Would you be e-reading if DRM was unbreakable?

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

I used to strip my books from DRM and then convert into the various target formats via calibre, so I could read them on all my readers.
I'm not doing this anymore. Simply too time consuming.

I never understood this point.

Stripping DRM takes no time at all. You sprinkle some Alf into your PC, and after downloading your book(s) into Kindle for PC or ADE, you import them into Calibre.

*poof*, DRM gone.

Converting to a different format takes a few mouse clicks and you're done.

Originally Posted by mgmueller

When I met him again a few months ago he stated: "I only read about 80 books per year. Most cost less then 10 Euros. For that amount, I don't bother anymore".

So he doesn't bother about saving up to €800 a year, or €67 a month? I would.

Being able to remove DRM and convert books can save a lot of money through deals, free books, or coupon codes, whatever the reader you have.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Maybe the reason is just that I detest, abhor and loath DRM...

Why?

If I go to the cinema, I spend 10 Euros for less than 2 hours. And I leave with nothing more than some fond memories.
If I go to the restaurant, I spend way more. Same for a vacation.
All without any physical remnants, only momentary joy and fun.

Okay, I re-read books or re-watch movies quite frequently. And of course it's more convenient to re-read on my Paperwhite, than re-buying the book again.
But still: If, in the worst case scenario, my eBook wouldn't be accessible anymore in 5 years - would this really be so troublesome?

What about my 600 DVDs, that sit uselessly in my shelfs, since I'm using iTunes instead since 2008?
What about the thousands of German Marks I spent on Commodore 64 games?
No technology lasts forever...
So, how is DRM any more troublesome than switches in technology, like from DVD to Blue-Ray or digital content?

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Why?

If I go to the cinema, I spend 10 Euros for less than 10 hours. And I leave with nothing more than some fond memories.
If I go to the restaurant, I spend way more. Same for a vacation.
All without any physical remnants, only momentary joy and fun.

Okay, I re-read books or re-watch movies quite frequently. And of course it's more convenient to re-read on my Paperwhite, than re-buying the book again.
But still: If, in the worst case scenario, my eBook wouldn't be accessible anymore in 5 years - would this really be so troublesome?

What about my 600 DVDs, that sit uselessly in my shelfs, since I'm using iTunes instead since 2008?
What about the thousands of German Marks I spent on Commodore 64 games?
No technology lasts forever...
So, how is DRM any more troublesome than switches in technology, like from DVD to Blue-Ray or digital content?

Because of what EowynCarter already mentioned.

DRM *makes sure* that at some point in the future, the product will break.

If I go to the movies, I *know* beforehand that I'm going to pay money to see the movie and that I can't keep the movie afterward. It still is my choice to do this. If I don't want to, I can wait for the DVD.

If I buy a book, I buy it to read it in my own time, as often as I want to: the same reason why I would buy a DVD (to watch it as often as I want).

And how DRM is more troublesome? It's more troublesome because there is a big chance that it *CAN'T* survive a switch in technology, making sure the product becomes unusable at some point.

DVD's and CD's can be converted to a lossless video/audio format if need be. Ebooks without DRM can be converted from one format to another. Old games without DRM can run in emulators or on a virtualized OS.

No, there is not a 100% assurance this will always be the case, but DRM makes sure that, at some point in time, it CAN'T be the case. I'd like to have the choice to be able to use this old stuff or not, rather than to have some company decide that I can't.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

...Stripping DRM takes no time at all. You sprinkle some Alf into your PC, and after downloading your book(s) into Kindle for PC or ADE, you import them into Calibre.

*poof*, DRM gone.

Converting to a different format takes a few mouse clicks and you're done.
...

Maybe if you do it consequently every day. I buy maybe 1.000 ebooks per year. If I only would do it, let's assume, twice per month, it's quite time consuming. I have to check, where I bought my books. For now, this might be Apple iBooks, Google Play, Amazon, B&N, Kobo. I have to download them, for some I even would have to install ADE and the likes (yikes!). I have to strip them from DRM, port them to calibre. And then, nitpicky as I am, I would spend a few minutes on tuning it. If I touch it already, I would want to do it right. Correct inconstancies in author's name and the likes. How much time is it then? 3 minutes per book? 15 to 30 minutes per day? Or a few hours every month?
Even at the lowest hourly rate, that's quite a lot of money spent for backup and such.

(I always calculate each activity against what I could earn in the same amount of time. My sister in law for example drives 30 minutes to another retailer, to save some bucks on her purchase. Considering gas and even more so the time she spents, she actually looses money).

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Honestly, I never quite got that point.
What's the reason for stripping DRM?

Most important reason for me is to be able to correct the publisher's mistakes in the ebook. If DRM is unbreakable then publisher's mistakes are unfixable, except by the publisher themselves.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

So he doesn't bother about saving up to €800 a year, or €67 a month? I would...

He only would save those € 800, if he would continue to pirate (= download from the dark net) these books.
But this wasn't the original question.
The poll was about DRM.
He already has paid his € 800. He only would save those, if he would re-read all of them on another reader in another format. In what period will he re-read maybe 30% of his books? Over 3 years? So it's 10% per year then = € 80. Saving on 10% (at most), but having the effort for 100%...

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Most important reason for me is to be able to correct the publisher's mistakes in the ebook. If DRM is unbreakable then publisher's mistakes are unfixable, except by the publisher themselves.

