Kindle Is Making It Harder to Switch to Rival eReader Brands.
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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.
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.
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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.
Libraries (and Libby, the app they use) are also making it difficult to do anything but read in a browser or use 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.
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And Calibre, a third party software for managing ebooks, has a plugin to crack Kindle files
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
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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.
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It helps because you regain that feature when you jailbreak...
When you jailbrake the kindle you can download the ebooks from Amazon to the PC?
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if you can afford it, wire the author the 50 bucks or so for the book, and explain why you did it. most of them will be thrilled to get the full 50 for the book, i bet.
if you can't, well they wouldnt have gotten any money anyway.
Where the hell are you buying books that they cost 50 lol
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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.
they choose their business model, I choose my customer model.
Ooh, this is very pithy. I like it. I will use it.
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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.
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.
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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.
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. -
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!
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.
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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.
Seems like everything in ebooks is currently moving to the "you don't own anything and be happy" approach.
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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!
And PocketBook. Don't see them locking down anytime soon.
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Been using an Onyx Boox Nova 3 for maybe 8 years now. It runs android, drm free everything. For some android could be a distractiin 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.
E-paper devices with Android are usually way underpowered for the platform, easier to just use the phone for such things.
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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.
They are allowed to do that? It's your ebooks, not their ebooks.
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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.
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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
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They are allowed to do that? It's your ebooks, not their ebooks.
According to them you only have a license to those ebooks.
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According to them you only have a license to those ebooks.
And Amazon owns them? I would be furious as a publisher.
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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.
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.
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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
And Calibre, a third party software for managing ebooks, has a plugin to crack Kindle files.
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.
