Kindle Is Making It Harder to Switch to Rival eReader Brands.
On February 26th, Kindle customers will lose the ability to download eBook purchases directly to their PC. If you want to switch to a rival eReader brand in the future, I suggest that you use the soon-to-be discontinued "Download and Transfer via USB" feature to archive your Kindle library.
https://www.howtogeek.com/kindle-discontinues-download-transfer-via-usb/Open linkView original on ponder.cat721
Comments180
thus I have my personal library backed up on calibre. Wonderful software that's been around for twenty fiveish years.
I love Calibre. I've recently broken my E-Reader (Tolino) but all my books are backed up on Calibre so the only loss is the hardware (still sad but not as annoying)
There's also calibre-web for a self-hosted option with a web interface.
IIRC it’s not as feature complete as the fat client
This. I've personally found it easiest to use Calibre to strip DRM & get things tidy, then use Audiobookshelf to manage both my ebooks and audiobooks
It does ebooks too?
Yep! Here's an ebook I have hosted through Audiobookshelf, reading it over the Internet using my domain & reverse proxy.
(The top bar is shown/hidden when you tap the screen, so it's not always in the way like this)
Thanks!
Yeah is this going to break calibre functionality? I remember using it to rip books from my kindle library but not how, exactly 🤔
It’ll break saving books you bought from Amazon, but you’ll still be able to send books you got from other places to it from Calibre. Fortunately barely any of my ebooks on my kindle are from Amazon (though my next ereader isn’t going to be a kindle, that’s for sure).
Cool guess I’ll download anything I bought from Amazon before the cutoff then it’s been ages and I can’t remember what’s there o7
Probably some kind of plugin or script to run... i forget the specifics because literally grab the kindle version, then search z-library.
Please pass it forward: all Kindles can now be jailbroken
What can I do with a jailbroken kindle that makes it worth doing instead of just using calibre?
Better Calibre integration.
Custom shelves and book collections on Kindle.
You literally just said the two things I wished Kindle allowed me to do natively.
I hate the fact my Kindle store books will bundle by series, but my non-kindle books will not.
Yea, I had like a 2nd or 3rd gen paperwhite and rooted it for this reason, but my partner's wasn't hackable until this moment. So now she can have it too.
Ok, the latter might actually be worth it. I’ll have to look into that.
Better reader, PDFs with reflow.
How would the reading experience improve for regular ebooks?
I switched from the default reader to koreader, and now I have dark mode (mine is probably about 8 years old and did not originally have this feature). Koreader has so many features and qol improvements compared to the default Kindle experience.
I'll continue pirating, thanks.
PSA: “Archiving” is a general legal-neutral and safe term you can use with co-workers.
Wether i am also a pirate one may speculate but i am always an archivist.
Turns out it really is archiving when government decides to go renegade and start deleting everything they disagree with or wipe from history. Archive away beautiful data horders.
Fuck that.
YARR!!
Joke's on them, I get all my books from Z-Library anyhow.
I have a few books I bought, but even then, I grab from z-library. More portable and no DRM.
reMarkable, PineNote, Bookeen, etc...
I'm not saying anybody deserve to be mistreated ... but come on, at this point if you buy something from Amazon it's Stockholm syndrome. Just do NOT. It's that easy.
F*ck Bezos and other billionaires. Stop making them even richer from your pain. Stop your mind from being literally enslaved!
There is a whole community of people out there who will pretty much refuse to buy brand new electronics. And thats for very obvious and valid reasons.
Kindles can be found for dirt cheap if not free 2nd hand. And so many users have a kindle for this reason. Myself included. Id never throw out or discard an electronic device that continues to work. For the same obvious reasons as why i dont buy new ones.
And so this information is super relevant and important to users like me. Regardless of how much people like you might be convinced that "we had it coming" or whatever.
