Do you have any ebooks from Microsoft? No, you don't.

[robkelk]

This weekend you better read those ebooks you bought from Microsoft – because they'll be dead come next week

If you bought an ebook through Microsoft's online store, now's the time to give it a read, or reread, because it will stop working early July.

That's right, the books you paid for will be literally removed from your electronic bookshelf because, um, Microsoft decided in April it no longer wanted to sell books. It will turn off the servers that check whether your copy was bought legitimately – using the usual anti-piracy digital-rights-management (DRM) tech – and that means your book can't be verified as being in the hands of its purchaser, and so won't be displayed.

Even the free-to-download ebooks will fail.

So go read your those Microsoft ebooks you have, while you still can. This thead will still be here when you get back.

You would imagine that Microsoft considered other options: figuring out how to remove the need for DRM validation for those books; seeing if it could provide a non-DRM version; selling its database of DRM books to another company; or keeping a skeleton DRM system in place.

The fact that it decided against all these options and to simply kill the whole thing off should be a very big warning sign to anyone who has bought, considered buying, or will consider buying an ebook in the future.

The truth is that most ebooks come with some degree of DRM. Amazon and its Kindle ebooks are the biggest in the market – nearly all of them come with Amazon's DRM system.

Here's a source that makes clear what does and doesn't have DRM, and does not charge for its public-domain books without DRM: The Internet Archive. (Yes, the site is more than just the Wayback Machine. They have public-domain movies, too.)

[classicdrogn]

In this case, my reaction is just to point and say "HA-ha!" like the mean kid on The Simpsons, given how very Micro$oft that is. Y'all should have known better in the first place. Does that make me an asshole? Well, there's a reason I changed my sig, and still I don't always live up to it...

At least fanfics and anything else you packaged yourself via Calibre will still work on your book reader, I guess. What if you just leave the networking turned off?

[robkelk]

If you leave the networking turned off, can the device validate that you have a license for the ebook?

[Dartz]

"The books will stop working"

I can't remember where I read this line, but it seems a suitably kafkaesque description of the modern world.

[robkelk]

It was in Microsoft's press release, quoted in the article that I linked in the thread's OP.

[hazard]

And people wonder sometimes why I consider the dead tree article generally superior.

[Dartz]

It was in Microsoft's press release, quoted in the article that I linked in the thread's OP.

There was some gone badly wrong when I can read an article, and forget I read it ten minutes later.

This has actually been a real problem in my working life lately.

[Labster]

"The books will stop working." I keep saying it and it sounds worse each time.

[Star Ranger4]

... on the one hand, while my tablet has mostly become a giant e-reader, I also really only use it for Amazon's Kindle unlimited. So rather confused about if or how much this will affect me aside from the whole Eyeroll thing that comes down to...

"Um. Yeah. Microsoft. If its not making them as much money as scrooge mc duck they are figuring out how to disengage from it"

[Wiregeek]

As much as I love Kindle Unlimited (I assure you, I've pushed more data through it than you have. I'm a voracious and omnivorous reader), It's just the same fuckery in a different hat.

[robkelk]

And people wonder sometimes why I consider the dead tree article generally superior.

Dead-tree versions of books sequester carbon, too! (Not much per book, but every little bit helps.)

[Epsilon]

And people wonder sometimes why I consider the dead tree article generally superior.

Dead-tree versions of books sequester carbon, too! (Not much per book, but every little bit helps.)

At last, an excuse to be buried with my collection!

[classicdrogn]

Even if you can't have a pyramid, at least you could have a casket lined with stuff from SJG!

[Inquisitive Raven]

And people wonder sometimes why I consider the dead tree article generally superior.

Dead-tree versions of books sequester carbon, too! (Not much per book, but every little bit helps.)

Not if more carbon gets dumped into the atmosphere producing and transporting the books than they sequester.