Do you correct only some major flaws, like inconsistencies in titles or author's names? (I hated it, when I bought a series of books and even within this series there had been different methodologies for the author's name or numbering the series and such). I used to do this. But now, even in my library of 900 Amazon eBooks I found, it's only cosmetics. I find my books easily enough, no actual need to bother. It's annoying, if you don't find all books in one place, since the author for some books might be sorted "last name, first name", for others "first name + last name" and so on. But is it really a problem?

Or do you actually check the entire book and the content? I can imagine such effort for my 2 or 3 most favorite books. But in general?

Nowadays, I simply want to enjoy the book = consume the content. And not bother in the process. And I really don't care anymore about some typos or inconsistencies. If it's too bothersome, I even can get my money back and buy something else.
But I admit: There was a time, maybe 5 years ago, when tuning my collections was more fun and took more time, than actually making use of it.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Maybe if you do it consequently every day. I buy maybe 1.000 ebooks per year. If I only would do it, let's assume, twice per month, it's quite time consuming.

As I've said often enough on this site, I don't have time to read two or three books a day. Therefore I don't buy 1000 books a year. I don't even have the time to try and find three books a day to read.

Even so, if you would do this every two months, you could do the import (takes a few minutes), and let the conversion run overnight.

The time you spend on fixing metadata is completely determined by yourself, not by the tools you use. I must admit I've stopped spending a lot of time on fixing books. The only things I now do is fix the metadata, and if needed, I do a tiny tweak to the layout such as fixing indents (some books have huge indents, or none at all) or removing whitespace between paragraphs. With DRM on the books, I wouldn't be able to do that, making the book very annoying to read.

I did quit trying to get every book 100% correct in all respects. Now it just has to be "correct enough" to not annoy me, and as books get newer and newer, they become better in this regard.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

I find my books easily enough, no actual need to bother. It's annoying, if you don't find all books in one place, since the author for some books might be sorted "last name, first name", for others "first name + last name" and so on. But is it really a problem?

Ah, another fine example on why to remove DRM. Finding a book can be very hard: I have series that I had to split over three (!) stores, because one store only had books 1 and 3, another store had 3 and 4, and the last store had 1, 2 and 5.

Done with book 1? Then I want to read book 2. Crap... Which store did I buy that in? Hm...

Downloading the books and removing the DRM allows me to order these books in Calibre for easy retrieval and backup. It takes only seconds.

Would I *NEED* to do it? No.

But... do you also throw all of your tools into a random drawer, or stash your books in your bookcases in every which way; upside down, with the spine to the back, and so on, without any order in it? Do you throw your 600 DVD's into a random closet?

I don't. I keep things organized; and with digital stuf even more so, because it's much easier to lose than physical stuff if you don't organize it in some way.

Who has at some time selected a bunch of sorted files, deleting everything, and then coming to the conclusion that inadvertently, a file that should NOT have been deleted was in that row, somehow, unexpectedly? Come on, everyone has had that happen at one time.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Even so, if you would do this every two months, you could do the import (takes a few minutes), and let the conversion run overnight...

Yes. But I would have to download my eBooks first on my PC/Mac.
Now, I buy them on the fly while on the train or in the hotel and such. On Kindle, Nook, some tablet and so on.
It would be hard enough to track, what I bought when and where. And then download every single one. And still I would read the Amazon book on the Kindle and the B&N book on the Nook....
BTW: I only read about 100 books per year. But I buy whatever interests me. Some I read a few weeks later, many I never read but collect...

[Katsunami]

You speak as if you go like this:

"Hey, let's read a book."
*buy*
*15 minutes later*
"Done! Let's buy another one."

In that case, I wouldn't worry with DRM either.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

..Do you throw your 600 DVD's into a random closet?

I don't. I keep things organized...

I sort all my stuff by purchase order.
Once, I tried to sort my Audio CDs by Artist. It was a mess, adding titles to my collection almost every day.
Sorting by purchase order is a.) the easiest way to add a new article, simply put it at the end of the row and b.) is extremely easy to find. Most of the times I'm searching the new stuff anyway. And I roughly remember the period, when I bought something.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

You speak as if you go like this:

"Hey, let's read a book."
*buy*
*15 minutes later*
"Done! Let's buy another one."

In that case, I wouldn't worry with DRM either.

Close enough.
It's usually: "Let's buy the new James Patterson. Hey, there even are 3 new ones. And a new John Katzenbach as well? Buy, buy, buy".
And btw: I do the very same for movies and TV shows from iTunes, for games for NVIDIA Shield, for apps on Surface Pro and so on.
Lots of those way more expensive.
Like I said before: Reading, in my opinion, is one of the cheapest hobbies of all. If you buy all your ebooks for the regular price, you pay maybe 1 Euro per hour of usage. Deal of the century...

[Catlady]

Since I buy books from the major publishers, I don't do any fixing--I just use the tools to get rid of the DRM. This is not time-consuming even though I do it only every few months or so.

I have spent much more time trying to change/add covers, fix formatting, etc. on public domain titles.

I remove DRM because I want to have as much control as possible over what I own. DRM interferes with my use of the material.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Or do you actually check the entire book and the content? I can imagine such effort for my 2 or 3 most favorite books. But in general?

I don't bother with one-off spelling mistakes or other minor things that would take more time than it is worth to fix, but mistakes that are repeated throughout the book are very annoying, and usually quite easy to fix. I think it is well worth spending a few minutes to fix mistakes that would otherwise spoil my enjoyment of a book that I am going to spend hours reading, and in many cases re-reading.