Sure, it's the same problem with most of electronics, it's the console business model, or ink printer, where the device itself is "too" cheap and companies make money on content. Unfortunately it comes with shackles. I'm all for breaking the shackles but unfortunately has to be aware of what they are getting into, not just the trouble but also potentially supporting the company promoting DRMs and more.
I work in XR and Meta/Facebook is the embodiment of that problem. The Quest is too cheap compared to alternatives like Lynx (standalone designing in France, unfortunately still running on Android but at least rootable) or even the "old" now Valve Index, which in addition to its price also requires a gaming desktop.
So... it's a money making machine for corporations. Hopefully recycling is done in a way that provide 0 support for the corporations locking down its device, promoting its marketplace BUT also, sadly less realistic, doesn't also prevent companies who try to sell genuine alternative that do NOT promote such business model from existing.
TL;DR: get a 2nd hand reMarkable, PineNote, Bookeen, etc…
3Easier said than done. Had a quick search. In 45km of my home there is not one reMarkable, PineNone or Bookeen. There is 2 kobos. And around 200 kindles. Kindes are starting at 5 bucks for ones that look a little beat up. Kobos are 80 bucks. You can still avoid buying most books from amazon. Obviously not all. Even owning Kobo there are some books you end up buying from Amazon. They have the largest foreign language library. There are thousands of popular books which you cannot get in a foreign language anywhere else these days. And you have to acknowledge that most people in the world are not reading books in English.
Sometimes you can get a solid deal. If youre super patient or lucky. But the 2nd hand market will generally always follow the market distribution of retail.
So long as kindle is domninating. 2nd hand users are gonna be heavily pressured into buying kindle.
I wholeheartedly agree that we shouldnt support amazon and i do think they are making kindles a pain.
But i dont think you can expect people to just find 2nd hand alternatives like what you listed. Especially when you consider the demographic of people shopping for eraders.
This is why i find these kinds of comment chains futile. We all love to vote with our money, but its not that simple for a lot of people. Maybe instead of this "you get what you deserve" attitude we could put more energy towards promoting the jailbreaks and trying to make those as accessible as possible for your chineese grandma to be able to do it herself on her Windows Vista. Not to mention that there is 0 value in telling anyone that bought a new kindle that they deserve whats comming. At best they sell their kindle when they buy a kobo perpetuating the cycle. At worst they trash it and contribute the already growing problems of ewaste.
FWIW my point isn't about shaming people, it's to make buyers fully aware of the consequence of their actions, both political and ecological. My point is to show that actual alternatives exist and yes they are more rare and expensive (probably also because they are rare, which is by design for Amazon, they do have scale in mind from the founding of the company, they undercut in order to dominate all marketplaces!). I genuinely wish the options I listed were both cheaper and more available. Now... it's a bit like buying clothes from Primark vs e.g. Patagonia. The pricing is radically different, and their are both selling clothes, but I'd argue they are NOT the same products, including the ecological impact. So... again, not trying to shame anyone, solely show that alternatives, with different trade off, do actually exist TODAY. Every time one person try to go with the cheap and popular, they are tipping the scale to, IMHO, worst solutions for everyone else, including the 2nd hand market.
Related https://lemmy.world/post/25825690
unfortunately though, due to the same issues there isn't a very large second hand market of those either. Like the cheapest remarkable second hand I could find was still 300$ and the cheapest pine note was 270$ for preowns.
when you compare it to the kindle which has preowns starting at 40$ it's a hard buy
I got a secondhand Kobo on eBay for less than $100, almost in new condition (the seller just forgot to include the charging cable, but luckily I had plenty of spare micro-USB cables). It's a 2018 model, but it has 8 GB of storage, plenty for most people, and a nice 6" 300 PPI screen with warm light and dark mode. It's more than sufficient.
Point being, alternatives are out there. reMarkable and Boox aren't exactly equivalent devices, since those are meant as more e-ink note-taking tablets, not dedicated e-readers. You could probably find a 2018 Kobo Clara HD for around $40-50 used nowadays as well... and it has more features than the equivalent 2018 Kindle.
