Quote:
Originally Posted by StephenM
If Microsoft can do it, so can Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Chapters, etc. What if Borders had their own DRM scheme? Would all the Borders customers now be out of luck, since they are now no longer in business?
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Amazon *did* do this, with ebooks, before the Kindle. They used to offer PDF ebooks; when they stopped, people lost access to their books after upgrades.
If Amazon switches to ePub, they'll probably just drop any books they no longer have the rights to (books that have switched ownership or otherwise been pulled from sale) because they won't have the permissions to provide them in a new format. Switching between mobi and epub is simple enough that they probably won't drop their entire line--but they may stop providing books to the current Kindle apps and older Kindles, and tell people that if they want access to their library, they need an updated device/app, which of course will only allow downloads of the books they still have rights to sell.
DRM is only a minor nuisance until the company providing it changes business plans, at which point it becomes "all your purchases are useless."