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I strip the DRM off of books the moment I buy them. Check that this is possible for you too, and you'll end up with a collection of DRM-free epub files that you can back up as you like.

I assume this violates the EULA of most retailers and subjects your account to possible deletion. Not saying that it's likely, but DRM restrictions seem like a matter of principle to some people. Even if you can strip the DRM you still don't legally own the product.

who cares, they can't take it from you

In this scenario I think the biggest issue with losing an account is the ability to aquire future purchases. But like I said, it's more a matter of principle for some. You own a book, you don't own a digital copy of a book.

This is the direction NFYs should have gone (could still go).

It would be great to be able to resell digital purchases, but that’s only on the consumer’s interest, so will never happen without an act of ${rule_making_body}.

This fundamentally does not work, because being able to copy is such an essential feature of electronic information. Think about it - you can never really "lose access" to information in the computer world unless you purposefully delete it completely, which cannot be realistically ensured.

I understand what's you're saying, that any digital scarcity is by design and therefore artificial.

But damn I wish my Steam library had a resale value.

As more games become unavailable for purchase (e.g., the recent nonsense Epic pulled with old Unreal games), it will.

If they sell you the digital copy, you own it.

If it says "license" on the button rather than buy then find another store...

This is not legal advice and is my own personal opinion.

On a related note, there ought to be a law that forbids the use of "BUY", "GET", or "PURCHASE" for things you would not in fact own. Instead, they should say "SUBSCRIBE" or "LICENSE".

I would also accept “RENT” or Long Term Rental

Those should be for licenses with an end date. "Subscribe" and "license" don't really imply there being a definite end date to your access, but nevertheless informs you that your access is contingent upon the continued existence of the business in question, unlike things you "buy".

To what bodies have you proposed such a law? I'm in total agreement with you.

First, fuck those retailers for putting such conditions on things you bought to own. They're yours, so who cares.

Second, strip the DRM using Calibre, and store the books off any cloud-based platform and on your own drives, as you always should in any case given the proclivity of many content companies to just flagrantly bullshit their way into excusing themselves when they frequently steal back their customers access to stuff they ostensibly own.

Once a piece of digital content is actually yours, in your own device drives, it's only then really yours.

Keep the on-device cloud-based versions around if you like the user interface of your platform or reader, but your own digital copies elsewhere. The retailer doesn't even need to know (though I personally wouldn't give a tin shit if they did anyhow).

>"They're yours..."

Yes and no. There's an important distinction between _having_ something and _owning_ something. You can have possession of figures carved from contraband elephant ivory. But if anyone who was inclined to care about such things decided to take action, a court could compel you to destroy it. Same thing with any illegal item.

But these are all "ifs and buts." Hence why it's a matter of principle and not practice. At the end of the day, most people are fine with "buying" a book that they don't own as evidenced by the sales.

Now you're just engaging in silly semantics. Yes, in all practical sense, you absolutely do own the DRM-free books you've stripped of their rent-seeking garbage. You could even take that to court and quite heavily argue that because you bought them as claimed property, they're yours. You might not win, but a case could be made and in any case, you could move digital copies anywhere you want. The ones doing wrong here are the companies that try to impose DRM on things people are buying under a notion of ownership, That these also randomly erase or reclaim things they claim to have sold only makes the wrong worse.

>At the end of the day, most people are fine with "buying" a book that they don't own as evidenced by the sales.

most people are under the impression that they own the things they've paid for, and the inevitable rug pulls always take them by surprise.

rejecting the bullshit rules of rent-seeking parasites would be a more worthy principle to pursuit.

Nobody can compel you to destroy a DRM-free digital copy AND enforce this. It is impossible.

If it's not enforced or not enforceable, there is no "compel".

How do you know a book in a shop wasn't printed by a rogue party? Maybe the "bookshop" had a EULA saying you don't own the book?

Buying a DRM book and stripping the DRM doesn't deny the seller, nor author, anything they previously had. It just lets you do what you paid for.

Just send them your own EULA at "purchase" if you think that unilateral terms no one reads should be binding on the other party.

This is not legal advice and is my own personal opinion.

> Just send them your own EULA at "purchase" if you think that unilateral terms no one reads should be binding on the other party.

