Does DRM-free importing actually free you

Neon Ichiban 3. 0 is marketing itself as the antidote to platform lock-in — a digital comics reader that lets you import DRM-free files from your desktop and buy directly in-app rather than through a closed ecosystem. The pitch is liberation. What it actually reveals is how smart platforms weaponize the appearance of openness to capture users before tightening control.

This exact story played out fourteen years ago. ComiXology launched in 2012 with identical positioning: a web reader, in-app purchasing on iOS, support for DRM-free import. The strategy worked. Users switched. Network effects accumulated — their pull lists, reading history, library all locked to one platform.

Then, once the switching costs were real, ComiXology removed the web reader. Amazon's 2014 acquisition completed the picture. In-app purchasing vanished from iOS after Apple's App Store crackdown. What had been marketed as open infrastructure became a walled garden. By then the user base was too invested to leave. The friction points that had driven them to switch in the first place. Inability to read on desktop, forced app-only purchasing, came roaring back. Now users accepted them as the cost of keeping their library intact.

Neon Ichiban is not a competitor playing a different game. It is ComiXology's younger competitor playing the exact same game at the exact same starting position. In-app purchasing and desktop import are not solutions to friction. They are the opening move. Openness converts to lock-in once network effects stick, and the cycle simply restarts with a new platform making yesterday's promises.

This pattern matters because it shows why smart users still get trapped, and it's not stupidity. It's how incentives compound. A feature that feels genuinely liberating at adoption creates switching costs that make its removal acceptable later. The trap isn't the lock. It's the moment you stop noticing when the door closes. Understanding that you are already inside the cycle. Already making small choices that will make larger ones harder. Is the only way to stay aware of what your apparent freedom actually costs.