Packt is proud to say that our products have always been free of DRM. From Mastering phpMyAdmin for Effective MySQL Management, our very first book, all the way through to our brand new releases – when you buy a Packt eBook or video, you are guaranteed that it will be completely, totally, 100% free of any DRM.
What is DRM?
DRM is called Digital Rights Management by its defenders, and Digital Restrictions Management by its opponents. It is the imposing of technological restrictions on your digital media. In eBooks, it might mean restricting the number of times you can copy a pdf or the devices that you can read your content on. As the ‘Defective by Design’ campaign says, ‘DRM creates a damaged good; it prevents you from doing what would be possible without it. This concentrates control over production and distribution of media, giving DRM peddlers the power to carry out massive digital book burnings and conduct large scale surveillance over people’s media viewing habits.’
Why is Packt DRM-free?
As a publisher committed to the idea of Open Source, we firmly believe that you should be able to read and interact with your content when you want, where you want, and how you want. Packt’s MD Dave Maclean puts it best:
Our top priority at Packt has always been to meet the evolving needs of developers in the most practical way possible, while at the same time protecting the hard work of our authors. DRM-free content continues to be instrumental in making that happen, providing the flexibility and freedom that is essential for an efficient and enhanced learning experience. That’s why we’ve been DRM-free from the beginning – we’ll never put limits on the innovation of our users.
Day Against DRM
2016 sees the tenth annual Day Against DRM, a gathering of the global and internet community to show the world and media the need for a future free of DRM. To show our support, on May 3rd every single Packt eBook and video is going to be $10 for 10 years of Day Against DRM. Every eBook and video you pick up will be yours to read and watch as you like – put it on any device, copy it as many times as you like. It’s yours to own, forever.