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Coffee poured. Plush pillow. E-book loaded. You are ready to start a delightful afternoon on your eReader when the book goes away.
Starting in July, Microsoft will close its e-book library and erase e-books from all devices. Consumers will receive a refund for every pound purchased.
The company is able to close its store, launched in 2017 to compete with industry leaders, Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble, thanks to a tool called Digital Rights Management or DRM.
DRMs allow businesses to control content to protect copyright holders and prevent piracy.
"One of the things that I believe people do not realize is that it is of crucial importance, is that DRM and related software tools are built into all kinds of of peripherals that we buy, "said Aaron Perzanowski, the author of The end of property: movable property in the digital economy, says Lulu Garcia-Navarro of NPR.
"Your car, your smart home appliances, your home security system – all these systems have software that allows this type of control over the use of devices, and I think we're going to see the same kind of situation appear in the context of the physical devices that are used in people's homes ".
It's time to @FTC determine if a refund is really enough when a seller confiscates your support or brick your device. https://t.co/DaO73bLoti
– Aaron Perzanowski (@APerzanowski) June 30, 2019
The way DRMs are widely used has been criticized by consumers and has sparked many calls for regulation of large companies.
"The initial vision of DRM was to enable the sale of digital products online so as to reduce the risk of copyright infringement," Perzanowski said.
"Since this technology has been deployed, we have found that the major beneficiaries of digital rights management do not have copyright." These were technology companies such as that Amazon, Microsoft and Microsoft, able to control these ecosystems to make it more difficult to switch to new platforms. "
In an article from the Law Review of the University of Pennsylvania, Perzanowski found that users are often misled when they click on the "Buy Now" button, thinking that they have acquired the permanent ownership of digital content.
Other companies, such as Amazon and Walmart, have had problems with digital rights management in the past, erasing digital content to the detriment of consumers.
Amazon, the giant of e-books and online shopping, has done some by removing some of George Orwell's books from the Kindle's DRM server, including 1984. Apparently, the company did not understand the irony of erasing a book that details the dangers of controlling thought.
Perzanowski is concerned that DRMs are eroding property rights and that their reach exceeds digital media.
"You can go out and buy a car and you think you own it because it's parked in your garage," says Perzanowski. "But in reality – how does it work, who can fix it, what spare parts are compatible with it all – everything is controlled by software code, and so I think the boundary between the physical and the digital is becoming more and more more blurred. "
In an explanatory posted on its website, Microsoft adds that anyone who writes annotated notes or ebooks will receive an additional $ 25 credit. The company has not provided a reason for the closure.
Frank Scardera, a Reddit user, is one of the many Microsoft consumers affected by purging the eBook.
"I was disappointed when Microsoft announced the closure of the service …," says Scardera. "In the future, I will buy books from sources using DRM-free formats, so that, if a service is closed, I will not lose my books or other media."
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