I've heard, explicitly from lawyers, that sending an automated process (like a website) amendments to their EULA won't hold up at all in court. It's clear that the EULA is take it or leave it, and throwing changes at something that you know will ignore them doesn't accomplish anything.

It'd be nice if we could do it, but it doesn't fit into the reality of law.

It is also clear that few people read EULAs, so the courts should declare them invalid and apply the basic copyright law.

The difference between that and sending your "modifications" back is that you have an explicit, intentional choice to make: accept the EULA or don't use the site.

I think that the walls of text do need to be reigned in in acceptance of the fact that it's absurd to hire a lawyer to review all of those contracts, but I also somewhat sympathize with courts' opinions of "So you think you could just use the product and the contract doesn't apply to you because you didn't want to... Read?"

Most of those EULAs are saying what should be common sense. The law should just give me those rights, but because copyright hasn't caught up to the digital age and software we need something that allows me to copy into computer memory.

Anything that isn't 'common sense' needs to be a contract that a lawyer reviews for me

EULAs aren't worth the pixels they are printed on. All EULAs can be ignored until there is an established precedent ruled on by courts.

Except that, once there is an established precedent, it's too late to decide that you'd better not ignore it.

It's extremely unlikely that there will be any suit based on the mere act of making your own copy. All prior cases deal with distribution.

There already has been. The relevant case law is LLC v ReDigi:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_LLC_v._ReDigi....

> On March 30, 2013, Judge Richard J. Sullivan ruled in favor of Capitol Records, explaining that the transfer of digital data from one storage medium to another constituted a violation of copyright, because the copy was ultimately an unauthorized reproduction, and therefore outside of the protection of the first-sale doctrine

>claimed copyright infringement against ReDigi, a service that allows resale of digital music tracks originally purchased from the iTunes Store

AKA distribution. Without distribution, the owner cannot claim damages. So making your own copy for your own use does not fall under this.

Yeah. That’s the reason for DJs there is a license for “working copy” (bastard SIAE), especially if you’re downloading digitally and copying it to usb disk. If you are playing vinyl, they can suck my tonearm!

You need to proactively write your congressman (or local country equivalent) to make personal copies of media legal. Ideally make region locking illegal, and a dozen other things I can't remember off hand, but we have all been subject too at times.

Some have been found to be valid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement#Enf...

Yes, but the concern is not a legal one, it is a practical one.

"You have been found in violation of our EULA and we have therefore permanently deleted your account. Please check our support page at <404> for more information." - Any Service, to Any User.

Now what, for Any User? Hope you're famous enough to raise a stink on Twitter to get your account back? Pay $1B in legal costs to sue them?

And if they ask about it, you simply lie, but they'll never ask. I get your theoretical concern, but I don't understand what practical the concern is, because there doesn't seem to be one. They can't peer into your hard drive or running processes, and they aren't going to track down the accounts of random internet commenters.

I am not sure how they’d know what you do to a file once you copy it to your PC, which is allowed.

While many on HN use Linux most of the world doesn't.

And while iOS, MacOS, Windows, Android are not known to deliver exact details of everything you do it is known they send back some "telemetry".

Given the way the world is going, your comment - while true now - may not be valid in 10 or 20 years.

It would certainly be a departure from now if they started sharing that data with third parties.

There are tradeoffs to cowardice, yeah.

So just buy a Kobo device without any account whatsoever and upload DRM-free epubs to it.

And how, pray tell, are they going to find out that you stripped the DRM from the books if you don't distribute them, without violating multiple privacy laws and perhaps even more?

They can't.

This is very little effort to do and yet at some point I stopped bothering or caring.

With Calibre it's basically set it and forget it, as the DeDRM plugin (when installed) will strip DRM on import.

Yeah, it is, but I rarely find the time to plug my Kindle into the PC. Of the many things I need to get done it just doesn’t seem that important worrying about the remote chance that an ebook I’ve read might be removed from my account.

I do this as well - they should be unencumbered to begin with. Fortunately the most popular format is trivial to remove the DRM.

I don’t think Amazon’s KFX DRM has been fully broken yet. It’s at the cat-and-mouse stage. The DeDRM tools work for some books some days, and then Amazon tweaks something and it’s broken again. To me, it feels like the beginning of the end of easily cracked DRM.

