That's like trying to compare the freedom of a car vs the freedom of a bicycle.
It's not "taking away freedoms" if you buy The Catcher in the Rye Kindle Edition vs Print Edition
It's purchasing a completely different thing.
They have the same end, a lot of the time. You end up reading The Catcher in the Rye.
One is cheaper and is easier to travel with, the other you can lend to your friends a lot easier. One dies if batteries die, the other gets warped pages. One can be taken into the bathtub with just a zip-loc bag to protect it, the other runs the risk of getting rippled pages.
So it gives the "freedom" of being able to travel with ~500 books instead of 4, gives the freedom of easier bathtub reading, takes away the freedom of lending to friends, etc.
I've had people (generally older, nontechnical types, but who aren't about to just trust that Amazon will be around forever) ask me whether it's possible to strip the DRM off of Amazon books. They may not know the term "DRM", but they understand it functionally and that it's a disadvantage.
Unfortunately the de-DRMing tools are a little too complex and have too many rough edges for this audience, right now. (Although there's a Mac version that wraps most of the de-DRM scripts for Nook/Kindle/Adobe in a drag-and-drop GUI that is pretty clever.) I hope that developers of those sort of tools will keep ease-of-use by nontechnical people in mind in their development.
Once you have the ability to strip the DRM and put the ebook file away in a safe place, you really have a product that is better in nearly all respects.
From a practical perspective it doesn't take away any freedom. I try to avoid buying any ebooks I can't get DRM free copies of in case the DRM scheme they use changes or goes away and requires me to purchase a new license.
Obviously I could just use the free copy to begin with but it wouldn't send any information to the people that make such books that I want more of them. Also the QA on such books can be a little light and format shifting them is a hassle I do if need be but would rather avoid.
It's not "taking away freedoms" if you buy The Catcher in the Rye Kindle Edition vs Print Edition
It's purchasing a completely different thing.
They have the same end, a lot of the time. You end up reading The Catcher in the Rye.
One is cheaper and is easier to travel with, the other you can lend to your friends a lot easier. One dies if batteries die, the other gets warped pages. One can be taken into the bathtub with just a zip-loc bag to protect it, the other runs the risk of getting rippled pages.
So it gives the "freedom" of being able to travel with ~500 books instead of 4, gives the freedom of easier bathtub reading, takes away the freedom of lending to friends, etc.
It is simply a different product.