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DRMs came about for a very good reason: protecting copyrights in a digital age where information can be easily duplicated. Fair enough, I can understand that. But how comes DRMs always end up generating interoperability problems that have NOTHING to do with copyrights?
I bought an iPod because I really liked the design, and for a time, I purchased on iTunes because it was so easy. I haven't regretted it yet, but what if another company comes up with a mp3 player I fancy more? All my tunes are locked to a single device, and as far as I know, that does not promote copyrights in any way. (yeah, yeah, I could always burn them on CDs and rip them afterwards, taking a few hours of my time and losing quality in the process...)
Same thing for ebooks. I have a sony PRS 505 but I live in France. For me, no books from the sony shop! And because of the Mobipocket/Kindle relationship (again, how does THAT promote any copyrights???), no Mobipocket on that device; same thing for eReader. The only way for me to do it is thus to remove the DRMs, which luckily enough is not illegal in this country. However, it is still crazy: I have to remove protection from books I HAVE purchased in order to read them on my own device!!!
And although I understand that "lending a book" can't have the same meaning with ebooks, I still have a problem with the fact I could not just tell a friend "here's a good book book I enjoyed, tell me what you think". How did technology managed to go forward and managed to lose that simple pleasure???
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