this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
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Deshittification

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State of affairs for technology seem bad? But what is being done to change it? And what could be done by you so it changes at least for yourself?

A community to talk about the reversal of enshittification, be it news, actions that could be done, etc.

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DRM allegedly is meant to stop distribution of unlicensed copies. Quite novel. However, from what I can observe, usually they seem easy to remove or circumvent, and its main use seems to be to stop legitimate users from using a given product.

For things like music, games and movies, as a response to this, I see hints of interest of going back to physical medias, as back when this type of media was mainstream, DRM, if present, was usually a local nuisance, and not a remote killswitch.

Besides being able to own the physical media, including being able to back them up (including scanning for books and the sort), the experience of using them can be quite nice too.

But something I don't spot quite as frequently is mentions of DRM-free medias distributed purely digitally. And if one is to "vote with the wallet" to try to push for better market practices, or even for ease of backing up or accessibility, I'd propose recommending those too.

Physical media is expensive to ship, harder to store, you can't carry around a rental store-worth of physical medias in your backpack, and due to distribution bottlenecks and licenses, the company can't produce as many copies, making it less accessible. And from what I can observe, people usually prefer contents to be easier to access, adding to the problem.

With digital, those things are dealt with, at worse requiring the user to double-click some file. And if/as DRM-free gets more trending, lack of killswitches starts to be normalized again among those that usually prefer the double-click.

So going back to the point, while there's value in physical medias, I think digital DRM-free may be better to promote, be it by purchasing or recommending, to try to push the market in a better direction.

What do you think?

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[–] Libb@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

But something I don’t spot quite as frequently is mentions of DRM-free medias distributed purely digitally. And if one is to “vote with the wallet” to try to push for better market practices, or even for ease of backing up or accessibility, I’d propose recommending those too.

What do you think?

There are mentions of those DRM-free products, don't worry. There is not just going on about them. I even was an enthusiastic user of those drm-free digital products for many years (mostly ebooks, in my case). And I m_may_ have consdired_ removing DRM from the ebooks I purchased all those years too, not that I would ever do such an illegal thing, obviously.

The issue, I realized, the main issues (there are others less central, to me at least) is that with or without DRM I still needed a reading device to read the ebook. A device that I could not really control.

I could easily read on my (GNU/Linux) desktop computer, but I don't like that experience. I need some device I can easily carry with me and read anywhere... a device that, alas, was outside of my control and that I knew was reporting back my reading habits to its maker. I could and I did cut my Kindle from the Internet but that was still a poor workaround for the privacy I was expecting to have by default when reading, and that was also preventing me from getting any updates for the device. or benefit from the comfort/advantages of reading 'digital'.

The thing is that I need no such device when I read a good old print book, and there is zero spying/tracking going on while I'm reading a print book.

I also did not need to regularly recharge it or take any care of it. And then, I can easily (and legally) resell the books I don't not care keeping. Good luck with ebooks.

A little over two years ago, after almost 20 years reading ebooks (I started with PDF and then with a Palm Pilot) I moved back to print (except for the few exceptions where I still need PDF: scans of rare ancient books I can't easily physically access, and very recently a hacked Kindle to access the few ebooks I bothered keeping (all of them DRM-free and/or from the public domain, but even that solution is not perfect. I'm real glad the hack exists and the new reading app I installed is also much better than Amazon's own, but it's not bug or issue free... to the point that I already had to reinstall it once since I hacked the Kindle a few weeks ago... which is another things I never need to worry about when reading a print book: it just works ;)

So going back to the point, while there’s value in physical medias, I think digital DRM-free may be better to promote, be it by purchasing or recommending, to try to push the market in a better direction.

+1 to the idea of promoting DRM-free ebooks from independent publishers. Independent, because it seems Amazon was considering selling DRM-free ebooks too. Which would be something good already but still too late and not enough for me as I would rather be the customer of any other independent publisher than them… A publisher that would never think it’s OK to delete an ebook from their customer’s device, for example.

As well as promoting DRM-free public domain ebooks. Them being ‘free’ does not mean they should cost nothing, btw: I regulary was purchasing ebooks from small independent publishers specializing in distributing public domain books (the same texts one can easily and legally find for free online, on Gutenberg, for example), for the sole reason I knew buying (cheap) from them I would get a version with a decent layout and some editorial work done on the text (removing most typos and so on). Publishers like the English Delphi Classics (they have once a year a 50% sale, if anyone is interested, they also provide regular updates to purchased ebooks, for free: with new content when it’s made available and editorial xorrections where needed), or the French Arvensa (which does a lot less update work, sadly).

But what I would like to see is a widely available independent e-reader. One that doesn’t cost too much and one that uses Free Software (insuring there is no tracking at all going on) making it worth owning.

[–] andioop@programming.dev 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Independent e-readers (or at least more independent than Amazon): https://itsfoss.com/open-source-ebook-readers-options/

take any care of it

I'm a clumsy person, but also weirdly high-maintenance. I will absolutely papercut myself on a physical book, or spill water on it and feel bad when the pages are deformed, or notice wear and tear and feel bad. Part of why I really prefer digital is because it's a lot harder for me to hurt myself, my minor spills can just be wiped off, and for some reason I do not notice tech wear and tear nearly as much. I also like the portability of digital books. Goes everywhere my phone goes, no awkwardness about carrying a book. I'm one of the people who really really wants to abandon physical media forever, personally. Less things collecting dust, less things to be super careful around that I cannot even get a single drop of water on. But not everyone is me, where digital helps me evade all my pain points with physical, and where I do personally not feel any digital pain points. I think both options should be available to people; but if I had to pick one of course I'll go with the one I feel serves my needs best.

Thanks for your long response, fun to read!

[–] Libb@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can't help you in regards to clumsiness (be assured we share a few similarities in that domain ;)

But I know I trust paper a lot more than anything digital in regards to sturdiness and longevity. A car can roll over a book or my notebook and I will still be able to use it. It can even rain on it, it may buckle but that's no big deal to read its page, including my notebook (as ball pens use non water-soluble ink and pencil is waterproof too). Sure fire_can_ burn a book (depends the intensity of the fire and that fabrication of the book, and its paper) but, at teh same time, I'm reading centuries old books whereas I can't access (or only going through many hoops) a few decades old files or use a twenty year o ld computer.

It's also much cheaper to replace a destroyed/stolen book/notebook than any digital device.

And like I said, I value privacy a lot more than not collecting dust ;)

I think both options should be available to people; but if I had to pick one of course I’ll go with the one I feel serves my needs best.

100% agreed.

Thanks for your long response, fun to read!

My pleasure.

[–] andioop@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago

The 20-year-old computer might not work but I still have its files good as new because of backups and migrations for me.

Also I just like being able to search for stuff digitally. I misplace physical things very easily even if I do try to have a home for everything, so reducing down to one digital item for reading instead of many books is very helpful for me.

The advantages of paper you cite probably hold water for lots of people, but for me the way digital just erodes all of the problems I would have with physical books makes that the way for me, as I am sure you feel the pros of physical outweigh the cons for you.

I do wonder how popular our respective preferences (physical vs digital copies) are when you restrict to people concerned with privacy.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 1 points 1 week ago

I'm sadly familiar with power outages, and lighting a candle every 2~3 hours and having a book ready is a great way to spend time then.

Also about sources of DRM-free contents, maybe you could mention any missing at the pinned post from !drm@lemmy.dbzer0.com? Here's the link: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40761919