> But it would be healthy for everyone if people supported a DRM-free and non-surveillance ebook ecosystem.

I dream of a day when that's possible, but all of the massive publishers with over 80% of book marketshare insist on DRM.

> and get into the gray areas of the piracy culture that's creating much of the DRM problems

This is an interesting framing, mainly because it can be flipped 180 degrees around. "Shinier and more impregnable DRM just creates problems that lock you into certain devices and usage patterns, which simply create much of the gray area of piracy culture"

I mean, you're literally starting out by not trusting the person who fucking purchased your product and then furthermore also artificially limiting them in how they can use that content and on what devices!

Imagine if every marriage began with an un-shut-offable location tracker in your wedding band. You'd be complaining about the "cheating culture that has contributed to the need to install uncircumventable perma-trackers on the newly-married... and also, everyone who tries to disable them OBVIOUSLY just wants to cheat" /eye-roll

> (Unless you DRM-crack, and get into the gray areas of the piracy culture that's creating much of the DRM problems.)

Meh. Even if there was no piracy there'd be DRM. It's not only used to limit privacy but also how you can legitimately use stuff you bought. Like how many devices you can access it on. Or how many times you can view video content.

In fact I think the presence of piracy helps keep prices low. I'm sure Netflix would raise prices even more if they weren't losing customers to piracy every time they raise prices or add crap like ads.. And really, DRM does absolutely nothing to prevent this. It's not as if the latest shows aren't on the pirate bay hours after they appear on Netflix.

> But it would be healthy for everyone if people supported a DRM-free and non-surveillance ebook ecosystem.

That would be very nice yes, if there were one. I don't think there's anything like GOG for books. But yes I do always buy my games on GOG if they are available there.

That is what DRM is for. Same as the region locking in DVDs. It is about segmenting markets, preventing competition and ensuring that the publishers can sell the same content over and over again.

Yes I know, my point was that not pirating is not helping to remove DRM from the world as the OP was suggesting.

Agree, my comment was for the room.

ebooks.com does tell you if a title has DRM or not, which seems to be the best option currently. Outside of that I haven't found much.

Not that I've ever encountered it in the wild, but I feel like pointing out that publishers can opt-out of DRM on Amazon as well. You'd recognise them by this in the description:

> At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

I only know about it because of Cory Doctorow, never seen anyone else that does this. Heck, even re-packaged public domain books contain DRM for some inexplicable reason.

Kobo also does it. They tell you in the eBook details. It's the publisher's request. Publishers like Tor, O'reily and Baen go DRM free. If the re-packaged public domain books don't request it then on goes the DRM.

The link lists a few places that have DRM-free ebooks, and some examples of good technical books I've bought that way.

Hmm yeah but I don't tend to read technical books on ereaders. Most of them require a bigger screen to be usable. I only read fiction on my kindle.

I haven't seen a good store that has the usual popular content without DRM. Well except on paper of course :)

But yeah I didn't know that existed for tech books. In fact the ones I bought online were from big publishers and quite expensive compared to fiction books. But perhaps that's just my niche.

> But it would be healthy for everyone if people supported a DRM-free and non-surveillance ebook ecosystem.

I try nearly every time. The book I want (usually sci-fi recommended to me by friends) is never available from any DRM free shop I can find.

I end up buying from Amazon because their DRM is the most convenient to remive. And I go to the effort to remove it because I want to keep the content I buy, not have it disappear when the DRM key holder decides to take it away from me.

> One solution I found is to buy ebooks as DRM-free EPUBs and PDFs

Unfortunately, for many, many books, this isn't possible, at least legally.

You can always load 3rd-party DRM-free books and I don't see Amazon removing that. Their hardware and ecosystem aren't that much better than everyone else's.

In fact, I want to hear from authors, who write books and profits from their work, what’s their thoughts about this policy change.