Go to Fictionwise, pick any book, and look at the details. You’ll see a format list that lists whether each format can be printed, or read-aloud. The list is not the same for all books, and applies to both DRM and multi-format books. All the formats can have read-aloud disabled (not that I’m sure all the formats actually have a read-aloud function in their readers).

Doctorow’s article is another strong argument in the growing movement to raise consumer awareness about the effects of DRM.

Last week, a 91-year-old woman, working to save our enviroment, told me:
“If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.”

Readers everywhere should be concerned about DRM, which is most commonly known as Digital Rights Management, but for ebooks might instead spell: Don’t Read Me.

Ebooks without DRM are ebooks with their full range of capabilites enabled — the ability to print, to copy, to read aloud, and to share the ebook on other devices. Ebooks without DRM can be sold cheaper. Without DRM we would have better ebooks at lower prices.

Adding DRM isn’t free. Spending on DRM systems (for all media, not ebooks only) is now a 1 billion dollar industry, and it will reach almost 2 billion dollars by 2012. (See http://drm.info/node/93 )

Who pays for DRM? … Surely, the dollar-cost of DRM is not coming out a publisher’s lavish lunch allowance, or from the profit margins of the online booksellers. … DRM robs creators and consumers: Content creators receive lower royalties, and consumers pay higher retail prices.

Yes, it is childishly simple to crack these DRM schemes (a python script is all it takes to unlock the DRM-ed mobi books). And what can’t be cracked can be circumvented in other easy ways. Publishers and booksellers using DRM are either foolish or naive, since by adding DRM they are paying for nothing.

Can someone please send a message to publishers — maybe via skywriting, or as a full page ad in one of the remaining print newspapers — that explains the fact that DRM does not work? … And why it is dangerous to have a false sense of security: the bomb shelter in the basement is not going to save you from a nuclear holocaust.

Taking DRM out of the equation will be a big win-win-win for consumers, for authors — and for publishers, too.

Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks

In that regard DRMed mobipocket ebooks are the same as paper books – you are stuck with one format and if you lose or damage it you might not get the book back again. This is definitely an unfortunate way to treat digital information when the customer could instead be guaranteed lifelong access to their purchase if they were able to back it up in a DRM-free or social-DRMed format.

Robbie: Did you not see my footnote saying that very thing?

In regards to Mobipocket DRM, I think it is wrong to say that your ebooks will “vanish” if Amazon stops supporting Mobipocket. Provided you have backed-up the ebook and still have the device with the corresponding Mobi PID you should be able to open it, right?

Um. Small correction: those copies of MobiPocket books that are infested with DRM will vanish entirely (well, become unreadable). DRM-free Mobipocket books, like those sold by Baen Books or Fictionwise’s Multiformat books, will be completely fine.

Which is a good reason to prefer them over DRM-infested versions, IMO.

Carry on.

Cory’s intelligent about the backlash that will come from readers who are cheated by DRM. Revoking Kindle’s text-to-speech feature is such a doltish, imperious step, it kind of unpleasantly sets the stage for further antagonisms for ebook buyers. This isn’t the way to start a relationship, let alone a technological revolution.

My hunch: the book industry doesn’t have long to avoid repeating the mistakes made by Hollywood and the music biz in the file-sharing age. Setting out to be a better jailer isn’t going to work, so why bother?

Sure, nobody will ever know if you do it if you do it in the privacy of your own home and don’t do something foolish like blab about it on a public forum. (Certainly, if I did remove DRM on books I buy, I’d never admit to it!)

But it’s not really a solution because telling people how to do it, or indeed even telling people to do it, could be considered “trafficking” under the DMCA. (Paul Biba yells at me whenever I dare to go into too much detail about how other people are doing it in an article.)

So we do, and indeed we must, continue to criticize DRM, because if people want to do the sensible thing and remove it on the books they buy, the DMCA turns them all into lawbreakers. We can’t even talk openly about it because of the chilling effects the DMCA has on free speech.

Until and unless those aspects of the DMCA are overturned, the sensible thing is just not to buy DRM’d books at all—or at least buy them as little as possible. It removes the need to break the law, and does not support the purveyors of DRM schemes with our money.

(Not that I’m necessarily one to practice what I preach. I buy some eReader-DRM’d books because I like the interface of their reader app and don’t find their style of DRM as onerous as MobiPocket’s. But I will absolutely not support MobiPocket DRM with my money when there is any possible alternative.)

And then there’s the fact that DRM is ineffective (as you point out). So, DRM stops no one from pirating, it’s easy to strip for the technically-inclined readers, and it discourages people from paying for content.