Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
They don't notice problems with DRM until (sigh) another store disappears, or they have to get a new device and run into limits on transfers or find that some books are no longer in their cloud library because of rights disputes.
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This happens more often than people think, it's just that laymen are never told why, or given a solution.
My mother has never been an Amazon user, and so when we bought her a Kindle, it was originally registered to another family member's account, with the idea that they'd have a "shared" library and anything he bought she could read, and vice-versa. Except she wasn't allowed to buy anything--she needed to call him every time and ask if he could buy it for her, and at some point I discovered that she was barely using the device to read anything other than free public domain books because she either felt too ashamed to call him, or he'd flake out on buying the thing.
To make a long story short, eventually we decided she needed to get her own account and re-register the device, and it was at that point that the issue of all of her books still registered under his account came to a head. Luckily, I was able to get all of her books liberated from DRM from her old device before we got her a new Paperwhite and set it up under her own account. But the point being, she was about ready to lose all of her old books because "Amazon said you can't transfer books to new owners" before I explained how we can get around this. If your end-users are not technically-minded to begin with, they are not going to understand the distinction between a technical limitation vs a vendor-imposed restriction.