Anobii CEO urges publishers to drop DRM on ebooks

Speaking at the Digital Book World Conference in New York last week, Matteo Berlucchi, CEO of Anobii, urged major book publishers to abandon their use of DRM on ebooks. HarperCollins, Penguin, and Random House each have a stake in the ebook retail and social networking company based in the UK.

Blogger Jeremy Greenfield reports that Berlucchi took specific aim at Amazon's use of DRM, stating that "Amazon uses DRM to lock people in," and warning individuals that once you are swindled by Amazon, if you later want to "drop out of Kindle, you lose all your books". Berlucchi also argued that "ebooks without DRM technology are easily shareable between users, just like print books," and therefore, "books without DRM are more valuable to readers."

While there are some points in which we do not agree 100% with Berlucchi (we encourage you to read John Sullivan's article on ebook lending), we still applaud the CEO for sticking his neck out there and urging large publishers to drop DRM!