I suspect that there are a great many ebook buyers who are indifferent to the terms of the license granted and have no intention whatsoever of being bound by all of its terms, particularly the unreasonable ones. For instance, a paid-for license revocable at will, and requiring the deletion of all copies you may have. Even Amazon's license for ebooks, which is far more reasonable than many, is honoured more in the breach than the observance by many members here:
Quote:
1. Kindle Content
Use of Kindle Content. Upon your download of Kindle Content and payment of any applicable fees (including applicable taxes), the Content Provider grants you a non-exclusive right to view, use, and display such Kindle Content an unlimited number of times, solely through a Reading Application or as otherwise permitted as part of the Service, solely on the number of Supported Devices specified in the Kindle Store, and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider. The Content Provider may include additional terms for use within its Kindle Content. Those terms will also apply, but this Agreement will govern in the event of a conflict. Some Kindle Content, such as interactive or highly formatted content, may not be available to you on all Reading Applications.
Limitations. Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense, or otherwise assign any rights to the Kindle Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove or modify any proprietary notices or labels on the Kindle Content. In addition, you may not attempt to bypass, modify, defeat, or otherwise circumvent any digital rights management system or other content protection or features used as part of the Service.
Book Returns and Subscription Cancellations Terminations. REDACTED FROM THIS POST.
Risk of Loss. Risk of loss for Kindle Content transfers when you download or access the Kindle Content.
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You are not granted the right to copy. If you remove DRM, you are breaching the license. If you read on any non-Kindle device or application, you are breaching the license. The license is actually granted by the content provider, who may impose additional terms. Once you have downloaded or accessed your book the risk of loss passes to you, despite the fact that for many of us the only copy will reside on Amazon's servers.
We have seen it illustrated time and time again just how dangerous it is to not keep a backup. In the longer term I think it will also prove equally dangerous not to remove the DRM. Formats and technologies change over time, as does hardware. The only effective way to future proof your books is to have DRM free copies. Some would say such copies should also be in an open, fully documented format such as epub, though personally I think the Amazon formats with the exception of kfx are suitable.
It may be permissible within Amazon's license terms to download and import a book to Calibre without removing DRM. To remove the DRM is a clear breach of the license. Yet many of us clearly purchase these licenses without any intention of being bound by this particular term. Whilst telling those who don't like other terms of the same agreements that it is up to the vendor and they can take it or leave it.