Yeah it seems I misunderstood what those tablets were,
I did find the old Samsung Tab tablets that would do pretty decent job though, those are somewhat around the same price range too, like 70-140ish range preowned
And looking into the kobo clara series it does look like those are about 120-130 second hand currently so not as bad
Thing is, the pinenote is €610, and the kindle paperwhite is £160, cheaper on discount.
I get your point and there’s a reason why the kindle is as cheap as it is, but I can understand why someone would see those prices and go for the kindle.
Or go for the Kobo, which is similarly priced as the Kindle. The Kobo Clara Colour is £150
I love how hackable Kobos are. I put KOReader on mine and it's honestly just the best experience I could ask for.
That and the upgradeable storage... as soon as I can figure out how to solve my partition issues.
Absolutely the reason I bought mine too. While we are probably a small niche, looking for this functionality was how I found Kobo in the first place.
I've had three ereaders, all three were kobo.Yet I wouldn't recommend them anymore. There's a mandatory online activation now. There are ways to bypass it but it's not great.
Many models are unstable with KoReader so it's not even an alternative anymore.
The day I replace my eReader is going to be a hard day.
I've bought myself a Boox Go Color 7. I love that one, even though it's twice as expensive as a Kobo or Kindle.
Indeed, cf https://lemmy.world/comment/15163037 unfortunately too cheap usually comes at a non financial cost.
And PocketBook. Don't see them locking down anytime soon.
A lot of books money goes to not rich people though
Where the hell are you buying books that they cost 50 lol
Shhh he's a pirate, he has no concept of how much media costs.
If it's alright for Facebook, it's alright for me. Yoho
🏴☠️
That was amusingly well timed:
I've jailbroken every Kindle fire I've ever owned, is this something new?
As it should be.
I don't mind a monopoly on a physical product as long as I can jailbreak it, install my own custom hardware, or modify it however I want.
You don't mind the harm to consumers and the anti-competitive results of Amazon establishing a monopoly on e-readers? Interesting take..
It eludes me how people pay to 'buy' something that they cannot download in the first place. If I don't have it as a file on my computer, I don't own it. You wouldn't pay to 'buy' a physical item if that meant only being able to look at it at the store, without the ability to take it home and do whatever you want with it.
If buying is not owning…
Just wait until they can figure out how to do this to physical items. How? Idfk bro what am I a rocket appliance?
Subscription lock
I'd love to see them put that on the big black dildo I purchase each year. Try me!
Lol
sorry vibrating/heating function locked until daily dues are paid.
Safety eject option locked until subscription is paid. "911. I have a dildo shoved in my ass and my safety eject subscription ran out. Please help!" you know, it sounds crazy and like this could never happen but I say it's just crazy enough it will happen. Look at who the American president is. That's all the proof you need.
I agree. However, some dishonest services allow to download, but downloaded file is DRM. It is even worse.
Most services are forced to carry DRM only versions of Ebooks by the book publishers. But there are ways of legally removing the DRM - it's a faff but doable. I buy epubs and don't use Kindle (haven't for a long time) as it's much harder to remove the DRM and actually own your books.
But way I look at it - if I bought the Kindle version of a book, I can just download a DRM free version by sailing the seas. Fuck Amazon.
It is very easy to remove DRM from kindle Books, but since you will not be avle to download them it will not be possible anymore.
i keep getting mixed msgs on this (then again, I could be misinterpreting) but it sounds like you can still download the ebook to your kindle (it will be in .kfx format), but if you plug the kindle into the computer and copy the .kfx file to it, that you should then be able to import it into calibre on your computer and the kfx plugin should strip the DRM.
i haven't tested this to be sure yet (my kindle library is already downloaded and i've just been buying ebooks from Kobo since the Amazon announcement)
https://itc.ua/en/news/amazon-has-canceled-the-feature-that-allowed-piracy-kindle-books-now-without-downloading-to-pc/
https://rl.bloat.cat/r/Calibre/comments/1h6wrlq/assistance_with_kfx_drm_removal_in_calibre/
DRM removal from Kindles from 2024 doesn't seem to work, that is why they are removing it.