There are KFX workarounds, like getting Amazon to provide the book in the older format, but then you lose all the features only present in the KFX format.

Or were you talking about epub? I used to buy epubs from the Google store but I only bought titles that weren’t DRMed. Are epubs from Google or Apple or Kobo easily cracked?

Epubs from most suppliers use Adobe’s solution. Which has been cracked for years.

I had to look it up. It looks like Google uses Adobe’s DRM, but Apple does not. They use their own DRM called FairPlay and it has not been cracked.

where do you buy them?

I believe pretty much all epub DRM can be cracked nowadays.

This is absolutely one of those cases where (assuming you don't redistribute the drm-stripped epub) there is a complete ethical justification but a failed business justification, and yet...

... also, I think this is why Jobs didn't bother protecting music with DRM (except for identification of the purchasing account).

Sell or donate books, too! Just because you bought something that lasts for ages, doesn’t mean that’s where you get the value.

I organize by age (using a ring buffer method) and have an honest “am I going to read this again?” review of my oldest shelf every few months or so.

For me it's not only "Am I going to read this again", but rather "Do I want to have this available for my children to read"? That makes the pool of books significantly larger.

I use "Will I consume (again) or recommend?" and apply it to most media I have.

https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools

>I really wish I could have an e-reader, but again, I don't want to spend money on things that will lock me into a single vendor indefinitely and might just arbitrarily go away.

https://github.com/joeycastillo/The-Open-Book

This may be up your alley.

For a more realistic option, buy a Kobo ereader and install KOReader on it, never connecting it to internet or registering an account.

I've had Kobos since abandoning the Kindle many years ago. I run two accounts with them.

One is on the device, has never purchased any books, and is a placeholder for easy software updates etc (I quite like their UI).

The other has all my purchases, but is never put on the reader. Instead I download, then use Calibre to create an open copy (for personal use only) and move it to the reader via USB sync.

It usually takes about 30 seconds to do for a book, and the result is a legally-obtained curated collection. And every book is tagged with where it came from (its legal provenance) for my own peace of mind.

My main motivation however is actually the metadata. Publishers/authors haven't got a clue when it comes to title, author, series, genre, covers etc., so all my books are now standardised and categorised and each has a cover of exactly the same size and aspect ratio. Maybe I'm an obsessive, but if you do it as and when you buy a book then it really does take a minute or two at the most. And the result is quite satisfying and, more importantly, as future-proofed as I can reasonably get whilst also being a very easy library to navigate.

> legally-obtained curated collection

In the US and many other Western countries (mostly forced by the US), circumventing or otherwise removing DRM is illegal in and of itself, even for personal use.

I like Kobo's devices for the most part, but I've only ever used KOReader on them. Kobo software seems to contain telemetry. As a side note, you can circumvent the registration requirement after wiping the reader by inserting an entry to a sqlite3 db, thus allowing your reader to be unaccounted for by Kobo or Google Analytics.

It does contain telemetry, as you say. But with a throwaway account on the device, and no payment method or other details on it, I don't really care. Plus unless I'm doing an update check (about once a year) it's always offline. I recognise it's probably still gathered info and is sending it in a bulk catch-up, but again I don't really care.

For the registration requirement you're right, but as I'm not replacing their software then by the simple expedient of a dummy account I don't need to do anything to the device, even the DB entry, and personally I'd rather not bother. Nice to know, though, thanks.

that looks like a lot of fun, i love tinkering around with electronics. i might actually try to put one of those together.

In the past, there were used bookstores everywhere that you could sell your books to. I don’t know of any used bookstores any more except one that is really far from where I live

I think used bookstores failed because they didn’t curate their selections enough. You can’t go into one expecting to find a specific book — you go there to discover new books. When the shelves are packed with books nobody wants, it removes the reason to go there

I'm not sure how sustainable they are, but there are a couple of used bookstores near me. I think they engage in heavy curation, though -- they'll pay for your books (or even do consignment for rare/expensive ones), but only if they think they're likely to sell.

