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Amazon will remove your ability to download the books you boughtAmazon is relying on P2P technology to provide you with the books you bought, as well as the books you haven’t bought
Are you telling me that Jeffrey Bezos is INTENTIONALLY attracting billions of customers with cheap stuff and then starts closing down his ecosystem? Why would he do that?!
If you own (or rather inherit) 20 million and you invest them with an interest rate of 5% you earn 1 million a year without doing any work. You can buy every luxury you need with an income like that. So everything above 20 million is not wealth or security anymore, it’s power. And some people are attracted by it.
I hate to knock it as a product, but I compared a lot of the books I bought on Kindle and - unless I’m missing something - the selection on Kobo seems quite limited in comparison.
It seems that Amazon is using Kindle Unlimited you lock authors into exclusivity. This reeks of monopoly abuse but of course nobody is going to do anything about that.
Whenever companies pull especially greedy bullshit it just makes me want to find the content another way…
The game Avowed just pulled this “advanced release” bullshit, pay $20 more and get access a few days early. Had they simply released the game I’d have bought it, but after seeing that I said fuck you I’ll find it another way and honestly I’m glad I did. As one review put it: it’s aggressively “meh.”
To be fair to obsidian the distribution choices have nothing to do with the people who make the game part. You can have great devs with a greedy publisher.
90% of the people I know who use kindle products all OTA their purchases to their device. If they have “illicit” books on their devices, I put them there.
There have been several threads about this on HN over the past few days and months. Just to avoid the confusion that seems to follow these, a few notes:
(1) This is the “Download and Transfer” option where Amazon allowed users to select books they had purchased a license to and download them from the Amazon website.
(2) The ability to transfer books from your computer to your Kindle using a USB cable is not affected.
(3) The ability to send non-Amazon-licensed ePubs using the Send to Kindle email feature is not affected.
It’s needless friction that depends on people having an outdated cable laying around to access what they paid for so yeah, it’s “pretty bad” lmao
All these companies have spent roughly 2 decades making everything wireless where possible and then Amazon turns around and goes “oh wait let’s go back to cables now that no one has them so people re-purchase out of frustration”
Even if you don’t break the DRM, having the file is a guarantee that they con not modify the version of the book you payed for, or remove it from your library (both things had happened in the past).
True, but let’s imagine newer Kindle devices or apps won’t allow you to read the previously downloaded files anymore? And I’m aware DeDRM exists, but so do DRM-free book shops. It’s not like I was okay to buy books from Amazon before, but now that they are getting rid of the download option, I will suddenly look for alternatives.
Having the file is the first step in removing the DRM - you can set DeDRM up as a plugin in Calibre to strip DRM automatically when you add the AWZ3/KFX file to your library.
Some uh people I know are doing that, yeah. Wouldn’t that violate ToS though?
I’m sure even without direct downloads, there will be ways to pirate Amazon books. I mean last time I checked, Netflix didn’t let me download the video files but that doesn’t keep people from pirating the content.
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Yep. I used to be able to buy an amazon kindle book. Download it, crack it, then read on any non-kindle device I had.
Now they don’t let us download the books. So now I won’t buy anymore kindle books. :)
FTFY.
xD fair
Are you telling me that Jeffrey Bezos is INTENTIONALLY attracting billions of customers with cheap stuff and then starts closing down his ecosystem? Why would he do that?!
Holy shit that’s a really well made and cool website!
If you own (or rather inherit) 20 million and you invest them with an interest rate of 5% you earn 1 million a year without doing any work. You can buy every luxury you need with an income like that. So everything above 20 million is not wealth or security anymore, it’s power. And some people are attracted by it.
Isn’t that what happened to the schools during COVID or something with one of the programs. I forget…
The only legitimate books I have on my Kindle are library books, anyway
Kobo is where it’s at! It’s Canadian and not owned by Amazon.
