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In an ideal world, all media would be free (as in freedom), but unfortunately that's not the world we currently live in. The biggest problem is that access to proprietary media is often crippled by DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), which can be bypassed in some circumstances by using a specific program. Sometimes there's no free software tool yet for removing DRM from certain media files, and running shady proprietary tools is the only option. Purchasing proprietary media inevitably encourages authors to continue earning money by producing and selling even more proprietary media (as opposed to free media). The next list summarizes the various possible relationships people can have, in my opinion, with the purchase and consumption of media (in order of increasing strictness):
Personally, I think that purchasing proprietary media is tolerable, as long as I'm able to remove any DRM with free software tools only. Specifically, after buying e-books with Adobe DRM I immediately download them with DeACSM and then I decrypt them with DeDRM. Both DeACSM and DeDRM work pretty well from GNU/Linux, natively (no need for Wine). Most importantly, no need for Adobe Digital Editions or Microsoft Windows either.