How to back up DRM-protected content?

[J. Strnad]

Technically, it was illegal to make a cassette tape copy of a vinyl album years ago, but I don't know of anyone who was sued for doing so. You did it to have a copy you could play in your car, and to make your own mixes, and to give to other people. No one really cared.

I believe it's the same with stripping DRM today. Publishers are worried that you'll strip the DRM and post the book to your website and everyone in the universe will be able to download it for free.

Of course, doing this would be WRONG. Even if you give the copies away, the author and publisher suffer because of lost sales. (Not every download is a "lost sale" but that's a different discussion.)

But come on...books get passed around. You buy it and read it, then give it to your spouse, who loans it to a friend, who never returns it and ends up putting it in a yard sale or selling it for a few cents to a used book store, and it gets purchased and given away and loaned out and donated to a library for a fund-raising sale, etc. etc. etc. And the only money the author and publisher make is for that first sale.

Why should we be so gd precious about ebooks? As an author, I'd love to collect $4.95 from every pair of eyeballs that read Risen. But so what if it gets loaned around? When it was a paperback, it got loaned around. I got fifty cents from the original sale, and then nothing. So why get all bent out of shape if the ebook gets read for free by a few people?

Publishers have to get over the DRM bs, and contracts have to adjust to fit the new global distribution network that sets geographical restrictions, and we have to MOVE BEYOND the old publishing business!


End of rant. For now.

[Blue Tyson]

Strip it, save a copy locally if you want it. Stick one (and lots of other stuff/books) on a DVD or some other permanent storage mechanism.

Email a copy to yourself at another location - gmail etc. Even multiple locations! You could do the same thing with some other file storage mechanism/site too of course.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by J. Strnad

Technically, it was illegal to make a cassette tape copy of a vinyl album years ago, but I don't know of anyone who was sued for doing so. You did it to have a copy you could play in your car, and to make your own mixes, and to give to other people. No one really cared.

In what country? I'm pretty sure that format shifting for personal use has been legal for a pretty long time, at least in the US. Making copies to give to other people is different though.

But come on...books get passed around. You buy it and read it, then give it to your spouse, who loans it to a friend, who never returns it and ends up putting it in a yard sale or selling it for a few cents to a used book store, and it gets purchased and given away and loaned out and donated to a library for a fund-raising sale, etc. etc. etc. And the only money the author and publisher make is for that first sale

Everything in that example is perfectly legal, but has nothing to do with copyright. Loaning/selling/giving away the original is a lot different from making/distributing copies.

[rrjchristopher]

I use the standard iPod Touch backup. My first iPod Touch provided definitive proof that it wasn't puppy-proof. My replacement retrieved all the eBooks, including the DRM ones, that I had at time of last back up. I back up more often now. Supposedly this works for anything running iOS.