drm, and backup anything digital that I buy, be it books, movies, music, or games, in default formats as much as possible. If I can't, because of unbreakable drm, or for example needing an always on internet connection, then I'll not buy it.
This extends even to the formats I use to store personal information in. Mostly, it's flat textiles. If I need to write a report, I use LaTeX. Flat text, and the tools are open. (Notice that I didn't say *free*, which they also are, but there are paid implementations.) I could mention many other examples.
You might call it paranoia, which is your good right. I call it prudence.
edit: If I could, I would buy my books in plain text and create the ebook file myself. Thinking about it... The fun thing is... After stripping drm and unzipping the epub, it basically *is* flat text, marked up with some html. I could actually use a program to merge everything into one file (which is trivial), and remove the html, for which many programs already exist, leaving a perfectly clean text file.
That way, I could recreate the book in any format ever invented, when I want to reread it. I can do it with a book from Gutenberg in less than 30 minutes..... Faster, if it doesn't have many chapters. Thanks for bringing up that idea.