It's really simple: I buy ebooks, then break the DRM so that I can make a backup. If it wasn't possible to break the DRM, I wouldn't buy them.
Non-DRM'd books are better, of course.
I want my descendents to be able to read my e-books just as easily as they can read my physical books. So my conversions include collapsing rich text to plain text, which I am reasonably sure will survive format changes over the next 100 years.
Exactly. I currently buy books on my kindle and use Calibre with plugins to strip the DRM on import. Before I had a kindle, I would use iTunes to purchase books and use Requiem to strip DRM from them.
I don't go to the extreme of converting to plain text. Epub is a zipped collection of html. There should be tools to extract data from those for a very long time into the future.
Spot on. The whole DRM situation is ridiculous. I would never buy an eBook if I couldn't strip away the DRM. Same goes for music. Who in his/her right mind would buy content that he/she doesn't really own?
Non-DRM'd books are better, of course.
I want my descendents to be able to read my e-books just as easily as they can read my physical books. So my conversions include collapsing rich text to plain text, which I am reasonably sure will survive format changes over the next 100 years.