"The Day the Ebooks Quit Working"

I cannot claim to understand all the technicalities involved in the process, but according to a recent BBC article, "Consumers who bought ebooks via Microsoft's online store are losing access to their libraries."  Of course, Microsoft will be offering some compensation to consumers unfortunate enough to have purchased or obtained free ebooks directly through the Microsoft browser, but that really offers very little consolation in the long run.  And it serves as a reminder that you really don't own ebooks that you purchase with DRM (digital rights management) included no matter where you buy them, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, included.

In Microsoft's case, it is simply a matter of the company deciding finally to abandon the ebook business for good (after their third failed attempt to compete with Amazon and B&N).  But if three MS attempts teach us anything, it's never to say never when it comes to MS and ebooks, and I would not be at all surprised if they find their way back into the business again at some point.

Amazon has already been known to selectively and purposely reclaim ebooks from readers on more than one occasion, once because they oversold the number of copies of 1984 they were authorized to sell and once because of a dispute with an individual customer of theirs.  From what I recall, Amazon deleted enough copies from customer libraries to get themselves back into compliance with the publisher contract, and I'm assuming that they simply compensated those customers who lost their copy of the classic.  In the other case, the company was in a dispute with a customer over its return policy (claiming that the customer was returning up to 50 items a month), and decided to kill his Kindle by deleting his ebooks and refusing to sell new ones to him until the dispute could be resolved or given up on.  

So there were legitimate reasons in both cases for Amazon to delete something from a customer's library - maybe.  But it doesn't make me feel any better knowing that, for any reason, ebook retailers retain this level of control over something I thought I bought from them for my own. Instead, it appears that I only leased the ebooks stored away in my Kindle.

This is where I get confused as to how all of this works, so if anyone can explain it to me - or correct any misunderstanding I have - I will greatly appreciate it.  In the past, I have received some ebook ARCs from publisher with DRM protection set to kick in at a certain date, and when that date comes the books are no longer readable.  If all the books I buy from Amazon have similar protection, but without a specific date-trigger encoded, it sounds as if Amazon still has a way to trigger the DRM and kill my books.  And that's even if I have a copy on another drive as backup?  

I don't know how it works, as you can see.  But I'm assured that work, it does.  And that makes me angry.  Ebooks are not cheap; they often cost as much as a quality paperback copy of the same book, paperbacks that I can do with as I please without fear of Microsoft or Amazon or Barnes & Noble knocking on my door late some Saturday night demanding their books back.