That's where I'm getting conflicting info: I understand you won't be able to "download and transfer via USB" from the Amazon website but when you download a book from the Kindle over wifi it's still a file on your kindle that can be browsed to if you connect your Kindle to a computer via USB
Then you copy that downloaded ebook (.kfx) to your computer and import into Calibre and use the Kindle plugin that strips DRM from .kfx files.
I'm going to try that today and see if it actually works...
It is pretty obvious why they are doing this though, but it also means you don't own them, you are renting them.
Convenience. Most people reads book once, if they finish it at all.
My Kobo e-reader is pretty nice and takes any ol e-pub file just fine. And Calibre, a third party software for managing ebooks, has a plugin to crack Kindle files. Just sayin
Which requires being able to download those files from Amazon. Which is what this post is all about, Amazon not allowing you to download the files anymore.
I was thinking along the lines of if you already had them downloaded and wanted to switch off to something else
Unfortunately currently broken for the latest version of Kindle for PC, which switched to a different encryption scheme. It also uses KFX file format that nobody likes, which fortunately can be converted to EPUB with another plugin, but de-DRMing doesn't seem to work right now. It still seems to work for titles in AZW3/MOBI that didn't get DRM update or didn't have DRM in the first place.
Am I an idiot for enjoying my Kindle Paperwhite as an eReader, while at the same time never actually buying books from Amazon?
Same. I find ebooks for my family or we use Libby. I wouldn't know how to buy a book on my kindle if I wanted to.
Nope. Mine has never connected to the www
Same. Most news sites treating this change as a "Kindle issue" is borderline disinformation. This is an "Amazon issue". Kindle the device isn't changing and there is no reason to switch if you already own one (just please don't buy a new one).
It’s a good piece of hardware. I do the same thing. Although I recently got a Kobo and I gotta say that I do prefer the kobo slightly better. Kindle is still good shit though
I am sorry, what?
Turn on PC or phone. Download ebook from torrent site. Enjoy.
It's not difficult to switch?
Try explaining how to do that to your non-techie relatives, especially the older ones who like reading. Yes, this makes is more difficult to switch.
Oddly enough, pirated ebooks are a malware minefield. And hard to find.
That said, I have about 8000.
Where are you going to that they are a malware issue?
Any torrent site and 'free ebook' download site is a minefield.
I don't do it anymore for that reason.
I'm aware of the 'safe' alternatives, but I've found buying books means I'll actually read them.
Why don’t you use library genesis or Anna‘s archive?
Library Genesis is down. Maybe for good
Undernet and #bookz for me somehow turned out to be easier than more popular styles of piracy.
Is bookz a channel in undernet?
yes
Balller, thanks. I've been enjoying IRCHighway and the ebooks channel.
#bookz is fantastic!
That's fucked.
So anyway self hosting Kavita to read everything in my browser is hella convenient.
Interesting, I'd never heard of Kavita, so have just been using Calibre all these years. Did you start out on Kavita, or did you move from Calibre, or another software?
I use calibre for my kindle, but kavita for web reading on any of my devices.
The calibre web server kept claiming its downloads to my device were corrupted and would just never open books. Kavita just sends the books page as a web page which gets rid of that particular issue
I tend to bounce around software. I ran into it at random researching docker containers and just kind of stuck with it. I've got a habit of trying to containerize everything nowadays haha
Dropping a link for the lazy/myself for later
https://www.kavitareader.com/
To all the people who are saying "I'll just pirate books," you are aware you can buy eBooks from places that aren't Amazon, right?
Have a look at https://bookshop.org/ebooks You can buy books/eBooks and support local bookstores that aren't Barnes & Nobles or Amazon.
I'd suggest you download/archive your Kindle books and then buy your eBooks from elsewhere. You can still load those onto your Kindle.
