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Comment by yoz-y | Hacker News Reader

I love ebooks and audiobooks. But the fact that I can’t legally lend or sell them (same with steam btw) means that it’s at best a lateral step.

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Lending or selling ebooks necessarily requires DRM. A large part of the community thinks having DRM is way worse than not being able to lend or sell.

Selling books doesn't require DRM at all. I buy DRM-free books all the time.

As an example: Kobo will tell you, at the bottom of each book's page, if it has DRM or not. And it will happily sell you a book without DRM and let you download it.

"Selling" doesn't require DRM; publishers require DRM. So not every book you want to buy or can buy is available without DRM. Not even authors especially want DRM. Kobo will only let you buy a book without DRM if the publisher makes it available that way.

If you say "publishers require DRM" and then say that publishers sometimes sell books without DRM, you might need to review the definition of the word "require".

Some publishers require DRM. Which is entirely different than the false claim made earlier that "selling ebooks necessarily requires DRM".

When DRM is used, it is because publishers have required it, not because booksellers require it. Is that a better way of putting it?

It's a completely different statement, so yes.

And we mostly get neither. Some stores do offer drm free ebooks and audiobooks.

My comment was mostly about the “steam for books” being lauded better as physical books. To me it would only be strictly better if you could sell and lend (which you can’t on steam)

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