In The News: DRM nightmare: After recent upgrade, Kobo customers report losing Sony books from their libraries

I mentioned my trouble with losing one of my eReader e-books from Barnes & Noble a few weeks back. In that case, the matter was resolved amicably, but it seems Barnes & Noble isn’t the only store to have trouble with e-books ported from other companies. Over the last week, some Kobo users on the MobileRead forums have been discussing problems they’re having with their Kobo libraries, including with books from the customers’ Sony Reader libraries that Sony had passed over to Kobo when it exited the e-book business.

One of the issues has to do with concealing the option to download ACSM files in order to be able to pull Kobo EPUB files down to the desktop reader. Unlike Barnes & Noble, however, Kobo hasn’t actually removed the option to do so—just hidden it under the three-dot menu at the far right of the listing for the e-book in question.

Another issue is that the “Trash” folder has been removed from the library. Now books customers delete from their library are simply automatically removed, though they have the option of searching the book in the Kobo store to add it back at no cost.

Some users are reporting that some or all of the books they’d added from their Sony Reader libraries are missing. They were apparently removed from their library during a recent software upgrade, and the customers now have to search them in Kobo’s store and add them back individually. One reader reports missing around 460 Sony books from her library, which is an awful lot to have to add back one at a time! Some customers also report that the Kobo site wants them to repurchase some of the missing volumes. (“This is why I back up and ‘future proof’ all my ebooks,” writes MobileRead user MGlitch, and he wasn’t the only forum regular to cop to making Calibre backups.)