Saying "I'm going to pirate because one specific website is changing its policy soon," is pretty stupid.
EDIT: Turns out I was wrong about bookshop.org, you actually can't load their eBooks into a Kindle. You need their app since they have their own DRM. Looks like I got all worked up about something without looking it up first.
See: https://bookshop.org/info/ebooks
Addendum: that specific site is dog shit. Imagine thinking you just bought an ebook but instead you bought a lease to some DRM shit that only works on their app.
EPUB or GTFO.
I hear you saying that, but the books I want to buy are never on those sites.
Does that provide epub when baught? Or does it lock you in with their DRM app?
Thanks for asking this, that question made me go look it up.
I found https://bookshop.org/info/ebooks
I thought you could load bookshop.org eBooks onto a Kindle, but it seems they have their own DRM and you need to use their own app...
Some of their books are DRM free, but not all. I thought they all were, but it turns out I was wrong.
So... maybe even bookshop.org isn't the best option for Kindles.
I guess there really is only one option left...
I went researched a few years ago and concluded that there is no option for writers to be guaranteed "no piracy" and that's why they prefer having paperbooks. (That is also after brainstorming with a few people to publish my own book if it were...) and those days i was trying to find an important book in electronic format and could not find it anywhere, the paper 10th edition version (which i eventually bought) is like 1000 pages and the e version i found was 200 ish pages summary. So my sad conclusion was that i just need a big'ol scanner at home, just so that i can scan everything that i buy in paper just because i could then keep it personally on my e-reader (and having destroyedbinding of each book i buy lmao).... is that too much to ask... my wife says no.... lol
Well, you should not use Amazon anything. Valuable lesson learned.
I have a first generation kindle that I bought 16 years ago. They used to be awesome, and Amazon shaped the way ecommerce worked. The lesson here is not to be fully dependent on one supplier, not to boycott everything just because it's big.
Yeah, they were great back then. I have the first generation Kindle Paperwhite (12-ish years), though at this point I only use it to read fanfics lol
AO3 let's you download entire fics directly in the EPUB & AZW3 format, doubt they're ever gonna change that 😁
This is why I never once purchased a book from Amazon even though I have a Kindle.
Pretty pumped to jailbreak it with the new jailbreak.
New kindle jailbreak you say?
https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/WinterBreak/
Supposedly works on all Kindles, I haven't actually done a deep dive yet, just have it bookmarked since yesterday.
What can you do with a jailbroken Kindle?
Run software they don't approve of. Like alternate reading apps that don't need you to pipe everything through an Amazon account, read formats they don't support, etc.
Hi. Thank you for the info.
I am looking for a new e-reader. Is there any reason why I should buy a Kindle and jailbreak it rather than get a PineNote, SuperNote, Nook device, Boox device, or a Kobo Libra?
Or would you recommend something else?
I was looking at the PineNote myself, but they stopped selling the developer version due to low demand. I'm afraid that it won't be back until those who do own it finish writing the software for it.
According to their site and a couple others, they have recently started selling again and with what looks to be some variant of Debian on it.
Oh... I didn't know that. Thanks for letting me know.
I have a Boox Palma 2 - their cellphone-sized thing that doesn't have a cellular radio. I love it. They're more expensive than kindles, though, since they're not subsidizing their cost with ebook sales. I haven't actually tried jailbreaking a kindle so I can't say how good an experience that would be, but you could probably pick up a kindle of some description on the used market for dirt cheap to try it out.
The Palma was one of my top choices but I was thinking it might be a little small for me. It is one of the better looking devices.
I didn't even think getting a used Kindle. New Kindle prices seem a little high for getting a locked system, so a used one is probably the most cost effective method.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Actually own it.
Interesting, thanks
I'll be done with audible the moment I stop being able to liberate and archive what I pay for.
Until then, they're helping me build my audiobookshelf
My solution was to just redownload all my books from z-lib after I bought them already.
