Panic swept over me when I read this notice. My body flashed hot, then cold. I broke out in a sweat. Blood pressure kicked up.
They’ve been threatening to do this for years, and if I’m being completely honest, I’m surprised this didn’t happen a decade ago. I understand it’s to protect author’s rights and hinder pirating.
But let’s be honest here. It won’t stop pirates. It won’t stop theft. They’ll find ways to get what they want, and they’ve had years of practice working around DRM software already.
All you’re going to accomplish by removing MP3 files is to make it harder for innocent individuals to enjoy books.
What about those of us who just download audiobooks ahead of time so we have them when we’re ready to listen to them? I’ve been doing it for ten years. I don’t sell or in any way profit from them. So many books have such long wait lists—months and months. I put Assistant to the Villain on hold August 22 and finally was able to borrow it on October 18, two months later. And that was a short wait! And probably included cutting in line because I’m a patron of the mothership library. But now that it’s my turn to listen to it, I can’t; I have a long list of NetGalley ARCs I need to listen to first. So I downloaded the Assistant to the Villain MP3 file and have it squirreled away for when I get a chance to listen. Once I have, I’ll delete it.
Or sometimes, it’s that I don’t want to listen in the Libby app. My favorite audiobook player app to date is Smart Audiobook Player. I’ve spent the last two or three years getting used to using Libby because I had little choice, so I don’t hate it as much as I did at first. But SAP is still better. Has settings options out the wahzoo and uses a LOT less juice.
Now I’m going to have to fuck around doing clumsy amateur data mining and using shady DRM removal apps. Because I don’t waste enough time on my reading habit as it is.
There are more reasons DRM is stupid, but I don’t have time to write about them at the moment. Mostly I needed an outlet for the upset this caused inside me.
