If you really want to keep something, get a hardcopy.
Microsoft Closes The Book On Its E-Library, Erasing All User Content
This is a classic example of why DRM has always been mistrusted.
Your ownership of any book is entirely at the whim of Amazon, Microsoft or Barnes & Noble.
Used book stores used to be a important resource for book lovers. My mom bought the majority of her paperbacks used. Can’t resell a EBook.
There are steps to remedy this problem that can’t be detailed here.
An e-book is just a file. For example, ePub is a ZIP file. So the first “step” is to back up your e-books just like you would any other digital data you would not want to see erased.
DRM is a nasty business; best is not to buy such encrypted books. If some have sneaked through, there are various plugins that will remove at least some of the DRM, which ensures compatibility with future software and different readers. For the same reason, buy your books in well-known, open formats rather than obscure proprietary formats.
No clue whether it’s legal to re-sell an e-book (assuming you didn’t sign a license agreeing not to); why wouldn’t it be treated like any other book?
I wonder if shutting off Wi-Fi on the tablet will prevent the Microsoft purge?
It’s easy to turn off Wi-Fi on a Kindle. I’m not familiar with Microsoft readers.
Other option is to change the Wi Fi password on your home router. That will permanently prevent devices from opening Wi Fi. But, that means resetting the password on all your other devices.
That will save any books stored on the Reader.
The reader “calls home” to verify that you are legally entitled to read the book. If it can’t call home, you can’t read it.
Making/preserving a copy of the ebook does nothing*.
Note that this isn’t the first time something like this happened. Walmart tried DRM video and music things several years ago and left all the buyers high and dry when they shut the DRM servers down.
And this isn’t Microsoft’s first rodeo. They killed the Zune DRM server in 2017. (You had been able to play music you bought on other devices like Xboxes up until then.)
DRM is a lose-lose situation.
- As other options should not be discussed here.
My mom shuts off Wi Fi on her Kindle to conserve the battery. The books still open fine.
She only has a few dozen books stored on the kindle. The rest are on the Amazon cloud and require down loading when needed.
I only turn on the WiFi on my Kindle for a few minutes every week or so when I need to download purchases. Then it goes back off. Otherwise, the battery life is miserable. When I asked Amazon about this a few years ago, they told me their battery life ratings were based on 30 minutes a day usage. Which is ridiculous, can you imagine someone making that same calculation for a video game?
It’s been off for weeks at a time, while I caught up on my reading of stored content. I have never had any problems with accessing the content on the device.
As someone who owns a roomful of hardcover and paperback books, I can only say,
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!I TOLD YOU SO I TOLD YOU SO!!!SUCKS TO BE YOU!!!HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH…”
As someone with thousands of DRM-free books sitting on my phone (and several other devices) right now, I roll my eyes at you.
Yeah, DRM stripped e-books is the way to go because if something is mine it’s MINE. I don’t rent books and I’m damned if some dickwad is going to steal my content at their whim. The only books that still have DRM on them are some total throwaway free Kindle books that I really don’t care about anyway.
I believe the Kindle DRM did something like encrypt the file using the device’s serial number, so it can decrypt the book without “calling home”. Since it’s your device and you know your own serial number, it’s also trivial to wipe out the DRM, and, for obvious reasons, you should. I don’t know what Microsoft was doing.
But, yes, don’t buy DRM files; that’s like a scrambled book that requires special self-destructing goggles to read.
I have a Kobo reader and I turn on the Wi-Fi only to download books. I also have a reader on my computer and I can download all the books I have bought there. But here is the strange thing. Somehow, the files containing the books are invisible to me. I have searched all over the computer for the files and cannot find them.
My wife used to say that hard copy books are better for when the apocalypse comes.
“Because you don’t need to charge their batteries?” I’d ask.
“No, because they burn better”
They can’t be that invisible. See here for some information; seems they may be stored with long numbered names and no extensions. DeDRM Tools should be able to get rid of the DRM.
While it is generally against the law to break DRM on something you buy, there is one big exception that is useful: you are allowed to break DRM for the purposes of interoperability. This is why Linux can legally break the DRM on DVDs. It’s required for interoperability.
This argument has been used for why it’s okay to break the DRM in order to be able to read your ebooks on other platforms. It was also used for why it was okay to burn a CD of your iTunes songs–which iTunes actually made possible.
I still won’t go so far as to recommend people break the DRM, but I will say it appears to me that such might not be as illegal as it seems. Though keeping the book after a refund seems like it might be illegal for other reasons.
Who said anything seemed illegal? As you yourself acknowledge, it’s not only perfectly legal but absolutely necessary in this case.
What I recommended was refusing to buy any product with DRM, but, if for whatever reason you have one, break away.
Um, although I agree with much that has been said, Microsoft is shutting down the bookstore because it didn’t sell much, and is fulling reimbursing every customer. This is different from the Wal-Mart case or that time when Amazon rewrote history about 1984.
It’s good that they’re reimbursing the customers; but that doesn’t I think change the main issue. The customers preferred having the books to having the money – that’s why they bought the books in the first place. And some of those who made notes may think $25 comes nowhere near making up for losing them.
I’m sure they’re legally entitled to do this. I just think, again, that if you want to be sure not to lose something, keep a copy that’s entirely under your control. And if you want to be really sure not to lose somethng, keep it in both hardcopy and a backed up computer form.
Yup, I used to routinely strip DRM from my e-books. I believe that was legal. I never gave away copies or otherwise abused the copyright. Then I stopped using ebooks for a while, and I haven’t figured out how to strip DRM on the latest incarnation of Kindle. So I’ve only bought DRM-free books (there are a lot of them) and use the Kindle for Library books. I figure they are unlikely to break the DRM-version of a library book before I was going to return it anyway.
I need to finish researching how to strip the DRM, because there are other books I’d like to buy. And I’m just not willing to buy a DRM-crippled book.
I do, in fact, use the DRM-free books on other platforms, but mostly I’m doing it to keep them when Amazon decides to change its own platform. I believe this is legal.
Thanks – maybe the update will work. Or maybe I just did something dumb when I last tried.