I've been monkey paw'd with my wish "Z library becoming the most convenient eBook platform"
I'm really glad that I downloaded my entire Kindle library a month ago, and converted it all to either CBZ or Epub.
Fuck Bezos.
One tip for the audiobook-fans: Download your Audible books while you still can. It's only a matter of time before Bezos locks those downloads too. Libation will help liberate your library into DRM-free files.
I love my Kobo. I installed KO Reader on it and have Calibre for managing my ebooks.
Get all my ebooks from z-library or Anna's archive.
..and for those on Linux there is 'DeGouru', a tool for de-DRMing internet archive books that are lending-restricted.
A bit annoying in that it is somewhat sensitive to the Python version one has installed but there are ways to manage that which I am not qualified to advise on.
That's my situation too. Got the Kobo Clara Color as a Christmas present for myself (the color was like $10 more, so what the hell) after resisting eBooks for years, and I really love it.
They take almost any ebook type, but they do have their own proprietary format, KEPUB. That's what their own store uses. Thankfully, Calibre can convert to and from it. Due to Kobo being able to more easily handle zooming in to images and things like that with KEPUB, it's sometimes worth converting.
Nice. Mines an older Clara I bought about 5 years ago. I personally don't have the use for a color screen, but for $10 I guess why not! Most books I read don't have any images besides the cover
I installed KO Reader as soon as I got it and never looked back. Not as pretty as the standard Nickel (?) OS but more customisable.
I love having an e-reader. I read so much more because of it. Much more convenient, not having to worry about heavy books, holding open pages, no need to worry about proper lighting for reading. Light and small enough to bring everywhere. I will buy another immediately once this one dies.
I heard there are ways to jailbreak all Kindles...
How would that help here? The only thing Amazon is removing is the ability to download your purchased eBooks to your PC.
It helps because you regain that feature when you jailbreak...
The files now use a different kind of DRM that hasn't been defeated yet.
The purpose of using the soon to be removed feature was to get files with an older encryption that can be easily removed
When you jailbrake the kindle you can download the ebooks from Amazon to the PC?
Locked-in platform closing the door. How surprising.
Accepting DRM in the first place is the problem. Hard to avoid, but still. I just got a boox; great value, can't use adobe DRM. Didn't have any problem there. Of course, money is going everywhere except big "publishers", but that's hardly an issue; they choose their business model, I choose my customer model.
Ooh, this is very pithy. I like it. I will use it.
It's not an accident that I download epubs and read them on Moon+.
Amazon signaled clearly years ago that their goal wasn't to make a convenient ebook reader, but to create an entire proprietary e-reading system designed solely to extract as much money as possible for as little value as possible. And this is just another step in that ongoing process.
In the meantime, hackers have just released a new jailbreak and made it a more open platform than ever :^)
Repeat after me!.... En-shit-ti-fication!
I use a library app called Libby to read non torrented books. But I’m not sure if it’s available on the kindle. It’s good to support your local library, even if it’s only digitally
Libby is able to sync with your kindle, and then you just choose "send to Kindle" on your phone when checking a book out and the book will appear in your Kindle library.
https://help.libbyapp.com/en-us/6017.htm
If you have a Kindle, this is 100% the best way to read books.
pretty sure that is us only
I resisted eBooks for years, preferring physical books from the library or new/second hand stores. I got gifted a Kindle from a well meaning relative a few years ago and I have a small collection on there, mainly built up when I was commuting.
This news came just as I am backing up my own data, moving off of the big name Cloud services and going back to open source software. (In confession the convenience of M365 etc won me over so the last 10 or so years I fell into the trap!)
Anyway needless to say my 40(ish) Kindle books quickly got downloaded and archived this week. Thanks to Calibre I've also fixed the covers to a book series that suddenly got updated to an awful 'new hip' version! :)
I'm now intrigued about repurposing the Kindle hardware as it still works and I don't want it to go to waste, but with this and other recent events I'm done personally proving data or money to these big corporate companies as much as I possibly can.
ebooks have managed to pull the same scam that game developers pulled on gamers 20 years ago.
