from Hacker News

Don't "buy" e-books from Oxford University Press

by pvdebbe on 5/24/25, 1:45 PM with 18 comments

• by thephyber on 5/24/25, 2:17 PM

  The screenshot mentions a 14 day return policy. If that doesn’t work, your credit card company is likely willing to help you force a refund (unless you agreed to a contract during checkout).

  The dead tree version is about a dollar more than the silly lease-under-onerous-terms-pretending-to-be-purchase version. Do the world a favor and opt for the physical book so you don’t contribute to the anti-consumer digital distribution company.

• by ndsipa_pomu on 5/24/25, 2:12 PM

  Piracy is the answer to consumer hostility. Ironically companies that abuse DRM in this fashion are pushing more people to consider piracy.

• by diggan on 5/24/25, 2:11 PM

  Say I want to buy "The Catholic Reformation: A Very Short Introduction", published by Oxford University Press. What are my options if I want a DRM-free copy, legally? Amazon no longer lets me download the books themselves so I can strip the DRM locally, so that's no longer an option. Apparently Oxford University Press also don't offer DRM-free reading. So what really can I do here if I want to buy it in digital form?

  I guess it's easy to say "Don't buy X from Y", but if it's the only option, what can one individual really do about it, besides just not purchasing it at all or pirating it?

• by jmclnx on 5/24/25, 2:30 PM

  I 100% avoid e-books. Until they come as an unencumbered standard PDF that I can view on any OS I have, I will stick with paper.