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With DRM they do seem temporary. Without DRM, they are safer than other books, if you have safe back-ups. Safer than the books destroyed in my basement when a pipe broke and it flooded. I've never really saved a lot of books anyway because I hate having them clutter up my living space after I've read them, and I rarely re-read books. But now I have kids and there are so many favorites I'd like to share with them as they grow up.
DRM doesn't affect me generally as I have a Nook and a Kindle and I'm happy using their clouds and just reading Nook books on the Nook and Kindle books on the Kindle. Very easy and no time spent dealing with computer programs to take off DRM. My guess is that most readers don't do anything about DRM and appreciate the convenience of the clouds like I do. OTOH, I do worry about what happens if B&N goes out of business. I've bought a LOT of ebooks from them.
I had an experience with B&N that makes me worry about this as well. I accidentally clicked a "buy" button twice and got charged twice for an ebook. I emailed them and they deleted one of the charges, but then later deleted my book as they said I'd gotten a refund and shouldn't have it. I corrected them and showed them the emails where I'd dealt with it, and they resent my book, but then quite a while later they deleted it again, and once again said that I'd had a refund and shouldn't have it. I can deal with a mistake once, but to have them apparently go through and examine in some way people's accounts and delete books every so often worries me. B&N doesn't have the best customer service, and that's why they'll eventually go out of business. I'd never have had that experience with Amazon. They've made mistakes, and they've always corrected them with no problems at all, without it ever coming up again in the future.
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