This is why I'm hesistant to switch to eBooks..

[Rob, Roberator]

I know there are other places besides Amazon to get books, many of which are DRM free..but still, this is just bothersome: You don't own the Books on your Kindle

[[deleted user]]

I use Kobo you dont have this problem, and its pretty good I can get most of the book I want on it, and I think it is cheaper than Amazon but dont hold me to that.

[Jason]

This problem is Amazon specific, so get a Nook or another ereader to combat the problem.

[Michael]

It isn't a huge problem, just keep a copy of your books on a thumb drive. It is balanced by offline storage of your books in case of disaster.

[Rob, Roberator]

NMC wrote: "This isn't even a problem with Amazon. Just strip the books you buy of DRM, back it up, and the problem is solved. If more people did this we wouldn't be hearing stories of Amazon randomly deleting user's data, because it wouldn't even matter at that point. "

You average person is not going to do this/know how to do this. Nor should they have to.

Like it or not Amazon is a top seller of books and they have DRM and the ability to nullify your access to their cloud where your books live.

Yes there are alternative places to buy books. Yes there are ways around the DRM.

My point in posting this is simply that one of the top (if not the top) seller of eBooks is doing this.

Content providers (not just for books) are so intent on protecting their content that they punish legitimate customers while people who pirate content have easier access.

This stuff just always riles me up.

[Tina]

NMC wrote: "This isn't even a problem with Amazon. Just strip the books you buy of DRM, back it up, and the problem is solved. If more people did this we wouldn't be hearing stories of Amazon randomly deleting..."

I believe it is considered illegal to break DRM.

[Matthew]

We fought this battle for a decade with the music industry. The publishing industry needs to go through the same growing process unfortunately. I would not be surprised if five years from now, this conversation becomes moot. We are already slowly seeing some publishers (Tor) go entirely DRM free. It will only continue to grow.

Remember that the publishing industry has hundreds of years of inertia in the way it does business.

[[deleted user]]

In some countries it is legal if you do it for personal use. Still, the answer to the topic is easy - do not buy books with DRM and make backups of what you have. A lot of authors/publishers do not use it (Brandon Sanderson) comes to mind. All the books in Project Gutenberg are DRM-free.

[terpkristin]

Kottke had a link the other day for how to backup your Kindle library. I'll let y'all decide on the ethics/morality of it for yourselves.

[Walter]

I know there are other places besides Amazon to get books, many of which are DRM free..but still, this is just bothersome: You don't own the Books on your Kindle

While I cannot speak for publishing companies, I do know that when a writer self-publishes his or her work as an Amazon ebook, one of the questions they ask is whether or not you want to engage DRM for the work in question. While it could always change in the future, the current default is that once you make your decision you cannot come back later and switch from one to the other.

For authors, DRM is a bit of a dual-edged sword. For my own work, I decided not to make use of it. The possibility that my work could be distributed by a third party for free on some pirate website was outweighed by the obvious inconvenience to the reader. YMMV.