This is not an anti-Kindle rant. I have purchased (rented?) several Kindle titles myself.
However, YSK that you are only licensing access to the book from Amazon, you don’t own it like a physical book.
There have been cases where Amazon deletes a title from all devices. (Ironically, one version of “1984” was one such title).
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html
There have also been cases where a customer violated Amazon’s terms of service and lost access to all of their Kindle e-books. Amazon has all the power in this relationship. They can and do change the rules on us lowly peasants from time to time.
Here are the terms of use:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201014950
Note, there are indeed ways to download your books and import them into something like Calibre (and remove the DRM from the books). If you do some web searches (and/or search YouTube) you can probably figure it out.
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Amazon is on my shit list and will not buy any products from them ever again. They are one of the worst monopolist mega corporations. They treat their employees like slaves, are anti-repair, anti-consumer.
I gifted an older Kindle to my sister, and the screen broke (out of warranty). I contacted Amazon about it, and they basically said they don’t make replacement parts and don’t service the kindles, they can only give me a small discount for buying a new one.
I looked up a guide on doing it myself, and even if I find a replacement screen, it’s really difficult. The screen is glued with a strong adhesive. The entire device looks very cheaply built and deliberately made really difficult to repair.
I mean to be fair they are very cheap to purchase all things considered. That said I’ve still got my Kindle 3 I bought used on eBay and it’s still going strong after like 10 years I’ve owned it.
I’ve used Calibre and stripped DRM off eBooks, definitely recommend.
It’s a really nice app. Very customizable.
Sounds like a lot of work. Since , and I am showing my age, limewire I will just put on my pirate hat and read as I decide.
Takes a small effort to set up (install Calibre, install NoDRM plugin, apply Kindle serial to plugin), but once it’s done, the rest is literally drag and drop, it removes DRM from your books automagically.
Does that still work? Last time I tried I had no luck
For Kindle specific ripping, I think it changed a year back and now you need to have a kindle connected before the Amazon servers poop out some magic unlock key/the whole book. After that you’re golden, but during the rip you need a kindle device…
They explain the Kindle difference when using Calibre DeDRM tool in this article.
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Even if you can physically hold it, you better be damn sure it will work without internet.
Finally got around to backing up my over 200 audiobooks in a DRM-free format after this post reminded me it was on my to-do list. Libation is pretty damn good.
Also to add that amazon has been caught encouraging users to “refund” e-books and purchase a different one, without telling users that these refunds are clawed back from the Authors.
Then to double fuck the Authors they didnt give authors detailed statements - only payments of the monthly total, so any “refunds” were deducted from the total sales from that month and author paid the difference. This was only noticed when an author with an accounting/finance background noticed a negative payment statement one month and looked into this and found amazon routinely charging back authors, sometimes for multiple copies of ‘refunds’ that didnt actually get refunded, straight up stealing from the Authors.
I do, I get them directly from IRC
How lol, Books are the only thing where I find it hard to … well, get a legal copy from cough
IRCHighway channel #ebooks, don’t use a web client, I won’t give you links but this should be enough to send you on your way
I looked in to the whole DRM removal thing. From what I could tell, everything was majorly out of date, required a really old version of Calibre, and didn’t work with newer books.
Calibre can be recent - the plug-in was abandoned but forked, but an old physical Kindle is beneficiary. However some books in the store are no longer available for those lately.
The DeDrm plugin and the most recent Calibre worked for me just yesterday on a brand new book. Something that’s easy to miss is that you need to put in the serial number of your kindle device and make sure you download the e-book for that same device. Otherwise the plugin won’t be able to decrypt it.
Yep, looked it up again today and some proper information has been posted publicly in the interim since I last tried. I was able to strip the drm from a handful of my books today using it and an older version of the Kindle PC app.
Glad you sorted it!
This is why I only read books from the library
Can’t delete a title since I don’t have it ever connected to internet.
You are right I get my books for my kindle from torrents. I do not own them. I also don’t pay for them.
(Also library has epubs, librarys are great)
YSK, finding and installing mobi files are easy. Also, keeping your Kindle in airplane mode prevents ads. Fuck Amazon. Calibre is a great open source piece of software.
I’m glad you mentioned airplane mode. I noticed something interesting about my Kindle after I set up a Pi Hole on my home network. The kindle would constantly try to connect to the Amazon mothership. Because the Pi Hole was blocking it, it would try it over and over again and this quickly depleted the batteries (maybe trying to boost it’s WiFi signal? I’m not sure). Putting it into Airplane mode helps preserve battery life noticeably, back to what it was before I installed the Pi Hole.
It drains battery faster even if it’s not blocked too, kind of annoying.
Is there an ebook service like GOG is for games? DRM free so you can keep the books regardless of what happens to the service?
(I know it’s easy enough to remove it, but I’d rather support a service like that if I can)
Any of the third party reading apps and any epub file you store yourself. So if you buy an ebook from Amazon but get the epub version instead of Kindle then it’s protected from deletion. This is because you store it like any other document and your epub reader just reads the file.
DRM fuckery means your mileage will vary.
Yaar, matey.
I hate that pirating is the ONLY way to even semi own what you buy. Bought an album off Bandcamp (DRM free music) and when one of the songs on that album got in a pointless argument about copyright and got taken down from my Spotify playlists.
Songs being taken off of Spotify is really common if you’re into older stuff as the rights get passed on when the artist dies. Though in this case it was a year old album.
I was glad I bought it DRM free as I thought they could only unlist it from the store, not from libraries… until I saw it was gone there too.
I payed MONEY for them to take it out of my library on a DRM free site. That’s like them taking my music CD and scratching it with sandpaper.Pirating literally gives me the same experience as buying it for literally no issue. (except the lossless files but who cares)
For ebooks in particular, owning what you buy isn’t that difficult though. You can legally buy DRM protected epubs in a lot of online book stores and then use the software calibre (open source) to strip the DRM. Much easier than with music, movies or software.
Yes, most Kindles allow you to load your own PDFs and .ebook files, so pirating them is inconsequential.
I‘d recommend the software calibre. Great for managing your ebook library and it can convert epub into amazons azw, mobi or kfx formats (depending on which generation kindle you have). With the right plugin you can even create WordWise data for your kindle-converted ebooks.
You don’t even necessarily need to illegally download the books, as calibre can also handle the DRM of .ebub books you bought from almost any store. Of course, sailing the seven seas is still always an option though.
I have a few kindles, have upgraded over the years and have been able to use them all in the same manner:
With a new device I connect it to the internet and update the firmware to the latest version (the factory installed version has had a lot of missing functionality in my experience). Then I block it from my network, delete the AP entry and put it permanently into airplane mode.
When purchasing an ebook from Amazon you can download it for usb transfer and I organize it on my laptop with Calibre.
Calibre can also strip drm, but if you’re transferring it to the device you downloaded it for it isn’t necessary.
Amazon may at some point in the future change all of this, but the content I have already downloaded can not be revoked and is usable outside the Amazon ecosystem if the drm is removed.
If it’s on a kindle they can and will delete it off your device, Drm or no
It’s like you completely ignored the part where he removed his Kindle from the Internet.
