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This arrangement is bad for customers, for a number of reasons: But when you “buy” a Kindle book, you’re renting temporary authorization from Amazon to store the book on up to 6 Amazon-approved devices. You can loan it to someone, trade it, sell it, or just keep it and reread it as many times as you want. When you buy a paperback book, its content belongs to the author, but the physical book belongs to you.
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The problem here is that America’s copyright lawyers figured out how to change the rules of ownership. But DRM also inconveniences legitimate customers. The stated purpose is to prevent piracy, and for that DRM is modestly effective. Like many people you own an Amazon Kindle device for reading e-books.Īnd like many companies that trade in digital intellectual property, Amazon includes digital rights management (DRM) software in their e-books.
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