Hacker News Reader

Comment by starbugs | Hacker News Reader

> The amount of DRM and locking down Amazon bolts onto its ereaders and ebook formats feels insane to me. I can understand the profit motive but god damn.

I don't. I would be much happier buying ebooks without DRM and I would buy substantially more of them if they were DRM-free.

View on HN

Kobo tells you when books have DRM and when they don't (at the bottom of the store page for each book). I'd recommend supporting them over Amazon any day.

Besides that, a lot of publishers who sell their own books do so without DRM by default. As does almost every book bundle hosted by Humble Bundle.

I am with you but we are a small minority. I literally don't know anyone IRL who cares about DRM. I doubt people like us factor into their decision making at all.

No, but I know people wondering why this can't play this video in 4k or why their offline downloaded videos stopped working and they get a pop-up telling them that they need to go online to re-validate them.

Yes, not many people know what DRM is but many of the effects are noticed when it ruins their experience.

I agree, however they probably assume it's their fault or something to do with this arcane black box they use but don't quite understand how it works.

For me, I bought a single DRM book against my better judgement because it was the only available way to get it quickly at the time. Predictably, I eventually lost access to it and never bought another one since.

I have never considered DRM on my Kindle, been using one for 15 years. I can buy any book on Amazon which is any book id be trying to read on this small format, and read it immediately for usually a maximum of $10. Never had want for more!

Until, one day, Amazon recalls a book you have purchased or simply folds up the Kindle service entirely (unlikely, I know, but certainly possible).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com