There’s still at least Half Price Books which seems to be doing fine. They usually have a impressive selection at least in old sci-fi that I sometimes go hunting for

> My apartment is running out of space for all these books, and maybe the solution to this

is obviously to get a bigger apartment.

im saving up to hopefully own a house someday, but buying a bigger apartment isn't as easy as it might have been 20 years ago. Boomers have rigged the real-estate market to protect their "investment" by severely constricting housing supply, and this has created pressure across the entire housing market, even for renters. This is the biggest apartment I can afford.

As someone who owns a house (after a long time of having much less space), I can state that you'll never get enough space.. not if you wish to stay married, at least. I just don't have the space for all my books, in this relatively large house. Other things constantly compete for the space. I've had to throw away a lot of books. They're hard to even give for free to used book shops, they get so many books from people like me.

In other words - I wish for unlimited storage. A house, unfortunately, isn't even close. There was a book I read, once, which had a house much larger on the inside than on the outside..

I use a Kindle for a lot of books, one reason is that it's so much easier when traveling. Another reason is that my vision isn't as good as it used to, years before I got the Kindle I changed from paperbacks to the larger variants simply to get the larger font. The Kindle lets me adjust the font to something I can read comfortably in every condition. A physical book is still better in many respects though. It looks much better, it's easier to skip forth and back, and if the book contains maps or drawings (fantasy or tech books), a physical book is tons better.

> There was a book I read, once, which had a house much larger on the inside than on the outside..

House of Leaves was such an experience to read. I really liked how they had a unique take on the medium and act of reading.

You should also look into using an Ereader with your library. Many libraries can lend out ebooks. No idea how it actually works (I assume there's DRM on the lent books, but who cares, there's no pretension that you're the owner anyway) but it's definitely an option to consider.

The issue with this is you are still running vendor controlled spyware on a device you own to access the DRM'd books. They have a direct interest to spy on you to ensure the terms of service are not being violated. It is better to simply download already DRM-free books from libgen or something, or if that's not an option use the library to borrow physical books.

The EBooks systems most libraries use is run by Overdrive, which manages the library’s digital collection, the loan periods, the accounts, etc. they do a pretty good job, and their phone apps (Libby) is quite good.

My only real complaint about Overdrive is the premise that a copy of a book can be lent out x times. It’s a concept pushed by the publisher trying to create scarcity where none exists. Overdrive can’t do anything but capitulate. I suppose I’m also bothered by the “x copies available” concept.

I love books but reading a paper book is a no go nowadays. So what I do if I can't get a book I want in digital format that use one of those paper cutter guillotine like tools to get rid of the book's spine (yeah I know it's sacrilege) or press down the pages with a tool so it's almost flat. Then photo each page with a cheap dslr on a stand, ocr them, and voilá I have my own ebook in whatever format I want. I can make highlights, take notes etc. The process can be accelerated with two dslrs and aligning the pages in a diy wood stand.

Also there are book scanners out there, but don't know the price on these.

The city I live in’s library has a pretty extensive ebook selection that way you don’t have to buy an ebook you can just borrow it from your local library for free. And then there is always the internet archive/open library route too

Buy an e-reader which doesn't require an account, like some Kobo devices (I'm most familiar with the Kobo Aura ONE which is an older device but there must be others). Then buy some books in epub format and strip their DRM, or if that's impossible, buy a copy and then pirate an epub. Then just upload those sweet DRM-free epubs to the device and enjoy your ownership.

My policy is to pay a premium for non-DRM ebooks -- supply some incentive for publishers to offer that. (Rampant piracy is what got us into the DRM nightmare in the first place.)

I recently got a new ereader (Pocketbook InkPad Lite) that's working well for this: https://www.neilvandyke.org/ebooks/

ebooks.com looks great, I didn't know about this! I would gladly pay a premium for non-DRM versions of all books I buy and I'll be using this as a source in the future.

However, I'm very militant against DRM, so in situations where I'm unable to acquire a DRM-free book, I will de-DRM or pirate it.

Is epub DRM standardized? Can I buy books from Apple or Google and read them on a Kobo?

Many libraries accept book donations. That way your book will be reused, possibly also providing the library with a little bit of extra funding.

