Most ebook sellers try to lock you into a particular ecosystem. If you don't mind buying from the same company every time, this isn't too bad, but you lose the ability to comparison shop, as well as making it difficult to switch apps. Fortunately, there's a way around this problem.

Dear Lifehacker, I've always wondered why Blu-rays have region coding, or why a music service is available in one country but not another. The Internet is global, right? And why are videos that stream in one country blocked in another? Is there any rhyme or reason, or is it all just to be annoying?

Microsoft has caved in to consumer outrage over its plans to force owners of its forthcoming Xbox One console to connect every 24 hours in order to keep playing their games. The always-on DRM requirement has been dropped, and Xbox One owners who purchase games on disc will be able to sell and swap those discs just as they can now.

In theory, digital rights management (DRM) is meant to protect the copyright holder's interests while not inconveniencing the customer. Why, then, is DRM so often badly handled?

Dear Lifehacker, I'm tired of Spotify and I want to move back to buying music. iTunes has a great selection, but will I still be able to play those songs if I switch away from Apple products? Would another service or physical CDs be better? And do artists make more money at one store than another? Help! Thanks, Tricky Tunes

Dear Lifehacker, I just heard about the woman whose Kindle ebooks were wiped when her account was suspended, and it got me thinking: Do I really own anything that I've bought with DRM? It seems like I could lose it at any time, or lose the ability to view something just because I switched devices. How can I get rid of the DRM so I can keep my own backups?

The authorisation process Windows imposes on its users is pretty picky, sometimes causing problems with legitimate copies. What do you do when you follow the rules and Windows authorisation still fails you?

We've looked at removing DRM from iTunes movies and TV shows on Windows, but what about Mac OS X? Here's how to rip out the DRM and turn that copy-protected M4V file into a regular old MP4 on your Mac.

Amazon subsidiary Audible.com is a great resource for audio books, but none too friendly if you want to access those files under Linux. Here's one way to solve the problem.

Further proof that we love MP3 and hate DRM: BigPond Music will stop selling music in the Windws Media Audio (WMA) format from April 1.

Looking to further its mission of making your software, and your media, free of restrictions, Ubuntu is bundling an Ubuntu One Music Store into 10.04, the next release of the Linux operating system due out in April.

The RIAA have finally declared DRM dead for music, according to all-things-BitTorrent weblog TorrentFreak. You won't see us arguing, having avoided DRMed music like the plague ever since it started gaining ground in the post-Napster 2.0 world, but the steady decline of digital rights management in recent months has been a welcome move all around.

Unless you've got an Apple TV or computer next to your TV, your purchased iTunes movies are limited to your monitor. Wired details how to burn those movies to a DVD for the bigscreen experience.

Microsoft's limited success with the Windows Media format for selling music (and movies) has largely been due to its willingness to add uber-annoying DRM to keep copyright holders happy. So it's amusing to see the Big M officially recommending that customers who have used those services work their way around them. Here's an extract from an email which Microsoft has sent to subscribers of its soon-to-be-defunct UK music store (I once purchased a single song from it for research purposes and hence ended up on the mailing list).
We recommend that you back up any previously downloaded tracks to audio CD using Windows Media Player. This will protect your music collection for future listening.
This approach isn't new to anyone who has sought to remove DRM from Windows Media files (or from iTunes, for that matter), but it's nice to see it given the company seal of approval.

Just because Apple and Big Music dropped the DRM doesn't mean they want you trading your iTunes purchases. CNET notes that buyers' registered email addresses are embedded in every file, and so (somewhat) trace-able.

The news that Apple will offer DRM-free tracks and let you convert existing protected music is pretty welcome, but as Nick over at Gizmodo points out, it won't come cheap. Converting existing tracks will cost 50 cents a pop, videos will be $1, and whole albums will cost 30% of the original purchase price. All that sound nastily excessive to us for stuff you've already paid for (and a good reason to break out the CD burner for some cost-free conversion instead). As Nick notes, it's also important to check any future purchases to ensure you don't actually purchase a DRM-hindered track; if that looks like the only option, hanging out until April, when a bunch more tracks will be freed up, seems sensible.

Looking for an ebook read but don't fancy messing with the complicated authentication schemes that often get in the way? New site eBooks Just Published focuses on newly-published titles that don't use any form of digital rights management (DRM), making it much easier to read them on a wide variety of devices. Perhaps surprisingly, there's more fiction than non-fiction on offer. There's also a useful subcategory of entirely free titles if you're looking to save a few dollars. eBooks Just Published

Windows only: DVDneXtCOPY iTurns Free provides a clever work-around to stripping audio tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store—and, theoretically, other protected, purchased tracks—of their DRM. The free application installs a virtual CD burner on your Windows system, so your only job is to create a playlist, hit "Burn Disc," and choose the "TurnsDrive" when prompted. If the app is running in your system tray, it catches the "burning," and works in the background to split the virtual disc back into unprotected MP3s. Album art, tags, and other metadata are all preserved, and while the burning process took unusually long for one batch of protected MP3s, it delivered on the restriction-free goods. You'll have to have authorised access to play and burn the tracks you want to unlock, but since iTunes allows unlimited CD burns (if you change the playlist just a bit), you're pretty much in the clear. DVDneXtCOPY iTurns Free is a free download for Windows systems only; a paid version adds OGG and other formats and a few other options. DVDneXtCOPY iTurns Free

Dear Lifehacker, Windows Media Player hijacked my MP3 files and converted them all to WMA. I want to change them back easily in one sweep—but am not the most savvy user. Help? Signed, Gimme My Beats Back Original photo by Mark Kobayashi-Hillary