Today I went to Google Play Books to purchase Charles Stross' “Laundry” book “The Apocalypse Codex”.

I was thwarted by Adobe Digital Editions.

Clearly Adobe don’t want me to read this book. Or perhaps it’s Penguin Books.

Google send you a .acsm file, which Adobe Digital Editions trades for the .epub you actually purchased, after doing the DRM thing. In my case, the DRM step didn’t work, no matter which way I did it. I got a refund. It’d be one thing if I got a locked up .epub, I could just remove the DRM, but this file is useless.

And since I’m a nice guy, I emailed Stross and told him that I’m going to either download an ebook copy illegally, or just purchase the book used when the price drops.

I tried, I really did.

UPDATE

Stross wrote me back:

> You tried; that's fine by me! Meanwhile, I probably don't need to tell you how
much I detest DRM.

So there you go.