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Ahem... just a moment, I tripped in my cape... :-P
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but for what I know the following is true:
People who buy ebooks from Amazon will lose all of them if and when Amazon folds and their Kindle (or Kindle reader application) breaks. They can avoid the risk of losing everything only by violating the license of their books and strip the DRM from them before backing them up. Such a violation, even if it is legal where the user resides (which is not to be taken for granted), is a risk in itself: in fact it enables Amazon to terminate their account (and maybe do something worse), according to the licensing terms.
It's not ignorance that keeps people from backing up their books in a form that keeps them readable even if Amazon folds (better: it's not only ignorance). Such a thing is actually prohibited by the license.
You have only two choices:
- gambling the continued existence of your whole library on the continued health of your book vendor (for decades!);
or
- engaging in unauthorized, and possibly illegal, activities that can lead the vendor to terminate your account (thus losing at least some of the services that you "bought" with the license).
This cannot be called "freedom". I think that the very minimum level of freedom would be having things called with their name: when you buy a limited license to access an ebook, you are not buying the ebook. And calling the first with the name of the latter should not be permitted by the law.
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