New Computer, sometimes happens...

[Tucson]

Hello Community. I have a new computer and wanted to get my old bought DRM epub books from the old one. I tried the normal way with Adobe Digital Edition, and 5 hours later, and chat with Adobe, no solution. No Adobe id worked, and the Adobe guys said Adobe Digital Edition is free, so no support, do yourself. I tried again many solutions since i had BOUGHT my old DRM epub.
Finally i had found the only method of getting my books on my new computer.
(get out DRM)

Since Adobe do not support us, and the reading of DRM is mandatory done with ADE, i said them that i will NEVER do something with Adobe. I decide also to NEVER buy another book with DRM. Never never.

I agree with Calibre opinion, and many others, that DRM is Sh**t; when you have a paper book, you do what you want. it must be the same with a numeric book. Not do 300 hours of intense research to know how to get what you have paid for.

If i can give an advice, think twice, before buying a book with DRM.;and same if you intent to use ADE.
Many thank's to the readers.

[cfrizz]

Welcome Tucson! You are preaching to the choir here.

Calibre with the addition is your friend, and ALWAYS download your books to your pc once you buy them.

So many people lost their books when the store they bought from went belly up. Even now some still come on here complaining about losing their books, when even the stores themselves tell you to download them because they don't guarantee that they will always be there!

[Sirtel]

The solution is not necessarily to buy only books with no DRM. Another way is to remove any DRM immediately after buying and back up your purchased books. That's what lots of people here do and we still have all the books we bought 10-15 years ago. Plus we can read our books on whatever device or app we like.

And of course there are folks who don't care, because they read everything only once and are not fussy about where they read their books. To each their own.

[Tucson]

Many thank's for the replies. Yes i agree that Calibre is a must and a little organization in life doesn't hurt. My grief is about Adobe which is unable to help people with Adobe Digital Edition to transfer DRM rights.
They want only money, money...

Long life to intelligent people here who have common sense !

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

To each their own.

Wow, look at your karma: 222222222!

I've bought very few books, I'm a library/Gutenberg type.
If the Adobe DRM annoyed me more I'd just strip it.
But I probably should so that I don't have to have a reader that understands it.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Renate

I've bought very few books, I'm a library/Gutenberg type.
If the Adobe DRM annoyed me more I'd just strip it.
But I probably should so that I don't have to have a reader that understands it.

For me, another reason to strip DRM is so I can edit the formatting. I'm very fussy about how the text looks on my devices. But this is presumably very niche - most people are not interested in messing with their books.

Overdrive is not available in my country and local libraries don't let you download their books to an eink device, so I don't use libraries for ebooks. I have never been all that keen on library borrowing anyway, because I like to reread. So I buy most of my books.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

For me, another reason to strip DRM is so I can edit the formatting.

Oh, I edit the formatting too. Without decrypting. With a sledge hammer!
With Adobe DRM the individual files are encrypted, but it's still just a normal zip file.
When I'm annoyed beyond my breaking point, I simply rip all the .css files out of the zip.
The utility I wrote for that is called unduke.exe
Duke is that cheapy reprint company with the stupid dog in the corner.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Renate

When I'm annoyed beyond my breaking point, I simply rip all the .css files out of the zip.

Yeah, that's going a bit too far for me. I just change certain things in the calibre editor. That can't be done with DRM intact.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Renate

Oh, I edit the formatting too. Without decrypting. With a sledge hammer!
With Adobe DRM the individual files are encrypted, but it's still just a normal zip file.
When I'm annoyed beyond my breaking point, I simply rip all the .css files out of the zip.
The utility I wrote for that is called unduke.exe
Duke is that cheapy reprint company with the stupid dog in the corner.

I too edit my eBooks. But ripping out the CSS would be a major fail. It would make the eBooks unreadable.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But ripping out the CSS would be a major fail. It would make the eBooks unreadable.

There is always default CSS built into every browser or ereader app.
When you rip out goofy CSS you get text with spaces between paragraphs.
What more could you need?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Renate

There is always default CSS built into every browser or ereader app.
When you rip out goofy CSS you get text with spaces between paragraphs.
What more could you need?

That's just awful. I could never read such a text on an ereader.

[JBaby]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

The solution is not necessarily to buy only books with no DRM. Another way is to remove any DRM immediately after buying and back up your purchased books. That's what lots of people here do and we still have all the books we bought 10-15 years ago. Plus we can read our books on whatever device or app we like.

And of course there are folks who don't care, because they read everything only once and are not fussy about where they read their books. To each their own.

For me it’s been 25 years. I bought my first ebook in 1999 and I can still put that book on any device I have. For me it only took getting burned once by DRM to learn the lesson of backing up my library. Just last summer Amazon locked me out of my account when I tried to buy a two year subscription to Kindle Unlimited. That’s something I’ve done twice before. If I hadn’t been backing up my purchases I would’ve been more frantic about the situation. I backup my Audible books too. That took longer to do because between my Mom and I we have over 1600 of them. I’m still organizing them in Audiobookshelf.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Renate

There is always default CSS built into every browser or ereader app.
When you rip out goofy CSS you get text with spaces between paragraphs.
What more could you need?

How about the paragraph spaces gone for one.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JBaby

For me it’s been 25 years. I bought my first ebook in 1999 and I can still put that book on any device I have. For me it only took getting burned once by DRM to learn the lesson of backing up my library.

I bought my first DRMed ebook from Amazon in 2011 (I had bought DRM-free ebooks occasionally since 2006, but I still read mostly on paper until late 2011). Fortunately for me both Calibre and DRM removal were pretty mature by then. I looked it all up, installed and prepared everything before making the purchase, because I wanted to be able to make a personal backup; relying on Amazon to keep my books for me was out of the question. I may have been pretty ignorant in such things then, but that much I knew - you can only rely on yourself to keep your stuff.

Later on I bought both DRMed and DRM-free books from other stores besides Amazon, several of which have long been out of business. Of course any DRM got immediately removed. I've never bought an ebook and not disinfected/backed it up right after buying. I'm pretty anal in this, I guess.

Of course not everyone cares. Some of us want to build a personal book collection; others just read and discard, and don't care about DRM or backing up.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

For me, another reason to strip DRM is so I can edit the formatting. I'm very fussy about how the text looks on my devices. But this is presumably very niche - most people are not interested in messing with their books.

I'm not overly fussy. I do check that the body text is justified, because making the reader force justification had some weird side-effects in the past (on centered text like chapter headings if I remember correctly).

Also, I'm willing to go out on a limb and try some pretty niche books published by very indie authors and some of those books are a real mess to nigh on unreadable.

Dolly Boy by Paul Rousseas is, as far as I know and as the author claims, the only fiction novel dealing with homosexuals in the concentration camps of World War II. I'm glad in the age of ebooks, the author was able to get it published. But the book was a MESS. I believe the entire book was one file and the formatting was a disaster, with font sizes changing in a paragraph.

I suppose it could reported, but then the book could be removed from sale and I don't want that. So I just cleaned up my copy.