"ebooks will be cheaper! and with the fact that we wont have to pay for printing, shipping, storage, etc, You'll pay a lower price while the author/publisher still receive more money than they would have from the physical book! its a win/win for everyone!"
aaaand then as soon as they were accepted ebook prices became the same (or near enough) price as the physical version, and in a few rare cases, even more expensive. Resulting in the massive promised profits for publishers, and maybe authors, but no gain but lots of demerits (like obnoxious drm, and shit like amazon going onto your device to delete it cause they lost the rights or something, which has happened) for end users/readers
And thats first party, brand new books.
There is no second hand market for ebooks, like there is from physical. Si theres no browsing a place like Half Price Booked or whatever to find something that isnt in your normal wheel house but thanks to being pre-owed, its cheap enough to roll the dice on.
It's not just Amazon. Libraries (and Libby, the app they use) are also making it difficult to do anything but read in a browser or use Kindle.
Overdrive (which is Libby) integrates directly into the Kobo OS so you can borrow books directly on the device instead of the roundabout way you have to do it on the Kindle.
Overdrive's being phased out and being replaced by Libby according to the 2 libraries I frequent. I wonder if it will still be supported on Kobo OS once the website and apps are shut down?
My library has used Libby for years. It's another version of Overdrive. My library books download to Kobo fine unless they're changing something else I don't know about.
My wife uses Libby and books go directly to her kindle.
Sadly too true. To be fair though I don't think ANY librarian want that.
Here in Belgium we have an online library ( lirtuel.be ) that isn't actually too bad. I looked it up and they say they provided ePub/PDF so I registered right away. Then... I discovered what they meant wasn't ePub/PDF but rather DRMed ePub/PDF (here is an example https://www.lirtuel.be/resources/67aaf2124e480409978b68fb with ePub logo on the top right). Anyway I contacted them explaining that my ebook reader (reMarkable) does not support DRM and thus I couldn't read the content. They pointed me to their documentation https://confluence.demarque.com/confluence/cantook-station/fr/faq/verrou-numerique-et-identifiant-adobe/qu-est-ce-qu-un-verrou-numerique-drm which implies it's all "normal" to use that. I insisted, they didn't reply.
Long story short, I'm either not using their service anymore or using DeGourou https://github.com/Bingwithyou/DeGourou to make the content legally loaned actually usable. Sad state of affairs but I'm convinced none of the actual librarians, namely people who care for making knowledge discoverable and accessible like that. I'm sure they've been coerced by same big publishers.
The librarians I've talked to simply don't know how any of this works. I've been told 3 times (the 3rd one today) that epub version of books are not available. Today it was a "trained computer aid that offers technology assistance" saying the epub format I download just last week is not available from the library.
Already been doing this, but I think this will finally light the fire under my ass to move to a boox device for all my reading I've got the big boox, which I use for sheet music, and quite like it, so the smaller ones are no brainers
FYI, Onyx egregiously violates GPL and basically gives the finger to anyone who complains. Not that anyone is necessarily clean as a whistle and even so they’re miles better than Jeff “I dressed like a fascist before it was cool” Bezos.
I’m a big fan of Kobo, but they also used to have a connection with Walmart.
This is why I have an Android e-ink device. I can put the kindle app on it for anything from their shitty walled garden, but I also can put pretty much anything else I want on it too.
If this doesn't help physical book sales, nothing will.
i buy most ebooks from a small local bookstore. for the rest there's still zlib
Are you buying ebooks in a physical store? How does that work?
they also have an online shop and are reselling ebooks for an external provider and get a small percentage of the money
I wonder if this is at all related to the EU changes to eBook DRM standards, where the standard Kindle Adobe DRM isn't compliant
I'm so in love with Anna.....
