In many cases, you do not need special software, although sometimes you do. Some e-book collections use something called digital rights management (DRM), which is software that restricts how a book can be used. Sometimes you need particular kind of software to open e-book file that use DRM. An example of this is the program Adobe Digital Editions. However, an e-book collection that uses DRM on downloaded e-book files may let you read an e-book online in your browser with no DRM, and so you can still access the book without any special software. For more information on collections with DRM, you can check out our pages on Downloading e-books and on Digital Rights Management. The page on Digital Rights has suggestions of e-book collections that do not have DRM, and usually you can access those files without any special software.
