Save money by buying the normal book and pirating the non-restricted version

Yeah, I read most of my books on an e-reader. I’ve tried to pay for my ebooks but I’ve rapidly stopped. It’s such an horror shitshow. They managed to recreate the same DRM nonsense which didn’t worked for the movie and music industry.

The final straw was that time where I bought an ebook on a popular library website. I tried to open it on my computer, I knew it had DRM so I wasn’t surprised to have to install this Adobe DRM nonsense.

However during the installation, I just clicked on « Skip » when they asked for my Adobe account. Yeah it worked ! I could read my ebook on my computer, now it’s time to transfer it to my Adobe DRM compatible e-reader.

Well, fat chance, Mr book "owner", your book has been linked to your computer and not to your ereader Adobe account, you are stuck.

I said a lot of words kids shouldn’t hear that day.

In fact, I love e-reader, it’s practical, it’s lightweight, you can throw your entire library on a tiny sd card but I can’t stand this arrogance.

Contrary to digital music or movies, books are still superior objects in all aspects. They are sometimes beautiful, you can do what you want with them. You can own them or give them or borrow them or … And still, the industry thinks they can sell you those unpractical DRM files at mostly the same price (when it’s not more) ? That’s arrogant and they can go f themselves.

Now I only buy real books and anything on my ereader comes from Z-Library or a torrent tracker. At least they are files I can own.

This assumes that buying the normal book gives you protection from prosecution. I am not sure whether you really can assume this.

Meanwhile in my jurisdiction, as long as I don't share with the public, I am free to download unencumbered ebooks and other media when I find them. No need to buy something for hope of non-prosecution.

You've assumed avoiding prosecution was the aim! I feel it's underwood around the literati that it's trivial to avoid being caught and so anyone who hands over money is doing so for morality or convenience. For most e-books (anything mass-market or academic) the convenience is better for piracy so my suggestion was for someone who didn't want to feel they weren't properly rewarding the author/publisher.

My bad, sorry.

However: We all know that creators don't get the whole money you pay for some works. If I would want to support a creator I would try to find a way to support directly.

In other words I find it a bad idea to buy a book as a way to donate.

Buying a book does much more for an author who isn't already famous than just giving them money does. It raises their visibility, making it more likely that publishers will bite on a second book by them. It also pays the editors, typesetters, etc. - the author isn't the only creative person involved, and every heavy reader can think of examples of authors who have good ideas but desperately need an editor.

Thus rewarding the DRM services with more money. If you’re going to pay when you could’ve gotten it for free, might as well keep alive the service that respects your rights instead of strengthening the one that violates them.

Not the parent, but I read "buying the normal book" as buying actual paperbacks.

Buying a physical copy of a book so you can pirate the digital version isn’t legally sound, plus it is a major impactful hassle.

Could I perhaps buy a digital version for my local library and then borrow it from them for the same duration as I'm using the pirated file?

> I buy non-DRM ebooks (so far, they cost about twice Kindle prices),

Curious about this one. The price is set by the publisher, so it's not like you can just opt to pay for a DRM or a DRM-free copy of the book at checkout.

I assume you mean that the publishers who offer DRM-free books tend to be more expensive? That might track if they're indie publishers, since they can't afford to be loss-leaders on a product.

But FWIW, Tor Books offers all of their stuff DRM free across the major platforms (Amazon, Kobo, Google Play, B&N, Apple Books, etc.) and they go on sale just as often as the major publishers, in my experience.

Example from that link I gave: "For O'Reilly books, they link to eBooks.com for non-DRM copies. So far, these seem to cost about twice what the Kindle versions of the books do, [...]"

What’s a good place to get non-DRM books?