Microsoft is Planning to Close the eBook DRM Server: "All the Book will Inaccessible"

"The books will stop working": That's the substance of the reminder that Microsoft sent to customers for their ebook store, reminding them that, as announced in April, the company is getting out of the ebook business because it wasn't profitable enough for them, and when they do, they're going to shut off their DRM servers, which will make the books stop working.

Almost exactly fifteen years ago, I gave an influential, widely cited talk at Microsoft Research where I predicted this exact outcome. I don't feel good about the fact that I got it right. This is a fucking travesty.

As Rob Donoghue tweeted, "I keep saying it and it sounds worse each time...There will be refunds, and reasonable voice says to me it's just business, but the book voice wants to burn it all down. I'm kind of with the book voice on this one." Me too. Here's what I wrote back in April, when Microsoft announced the shutdown.

Microsoft has a DRM-locked ebook store that isn't making enough money, so they're shutting it down and taking away every book that every one of its customers acquired effective July 1. Customers will receive refunds.

This puts the difference between DRM-locked media and unencumbered media into sharp contrast. I have bought a lot of MP3s over the years, thousands of them, and many of the retailers I purchased from are long gone, but I still have the MP3s. Likewise, I have bought many books from long-defunct booksellers and even defunct publishers, but I still own those books.

When I was a bookseller, nothing I could do would result in your losing the book that I sold you. If I regretted selling you a book, I didn't get to break into your house and steal it, even if I left you a cash refund for the price you paid.

People sometimes treat me like my decision not to sell my books through Amazon's Audible is irrational (Audible will not let writers or publisher opt to sell their books without DRM), but if you think Amazon is immune to this kind of shenanigans, you are sadly mistaken. My books matter a lot to me. I just paid $8,000 to have a container full of books shipped from a storage locker in the UK to our home in LA so I can be closer to them. The idea that the books I buy can be relegated to some kind of fucking software license is the most grotesque and awful thing I can imagine: if the publishing industry deliberately set out to destroy any sense of intrinsic, civilization-supporting value in literary works, they could not have done a better job.

Extension Reading: How to Get Rid of the DRM and Access to the eBook Freely

For eBook customers, who are restricted by DRM technology. This is an unfair transaction since they can access to the purchased content on authorized rang only. Once the platform shut down its service, customers will lose all the collected content. Apart from Microsoft, Audible audiobooks, iTunes audio files are also protected by DRM.

Thanks to AudFree DRM Audio Converter, this is a one-stop audio converter can help users to remove DRM from the Audible, iTunes, Apple Music, etc. It supports to convert DRM locked audiobooks to MP3, WAV, AAC, FLAC. Then you will able to listen to them on any device without limitations and preserve all the audiobooks permanently.

Original Resource: Microsoft is about to shut off its ebook DRM servers: "The books will stop working"