I figured more people here against DRM would know about this. What is it, like the fourth or fifth year now for doing this? I've never participated so I'm not sure. The ironic part is that I would have never found defectivebydesign if I had never made some purchases that had me outraged and then searched the net for alternatives. It's like DRM drove the internet forward by causing people to look for ways to get around it. I bought something and now I'm being prevented from using it?! DRM just makes illegal file-sharing all the more tempting is all.

I doubt that. Between the energy that got wasted during the manufacturing process (cutting down the tree, mashing it's content into pages, printing the content on the said pages) and during transportation, the energy spent reading the material on some e-reader will be minor in comparison.

Furthermore, energy has the potential to be generated substainably (solar, wind, hydro, etc).

However, cutting down a tree (plus the ink) to make a book will always be what it is, not to mention the materials spent so that the printing press can function (replacing parts and whatnot).

sadly we will not see solar,wind,or hydro becoming the norm in where we get energy because the oil compenies will lobby government to not let that happen

Actually, power companies lobby quite hard as well. They don't mind renewables as long as they are the only ones allowed to sell it on the grid...

The same thing happened with Apple and the music industry. The music industry demanded that all the digital music sellers put DRM on their music, the digital merchants agreed, Apple won out amongst its competitors and created a monopoly on digital downloads - even eclipsed retail, queue Apple being able to boss the music industry around, Justice Dept. indicates there may be a problem with every store having its own DRM, queue Apple writing the first contracts to sell DRM-free music with the major labels.

It's funny, the music industry uses Amazon as a counterbalance against a too powerful Apple, while the book industry is trying to use Apple as a counterweight against a too powerful Amazon. I find that amusing for some reason.

I was interested in getting an e-book a few years back. Decided against it because of the DRM and the lack of a universal standard like MP3. Didn't like the idea of getting a kindle, buying kindle versions of e-books, and then being shit out of luck if in the future I got a nook or something. Not sure if the format issue is still there or not, but the DRM is.
Once those two problems are solved and an e-book comes out with e-ink or something better then I'll pick one up.

Sort of ... it's not so much that Amazon is pressuring them to be nicer because Amazon wants customers treated better ... it's more that the book publishers are deathly afraid of allowing Amazon the kind of power where there isn't a free market anymore because Amazon is the sole ruler of e-books. Therefore they're even willing to consider treating customers better if it prevents Amazon's complete dominance.

All would be well and good if people only read ebooks on a device purely created for that and it didn't need to be replaced until it broke.
But that's in a perfect world. People read ebooks on all sort of devices and people also replace those devices all the time.

I wasn't only talking about ebooks either. More and more stuff get digitalised all the time. Music, various services, movies and other things. We're living in a digitalised revolution after all.

Cutting down a tree and making books of it isn't as bad as damming a river to make a new power plant for example. The paper can be recycled and a new tree planted while the environment on the river is damaged for a very long time.

Sorry for the rant. Sometimes I get irritated of that it's generally thought that to digitalise as much as possible will automatically save the rainforest or something.

I don't have an e-book reader either, but Gazoinks is right - a universal format does exist for e-books which is followed by every reader and tablet, e-ink or otherwise, except for Amazon's Kindle. However, there is indeed usually DRM on top of that to prevent one from reading the book outside of the program. Many stores though allow the downloading of a free program to read your purchased items on other devices. Availability depends on the device and the store.

Calibre is awesome. It settles my fears of purchasing an e-reader. I've been doing research and I think I'd like the Pocketbook Pro 602.

That's a pretty good description of what's happening here. While Amazon.com is being mostly ambivalent towards the customer (the 1984 fiasco straightened them up a bit) the publishers and Amazon hate each other's guts. The publishers are fighting Amazon, it's only serendipity that it's helping us.

Sadly I don't even know who to root for, save the few authors who are genuinely against DRM.

I think I killed a mid sized fortest with all the obsolete law collections I threw away over the years..

On the issue itself:

I'm again not really phased by the DRM on books, because, well, piracy. Ebooks are probably the easiest to pirate yet. Even easier than music. As long as they play nice, I play nice. But if Amazon or whoever tries something funny with my collection, thousands of books are literally only a mouseclick away.

epub sounds nice. Might need to check into ereaders again soon. You know if there are any good ereaders that support that format? One that would allow me to purchase from anywhere and just copy-paste the file onto the reader? Don't really want one that sync, especially after Amazon's removal of books people bought from their kindles.

Agree. Digital readers use a whole lot of not-so-great stuff in their manufacturing processes like, say, oil for the plastics and whatever not-so-pleasant stuff the battery is made from. And a whole lot of recycled paper goes into a typical book (less so with the glossy stuff, but those can be recycled into less fancy papers). And trees are a lot more renewable than plastic and the expensive metals needed for electronics.

And one can't ignore the transportation systems required, be it a truck going to the retail store or a digital download server farm sucking up a lot of power to run the cooling systems.

Basically, pick your poison, but don't do so based on some attempt to feel good about being 'green'.