Microsoft Closes The Book On Its E-Library, Erasing All User Content (NPR)

[eppur_se_muova]

Coffee poured. Pillow fluffed. E-book loaded. You're ready to begin a delightful afternoon on your e-reader when, poof, the book disappears.

Starting in July, Microsoft will be closing its e-book library and erasing e-books from all devices. Consumers will receive a refund for every book purchased.

The company is able to shutter its store – which it launched in 2017 to compete with industry leaders Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble – due to a tool called Digital Rights Management or DRM.

DRM allows companies to control content to protect copyright holders and prevent piracy.

"One of the things that I think people don't realize that's crucially important is that DRM and related software tools are embedded in all sorts of devices that we buy," Aaron Perzanowski, the author of The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy, tells NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
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more: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/07/739316746/microsoft-closes-the-book-on-its-e-library-erasing-all-user-content

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. So much for the belief that any day now

no one will ever again read a real book. They will all be digital.

I've been known to point out that all that's needed is some tweak in the technology and all of a sudden all your digital books will be unreadable.

What Microsoft is doing is unconscionable, in my opinion. Very glad I never purchased an ebook from them. I have all of six or seven ebooks on my Kindle, and someday I'll get around to reading them.

[erronis]

2. I love my personal library (2,000+) and the local library

While I'm an 8-12 hour/day internet junkie my best possessions are my books. Mainly non-fiction and reference, whatever classics I haven't given away to be enjoyed by others, several 17th century tomes and family heirlooms. DRM is for wusses.