Quick shout out to oceanofpdf
Been using an Onyx Boox Nova 3 for maybe
84 years now. It runs android, drm free everything (edit: it has no store really, it is basically empty. Supports virtually any filetype you can read. Epub, pdf, mobi, cbz). For some android could be a distraction from reading, but the browser is slow enough to were you use it to hop on annas-archive, get a book and then quickly close it. File transfer via shared wifi or USB, good reader, some nice reading stats without needing any account. Recommend if anyone wants to jump the amazon ship.The Nova 3 released in late 2020, it hasn’t existed for 8 years.
Ah shit I think you are right. Feels like I have had it forever but seems that was a false memory of some sort.
I bought it while I lived in my previous apartment which I feel was longer ago and so I got a bit confused with the dates I think lol. Thanks for pointing it out.
E-paper devices with Android are usually way underpowered for the platform, easier to just use the phone for such things.
I think you are missing the point of using an e-ink device.. I don't think anyone would use one because of "how powerful" it is.
I don't want to read for hours on end on my phone or computer. With this, I can turn backlight off and use a lamp, like a normal book. Better for my eyes and relaxing.
Also, having dedicated devices for certain activities will change how you interact with them when using them. If I read a book on my computer I am tempted to look things up, get some work done or play a game. This is just for leisurely reading, and so when I pick it up that is what I do with it.
If you read a lot (books, not documentation which requires looking things up) then it really is a lot better for your eyes and a better experience to use e-ink.
I've been downloading my books but most of them are DRM so I can't read them on anything BUT a Kindle. I've been thinking about getting another e-reader but I fear I'm trapped.
Just look up Kindle DeDRM, it is easy enough to remove that stuff and then even convert them to epub
They are allowed to do that? It's your ebooks, not their ebooks.
According to them you only have a license to those ebooks.
And Amazons owns them? I would be furious as a publisher.
No, the files are mostly owned by the publisher. That's why you sometimes have stories where books disappear from Kindles because the rights holders revoke Amazon's license to sell their books. It's what happened with one version of Orwell's 1984, ironically.
It's ridiculous, if you ask me, but that's the reality with Broken By Design DRM ebooks.
That's why it's prudent for any buyers of ebooks to download them as soon as you can, and put them in a library like "Calibre", that way, even if Amazon loses their license to sell those publishers books, you still have access to the ebooks you bought with your money.
And that's why it's bad that Amazon is removing the option to download the files yourself. And why I recommend people to take their business and wallets elsewhere! Stop giving Bezos your money.
And Amazaon doesn't have to reimburse you then, since they revoked your permission to read them, which is what you paid for?
It's not what happened when they removed 1984 off of people's Kindles. I think somewhere in the fine print, they'll probably have a clause that says they're allowed to do that.
Uneducated 2 cents. afaik the publishers have some kind of “part ownership”, where they can pull it out from the store whenever. The “anti-piracy” feature you get with DRMs is why many publishers actually like them tho. The part ownership thing is just icing on the cake. So no, a good chunk of publishers won’t be furious at all. DRM gives what publishers want and more, at the expense of the consumers in a way that most wouldn’t realize.
And if anything, I think it makes more sense to think that these publishers are also just granting Amazon some kind of “license” to sell their e-books.
Amazon would absolutely be destroying their relationship with a publisher though, if they decide to block the selling or access of a book to large group of people who are would-be buyers. But, at the end of the day, publishers want to know how much they’re making from putting their e-books on Amazon, and as long as that revenue is enough to satisfy their needs, they don’t need to care too much about the odd customer who had their book revoked, and they would generally be pretty shielded from any sort of disputes as long as Amazon is making those revoking calls.
The only surprise here is that it took them this long to do it.
My favorite sites for actual ebooks are Humble Bundle and Fantastic. But these are predominantly tech books. No idea where I’d get good fiction in epub today.
C'mon United States, do the anti-trust thing! You used to be so good at it!
Did they? There have been a few cases, sure, but in general they've not been good in this regard.