Amazon is changing what is written in books
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Is that what the "you can't download your shit anymore" is really reaching at?
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I just buy physicals of the reference books I really want and pirate the digitals of anything else that isn’t sold DRM-free. I WILL own what I bought, whether they like it or not.
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Piracy was, is and remains a service problem, as Gabe Newell of Valve (Steam) once stated. Most people are perfectly content to pay a reasonable price to get access to the things they want. But if you make that impossible, they’ll find other options.
Take anime for example: even if you subscribed to every streaming service out there, you still wouldn’t be able to see everything you wanted. Some things aren’t streamable or sold ANYWHERE, or only on a service that’s actively blocked in your region. Which means there is simply no legal way for you at all to get that content.
Music on the other hand solved that dilemma. You can use Spotify, YT Music, Apple Music or a host of other options. You pay a flat fee and you can listen to pretty much every song you want, as often as you want. Nobody’s pirating MP3’s these days, because nobody needs to. It’s now more convenient to just stream it.
I’d really like to see someone do the same for books. An unlimited digital library that lets you download anything you want for a flat subscription fee. I’d pay 10 bucks a month for that for sure. Because that would make it more convenient than pirating is right now, with a more consistent experience.
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Bruv real libraries will let you download books for free
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WB/Discovery+ just screwed people in the UK for watching cycling. It was £7 a month to watch before, which I was happy to pay. They just put an end to that and now bundled the cycling with their premium sports service for £29. I'm not paying all that when I only want cycling and none of their other content.
I cancelled my subscription, asked them to delete my account, purchased a fire stick and now paying for some dodgy IPTV service to watch it there for a fraction of the price.
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Yes, a lot of them do. But their digital selection often is pretty limited and comes with restrictions.
For example: our Dutch national online library lets you ‘borrow’ 10 e-books at a time. You get 21 days to read a book, but you can extend that one time by another three weeks. After that, you have to ‘return’ and ‘check them out again’ if you want to continue reading. With my particular reading habits, that’s a hassle and wouldn’t work for me.
But the biggest issue is: they only offer a limited selection. Basically, NONE of the books I’m reading now are available through that system.
I want to be able to read every book I want, no time restriction. And that’s not possible with the current digital library system they offer.
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I'm glad I've already pulled my audible library in to audibookshelf, I didn't have many ebooks so didn't bother with them. I'm moving to librofm this month I think.
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The bigger question is do they care. At worst they get a slap on the wrist by the US government. At best they get to control the narrative and have books like having history books on their platform talk about how the the Allies first striked Nazi Germany because they were lifting the country out of economic crisis and making the world a better place.
I doubt they'll care or listen if EU says stop since they'll just find a way around whatever they have planned to try and stop revisionist ideology from taking hold.
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I've got an old Kindle, but not too old, which I jailbroke just yesterday with Winter break. I recommend that method for those considering getting drm free usage out of their device (instead of it contributing to ewaste).
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Most people are perfectly content to pay a reasonable price to get access to the things they want. But if you make that impossible, they’ll find other options.
That's a sliding scale, though. Streaming comes at a fixed price.
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Yes, I prefer to read over watching a video and being forced to go at someone else's pace.
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Music is definitely not a solved problem. About 30% of my favorite older tunes aren't available on streaming at all, as I discovered when I tried to find a way to casually share with some friends.
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I bought a kobo recently (for the color screen) and have had to keep going back to my kindle to read smutty romance. All their newest decisions made me cancel my KU sub, and this has saved me from what I thought would be a drought.
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Mr Stallman needs to be considered from all sides before deciding whether you'll follow his lead. He's not without some toejam.
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Happy to help
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Lol. This is the exact same on...checks notes... every single other platform I know of. I have a kobo sage and it's the same, except that kobo runs on Linux and they don't lock their system. You can literally "jailbreak" it and still get updates from them. They also don't lock their books with encryption like on kindle so they lock you in. IMHO, there is 0 reasons to buy a kindle now, period.
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Except we are talking about ebooks and none of what you've said applies to them. Amazon did not win in the ebooks department, as there are many other better platforms out there that don't fuck their people.
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And your mother isn't complaining about it, which is not the audience I'm talking to. My whole issue is with those who choose amazon then complain about their practices. Especially in ebooks, there is actually no excuse for anyone to use amazon anymore. I understand some people have already bought many books from them and don't want to lose their books, but at least protest them not buying more books from them.
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Dude, literally. Lmao. I once had an author himself give me a link to his book to buy it. The freaking other himself. For our older parents and non-techy people, I understand using and sticking to amazon, they most likely won't even notice any of Amazon's bad practices, but young folks who are techy? Come on, you know better.
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Isn't Kobo made by rakuten? And Rakuten mainly operates in Germany? Also, hell get an e-reader with android on it and you can run all kinds of books on it without limiting yourself to just one company. There is even a Linux e-reader called pine note that you can buy.
