You Can Remove DRM From Your Digital Books, but It's Probably Illegal | Lifehacker

"When Amazon stopped letting us download copies of our Kindle books last month, I began looking for ways to preserve e-books and audiobooks that I've paid for. Buying from Amazon really limits those options thanks to DRM (Digital Rights Management), which is designed to prevent piracy, but ends up having far bigger consequences on digital goods like e-books.

Eliminating DRM effectively removes Amazon's control over what you do with your e-books. If Amazon were to go DRM-free, you'd be able read Kindle e-books on any e-book reader or app that you like. Amazon wouldn't be able to easily track your reading habits and you'd be free to keep an offline backup of all of your purchased content....

Bypassing DRM is illegal in the US, thanks to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), but it may be legal in other regions. The DMCA, among other things, makes it difficult to create a legal backup of the digital media you own. I reached out to Cory Doctorow, an author and vocal DRM critic, to learn more about this subject. 

In an email, he explained the complexities involved in understanding where the boundary lies here. "It isn't a copyright infringement to move a book from one device you own to another ([aka 'format shifting']). However, in 1998, the US Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which created a new kind of copyright—a copyright that protects DRM itself," Doctorow wrote. "Under Section 1201 of the DMCA, it's a felony (punishable by a [five]-year prison sentence and a [$500,000] fine) to give someone a "circumvention device" that defeats an "access control" for a copyrighted work. This law applies even if you don't violate copyright. ..."