People better listen. The cloud is not your friend. This is a broad brush but it is true you must be very careful what you use it for and what you have invested in it. Keeping your own info is still the best way to preserve your personal digital property. Don't exclusively trust a cloud.

A friend of A friend who blogs is not a legitimate source for allegations like these.

I've never heard of this happening, but the potential is there. I love ebooks and wouldn't want to go back to paper books, but the one thing I don't like is that you don't own the book in the same way you own a physical book. If the company you bought it from wants to, they have the power to make it so you can't read it anymore.

But I do love e-readers. I have both a Nook and a Kindle. I can't imagine ever giving them up.

I transfer all my books on my book to an SD card. And I have them backed up on my pc. Far MORE backup than a paper copy.

and I'm not techie enough to remove it, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with doing that. Though stories like this make me wonder.

I put 8-10 books at a time on the Nook.

You can open your reader, and drag and drop the books to any folder, or to Calibre or where ever you want them.
Backing up is a smart thing to do.
eggs and baskets and all that, don'tcha know>

But the light display does wear on the eyes after a while.

I've been thinking of getting a cheapo Kindle as well, so I can e-read even when my eyes are tired from the Nook. Do you have the cheap Kindle, or one of the higher end ones? Do you like the Nook or the Kindle better?

i don't have a preference.

But if you search for "nook simple touch" on sears.com today, you'll see there's a huge sale. If you stay with the same brand, you'll be able to use the same books on both.

The wireless has never even been on. Amazon can do nothing to my Kindle. When I bought it, I swore never to buy anything for it on Amazon. So far, so good.

So far, there's only the blog entry and an unnamed woman's account of the matter.

Hopefully Amazon will get back to them shortly and we'll see what's what.

http://gizmodo.com/5953829/amazon-deletes-users-account-and-kindle-data-without-explanation

Fuck DRM.

Calibre, the best free software available anywhere!

I had heard similar stories to the OP on a forum dedicated to ereaders (mobileread.com - A great resource, btw). Usually a TOS issue, often related to suspected reselling.

Another problem with having your hardware dependent upon connectivity is that you can be shut down and deleted without the company even approving such action.

I'd love to do this with my e-books if only I knew how.

Next, follow the instructions in the below link to download and install a set of DRM removal plugins for Calibre and use them on your ebooks.

http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/ebooks-formats-drm-and-you-%E2%80%94-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/

So I'm not sure what's happening here.

Anyone who is curious and loves reading I would recommend to get into e-books. At first I was hesitant about it, being a traditional reader of solid physical books and was dubious on the idea. But I'm totally sold now. The cloud thing is very convenient, but if you are concerned about it you don't even have to use the cloud to store your e-books. That is what is cool about e-books, they take up a minuscule amount of computer space so you can download a ton of them on your e-reader with no problems. Its almost like carrying an entire library in your pocket. It is awesome!

DRM is a way for the book publishers to protect the material from people giving electronic copies of the books to friends. By the way, it is easily bypassed to take off the DRM protection from your e-books, its a bit technical, but anyone who can follow step by step directions can find ways to do it on the internet.

For example, iTunes restricting the use of music to 5 devices (of course, that's an easy one to bypass).