To my surprise my local library doesn't accept book donations. They have to get them through their own buying program. Which is unfortunate, my wife wanted to donate Japanese books because they have so few of them, she even bought extras for that purpose, but they can't take them.

It's worth considering just sneaking them onto their shelves.

Sometimes they get 'adopted', and if they don't then often whoever tries to check them out (which is presumably someone who wants to read them) is allowed to just take them as they are non-stock. And at the worst, the librarians will find another home for them (they are not usually destroyed; sometimes they join the book sale which benefits the library anyway).

Great points.

Books or music as a service, when you think you've bought them, is terrible.

"I also can't get over the incident from the early 10s when Amazon deleted 1984 off of their customers' kindles." - what an ironic book for this to happen to

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=710506

The story is that publishing on a Kindle has the publisher give Amazon the right to sub-license copies that are "indefinitely" licensed to the purchaser; this is in contrast to iTunes where it really feels like they're giving you a "forever" license to something, since I haven't been able to find a story about movies outright disappearing from libraries (besides via changing countries which is an iTunes quirk).

I know it's not quite the same thing, but the Bruce Willis vs Apple disagreement over whether he has the rights to pass his music collection down to his heirs makes it clear that whilst the licence 'feels' more permanent with iTunes than with Amazon, the lifetime/ownership of the rights is about the same.

If you're actually paying for the books, de-DRM them. But pay for them.

I personally read on a Barnes & Noble Nook, my fourth e-ink reader. I absolutely love it, I would go so far as to say that the current generation has a _better_ reading experience than dead trees. But I use Calibre and remove the DRM, for the same reasons that you state. I view the books not as entertainment but rather as culture. Culture worth preserving.

I used to practically live at the Half-Price Books stores in my area, but for the last couple of years I've been a member at Barnes & Noble too. The thing that made the membership an easy decision for me was the manga section, but I've bought other books there, too, and did a good chunk of my Christmas shopping there this month.

I just give the books away once the shelves are getting filled. No point using them as dust collectors.

I have a handful of books that have moved with me but 99% I read once and never touch again. I also just donate most away when I run out of space

Since I was moving between cities and countries, i started to give away books that i’ve read as a present to my friends. Only fictions though, that I usually never read them again. It’s also nice way to have someone to discuss and talk about them.

I'm with you regarding the DRM. So what I do instead is download the e book from z lib and also buy the book if I like it to support the author. So a win-win for the author as well as for me.

Have you considered trading books with other avid readers? That freezes the need to buy new books and opens up a whole new catalog for yourself.

Donate books to the library. How many of them do you read more than once? Just send them on to someone else.

Are you really going to read your books more than once?

My wife and I are ruthless about not collecting stuff

To each their own, but many people read their books many times over in a life. It can be extremely enjoyable, comforting in bad moments, and bring forth new, fresh views on one's own thoughts and the text they're reading.

If you have a good library system, it can be pretty easy to have limitless access without amassing a collection. Obviously there are some books that won’t be available, but my wife and son read hundreds of novels a year (combined) they almost universally come from the library.

Plus, increasing library circulation often increases funding, making it a virtuous cycle.

It also sponsors the development of ever more restrictive DRM schemes, which you might want to consider. Your money is always voting for a future, and I'd rather not help create a world encumbered by DRM.

So do you think the money is segmented when you buy physical book from B&N?

I'm like you. But boy would the world be boring if everyone was like us.

I have reread my top 200 books I like more than once. I owned well into the 2000s of books. Most bought second hand. Most gone, but not the 200. As life ebbed and flowed books got boxed and unboxed. Glee ensues when a favorite shows up again.

I have a relatively good memory so I remember many details of a story. In spite of that, the flow of rereading a good story is a pleasure.

We listen to music over and over why not reread.

I pretty much re-read at least two or three books a year. I do sell books if I don't like them or feel neutral about them, but nowhere near ruthless. I still have a decently-sized collection.

A big reason to keep a book is to lend it to someone else.

Depends on what type of book. I don't usually re-read novels and you're probably right that there's no point in worrying about jeff bezos taking them away, but most of my books are either textbooks which I keep around as a reference, or comics which don't take nearly as much time to re-read as a novel would.

I tend to like authors whose books are worth re-reading. There aren't that many either.