There are plenty of DRM unencumbered ebooks around if you look. But if you do find yourself dealing with DRM there are a number of methods of removing it.

Personally, if I already own the book in question I pirate the e-book, I don't see anything wrong with this as the author has already received equivalent royalties for the book. In the cases that I do not own a physical copy, I will generally buy a physical copy and then pirate the e-book. In some cases it is impossible to find a pirated e-book in which cases I will search for a DRM free option to buy. And in the event that I can't find the DRM free option I will resort to an Adobe Digital Editions DRM version (which I will promptly turn into a normal copy). This has worked out well for me and I have a pleasant library of books on my e-reader.

(Unlike the author, I find the idea of e-book "borrowing" to be completely ridiculous (as ridiculous as spotify or netflix). I would rather just check the book out of a library, or outright pirate it. At the end of the day, the author is not making any extra money out of my inconvenience of having a proprietary management software which stores a book locally on my device but doesn't give me direct access to the data.)

It's very easy to remove that DRM. Personally I don't log in to my kobo so library books get stripped before being copied over (the kobo acts as a usb storage device).

> Unless you pirate them, most books are encumbered with DRM.

Depends on the publisher/genre. Tech books (from O'Reilly/PragProg/Apress/Manning anyway) for example are most often not encumbered with DRM.

I appreciate companies like Packt who supply credits to download DRM-free versions of the books you read. I get a free credit each month to download any book from them, DRM-free.