The music industry dropped DRM years ago. So why does it persist on e-books?

Posted by BernardSwiss on Dec 24, 2012 11:40 PM EDT
Ars Technica; By Cyrus Farivar 		Mail this story
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So maybe you were lucky enough to get an e-reader for the holidays. In fact, maybe you’re reading this article on one right now! Maybe you’re cozying up to your fire and you’re considering what e-book you want to download to get through these dark winter days.

But you’re an Ars reader, and you actually know (and care!) what DRM stands for. After all, we’ve been covering digital rights management for years, ever since it was a contentious issue in the music industry. You may recall that Amazon itself led the charge against Cupertino, challenging iTunes with cheaper downloads and a lack of DRM. But Amazon's lead in the fight against music DRM was a business decision rather than an ideological stance. You may remember our story from late October 2012, detailing how to strip DRM off of Amazon Kindle purchases as a means of backing up your titles and preventing Amazon from deleting your entire library on a whim.

And that leaves this question: where’s the DRM outrage over e-books? Or put another way, why doesn’t Amazon care about eliminating DRM for books, when it did for music?

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Let's think about DVDs as well. Ridcully 1 938 Dec 26, 2012 10:26 AM

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