On Tuesday, Tom Doherty Associates, which publishes Tor Books, the world's largest science fiction imprint, announced that it would be making all of its e-books available in a DRM-free format by early July 2012. The move comes just six weeks after the United States Department of Justice filed an anti-trust lawsuit over e-book pricing against Macmillan, Tom Doherty Associates' parent company, and five other publishers.

"Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time," said president and publisher Tom Doherty, in a statement on the company's website. "They're a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another."

The company added that it would be selling its e-books "from the same range of retailers" that currently offer its books, but also would add "retails that sell only DRM-free books."

Over at Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow, science fiction author and all-around DRM hater, applauded the move, calling it a "watershed," and adding that he expected more publishers to follow suit.

"There is suddenly a market for tools that automate the conversion and loading of e-books from multiple formats and vendors," he wrote.

"For example, I'd expect someone to make a browser plugin that draws a 'Buy this book at BN.com' button on Amazon pages (and vice-versa), which then facilitates auto-conversion between the formats. I'd also expect BN.com to produce a 'switch' toolkit for Kindle owners who want to go Nook (and vice-versa)."