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Comment by xbryanx | Hacker News Reader

No DRM? What are they talking about. As a "Safari Books Online by O'Reilly" subscriber I'm constantly confounded by annoying "features" that seem to have almost no purpose but to prevent you from copying anything from the online versions (like code sections). While it's not technically blocked or prohibited, these features sure don't seem to be there to enhance online reading.

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No DRM on ebooks, that is.

I agree that Safari's usefulness is severely hampered by the copy-protection methods (I used to use it as a free service through my university library). Unfortunately, as a subscription service O'Reilly has stronger incentives to use DRM because if it was easy to copy content from books, you could sign up for one month, copy everything you wanted, and then cancel your subscription.

Keep in mind that 1)Safari Books is a separate operating unit from the main O'Reilly publishing and that 2) a majority of th books on Safari aren't owned/published by O'Reilly. I'm sure some of the security measures are a result of Microsoft, Addison-Wesley, etc. allowing their books to be in Safari.

I still can't get over how bad Safari is when O'Reilly are so great in everything else they do. Does O'Reilly proper run the site?

I haven't used Safari in a long time, but it used to have non-O'Reilly books. I'm sure some of those publishers aren't as willing to go without DRM.

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