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Comment by graemep | Hacker News Reader

I will not buy DRMed ebooks. I hate the idea that someone can delete a book I bought. Once I have a book, I want to keep it.

I have quite a lot of books that belong to be grandfather, and lots that belonged to my parents. A lot of those will last another generation, maybe more. That does not happen with ebooks either.

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I buy books and immediately rip the drm out. They get their money, I get my book.

Where do you live? If you live in the USA you're violating the DMCA, if you live in the EU it is the EUCD which you'll be breaking, elsewhere there may be similar directives. That 'they get their money' does not make any difference here, it is the 'circumvention of technological protection measures' which makes you into a law breaker.

Oh well. I also speed. Call the police.

...one of these is far less damaging than the other!

And you can't sleep after you do too much speed!

woop woop that's the sound of da police lol

wait so buying PDFs isn't possible?

On that note, does anyone have a copy of "The C programing language" (first edition) that isn't falling apart because the acid paper is decaying? I was referring to my copy the other day and it is clear the days I own that book are numbered because of planned obsolesce in the 1970s. I never bought the second edition, but if I did I'm sure it too would be falling apart from age before my likely death.

First edition may be collectible regardless of condition. And as well as newer editions it is resalable. Can you sell an used ebook you bought? How about can you buy an used ebook?

I don't have it because it is collectable. I have it because it is a great book and I still refer to it once in a while. (mostly I can find what I need on the web, but once in a while what K&R really said is important - though mostly for online arguments)

I got a lightly used copy off Amazon, along with "The UNIX programming environment" a year or two ago, probably. They're both fine with only a bit of wear, but I don't think they were ever of a super sturdy binding that would hold up well under heavy abuse.

The binding isn't great, but on my copy the pages themselves are getting brittle. In a few more years if I touch them they will fall to little pieces.

I have a copy of the second edition from 1990, still in good condition (and a finer print job than later editions [1]).

[1] https://boston.conman.org/2002/07/23.1

It is trivially easy to remove DRM with a plugin for Calibre.

Not with the latest encryption. Although you can always screenshot and ocr. Or maybe I've missed something new.

Unless latest means "In the last few months" then no it's still trivial. I buy a lot of "Kindle" books, but I always rip the DRM and make an ebook version I actually use and archive. My attitude is that once I pay for a song/game/book/etc... it's no one's business, but my own how I use it (for myself I mean, obviously uploading it to others is a different issue).

For books from Amazon. Still trivial to remove DRM from Kobo, Google Play, any place that uses Adobe DRM.

I think it's easier with some providers than others. I bought an Amazon ebook that I was really struggling to de-DRM (so I promptly returned it and have only bought books with Adobe DRM since).

It's probably even easier to download them from Z-Library after having bought them on whatever legal platform.

Erm, i have a "friend" that has a few fancy signed physical hard covers that were never opened... because they took their sweet time to arrive so said "friend" downloaded the epub...

Also back in the day when games came on discs, they used to download the no cd crack before opening the shrink wrapped box.

I think we have the same friend. He told me he likes to download a book to get a feel for it… like thumbing through a book in a bookshop. If it’s good, he goes ahead and buys it.

eBooks can be backed up and survive a house fire or a flood, though.

Depends where the house fire or a flood is. If it's in a data center then they might suddenly disappear[1].

[1]: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/ovhcloud-fire...

If only we had more than one datacenter.

> Many believed they had been paying for a reliable service with backups, and were shocked that their data was lost.

You can keep multiple copies in different locations.

Exactly what the provider said.

> Customers were not even compensated for lost data, unless they had paid for backups [which were also lost], with the company saying cloud customers should be handling their own disaster recovery plans.

the challenge is I don't love my books for the content, but for their essence, so ebooks just aren't as valuable. If my physically books were destroyed in a fire I would be sad because i lost the objects, not temporarily lost access to the contents.

For me it's a bit of both. A programming book that I wrote over 10 years ago - the content is long out of date but the weight reminds me of the effort I put into producing it. Then there's my father's library, all 2000 books of it. I've kept about 50, on a wide variety of topics, and I value them both for the unusual content (Ancient churches of Wales; Jazz record catalogs from the 1940s; English artists from the early 20th century) and for the fact that they remind me of him.

> I don't love my books for the content, but for their essence

Curious thing to say. For me it is obvious that the content is the book’s essence.

You can buy an extra copy of the book too!

... But you'll need a second house!

> ... But you'll need a second house!

In another city... Multi-AZ deployment. Standard procedure.

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