DIGITAL LIFE: Ebooks Purchased From Microsoft Will Be Deleted This Month Because You Don’t Really Own Anything Anymore.

Microsoft announced in April that it would stop selling ebooks and that any books the company already sold would stop working in early July because the DRM servers were being shut off. Yes, you read that correctly. Those books that you “bought” are going to disappear. Even the “free” books that you downloaded through Microsoft will be deleted.

Microsoft started selling ebooks back in 2017 but tech limitations made them unpopular with users. As my colleague Alex Cranz explained back in April, anyone who bought Microsoft’s ebooks had to use Microsoft’s Edge browser and the company never made a dedicated ebook reader application. The books also came with restrictive DRM, the digital locks on media that prohibit people from sharing the files with others. Unfortunately, the existence of those same locks are the precise reason that Microsoft can pull the plug on your books remotely.

Users will automatically get refunded to whatever account they have on file, but if your credit card has expired or you don’t have a payment method stored with the company, Microsoft will give you a credit that can be used online in the Microsoft Store.

The service was such a flop I doubt Microsoft will have to issue that much in refunds, so this is really just a reminder that anything important you should have in hardcopy.

UPDATE: Link was missing before. Fixed now — sorry!