It's really time for laws which forbid companies to terminate accounts and access to them if they met certain conditions like licencing digital properties. Sure, they can restrict them all they want, as long as a fair stance prevails und people are not ripped of their goods. This strong difference in powers between companies and customers in the digital realm becomes more and more a serious problem. When people are s…
People need to talk with their wallet to get the message across. There is nothing stopping people from buying a 'dumb' e-reader with internal storage where you load epub/pdf/rtf/txt files that you actually own or borrow from a library.
In cases like this where there's a huge imbalance in power and technical knowledge between suppliers and users, I think it's perfectly reasonable for the government to legislate on the behalf of it's constituents to protect their interests.
I think at this point it's been clearly demonstrated that DRM is simply not necessary to protect functioning markets in digital goods. Apple showed this with iTunes, arguing forcefully for DRM free music downloads. I'm a gamer and there's a very vibrant and successful market in DRM free PDFs in the tabletop gaming industry. I'm no extremist, I don't object to all DRM in every case, but I think arbitrary lockouts like this are clearly wrong, and a right to DRM free copies of material you have bought if a service expires or closes is perfectly fair.