Walk into almost anybody’s house in America, and you will find a library. Whether it’s an Ikea bookshelf containing textbooks and a few second-hand novels or an entire room of floor-to-ceiling shelves, the presence of books in our homes has come to be a cornerstone of our democracy. Individually, our books record our own personal intellectual heritages and offer a means to share them with each other, as well as to pass them down to future generations. Collectively, our books are a bulwark of a free society. But this bulwark is rapidly being destroyed by digital rights management (DRM) software.

It’s clear that the physical book is on its way out, to be replaced by e-books. While some will bemoan the gradual demise of the physical bookself, a far more troubling implication of this transition is that because of DRM we will lose control of and access to our books, individually and collectively. Currently, the vast majority of books available for purchase on the three major e-book stores (Kindle, iBooks, Nook) are encumbered with DRM encryption. This has the following implications:

It becomes difficult or impossible to lend, give, or inherit books.

Access to any of your books can be revoked at any time by the owner of the bookstore.

It is difficult to use more than one bookstore, and ending your business relationship with the bookstore can lead to loss of access to your books.

Technological change can lead to loss of access to your books.

Books, probably more than any other medium, are and should be very long lived. I personally own books that are many decades old and have been passed down among several generations. It is highly likely that a DRM encumbered e-book will not survive this long — it is tied to an account that will eventually be closed, a corporation that will eventually go out of business, and a technology that will eventually become obsolete. For these reasons, the mass adoption of DRM encumbered e-books will do more to harm our society than book burnings or library bans ever could.

The solution to the problem is simple — stop using DRM. This solves most of the above problems directly. It solves the problem of technological obsolesence indirectly, because it allows the books to easily be transferred to new formats. The experience of the music industry, and the few publishers that provide DRM-free books, has shown that selling DRM-free media is economically viable. However most of the major publishers, abetted by the bookstores, continue to use DRM. As consumers, the only ethical choice is to refuse to buy e-books.

I’m not, of course, suggesting that you refuse to read e-books. The music industry has shown us that selling DRM-free files works. It has also shown us that the only way to get these companies to agree to provide DRM-free files is mass piracy. It is probably easier than it has ever been to obtain DRM-free e-books. A good place to start is to simply search for the title of whatever book you want, together with the word “pdf”, “epub”, or “mobi”. Once you have obtained the file, it is straightforward to transfer it to your mobile device — again, instructions for your particular device can be found by searching the web. I recommend that, starting today and continuing until publishers stop using DRM, you switch to piracy to obtain all your e-books. This will eliminate the DRM problem from your personal e-books and, if enough people start doing it, hopefully convince the publishers to stop using DRM.

Of course the same loss of revenue that will send a message to publishers will directly hurt authors, which sucks. Personally I think that the issue is important enough that it is worth it, and that the authors need to get involved from the other end by refusing to publish DRM encumbered e-books. However it is certainly not a black and white situation and if you want to continue supporting authors while also fighting to free our books, the best solution is to buy a paper copy of every book that you pirate. What is clear is that unless we do something, the status quo will persist and we will permanently lose control over our books and the knowlege and freedom that they represent.