I hate to knock it as a product, but I compared a lot of the books I bought on Kindle and - unless I’m missing something - the selection on Kobo seems quite limited in comparison.
It seems that Amazon is using Kindle Unlimited you lock authors into exclusivity. This reeks of monopoly abuse but of course nobody is going to do anything about that.
Pirate the books and support authors another way
Was Canadian, its owned by a Japanese company since 2010
They retained a large portion of their staff and are still headquartered in Toronto, though.
Safe the media, it is a service to humanity, hoarding saves our history.
Not if they just trash your harddrives after you die but I hoard for the same reason 🫥
They can’t destroy them all. Some books survived the Nazis as well.
Well now I’m glad I’ve never bought a kindle book.
Don’t use amazon.
Whenever companies pull especially greedy bullshit it just makes me want to find the content another way…
The game Avowed just pulled this “advanced release” bullshit, pay $20 more and get access a few days early. Had they simply released the game I’d have bought it, but after seeing that I said fuck you I’ll find it another way and honestly I’m glad I did. As one review put it: it’s aggressively “meh.”
Oh damn, I hadn’t heard of that with the Avowed thing. That’s a Bethesda/Microsoft sleezeball move right there.
I think people in general need to just default to “finding content another way”, because companies should never be given the benefit of the doubt IMO.
Case in point is Obsidian, they are supposed to be one of the good ones.
To be fair to obsidian the distribution choices have nothing to do with the people who make the game part. You can have great devs with a greedy publisher.
Kindle user, no Amazon account, only bought one book and own hundreds. Jailbreak your kindles or buy an android based ereader.
Or buy a Kobo instead and it just works. Bonus, no money to Amazon at all.
You don’t even need to jailbreak them, just import them through a PC to your kindle or email them to your kindle email address.
Well see if its possible after an update
True, I’m ditching my Kindle as soon as I can. I already cancelled my Amazon account and will no longer support them
Thats a good idea, my next big spend will be an android ereader. Turning off WiFi on kindle limits so much functionality.
I’m going to see what I can do to crack my Kindle open for now, but yeah I’m done with Amazon.
Should definitely be. My mother has the Paper White 6" and I am able to transfer all my zlib EPUB and MOBIs through USB with no issues.Nevermind, I think I misunderstood and you meant it more like, “We’ll see how long they allow this feature”
(and for whatever reason strikethrough markdown isn’t working…)
My Kindle email via way of calibre has not been working these past few weeks, returns some misk internal error from Amazon’s end… :(
ha, joke’s on him, i never bought any ebooks from Amazon
I’m not entirely sure why places do this. It will cause distrust in your product and cause people to find the service elsewhere or for free.
90% of the people I know who use kindle products all OTA their purchases to their device. If they have “illicit” books on their devices, I put them there.
Be careful. It’s about to turn 451. I’ll be surprised, if I last long enough, if it don’t click this year.
To quote a post from HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43070155
Still seems pretty bad though
It’s needless friction that depends on people having an outdated cable laying around to access what they paid for so yeah, it’s “pretty bad” lmao
All these companies have spent roughly 2 decades making everything wireless where possible and then Amazon turns around and goes “oh wait let’s go back to cables now that no one has them so people re-purchase out of frustration”
You think no one has USB cables?
deleted by creator
Does this make a big difference? Even if you have the ability to download the books from the website, they are still DRM protected, no?
Even if you don’t break the DRM, having the file is a guarantee that they con not modify the version of the book you payed for, or remove it from your library (both things had happened in the past).
True, but let’s imagine newer Kindle devices or apps won’t allow you to read the previously downloaded files anymore? And I’m aware DeDRM exists, but so do DRM-free book shops. It’s not like I was okay to buy books from Amazon before, but now that they are getting rid of the download option, I will suddenly look for alternatives.
Having the file is the first step in removing the DRM - you can set DeDRM up as a plugin in Calibre to strip DRM automatically when you add the AWZ3/KFX file to your library.
Some uh people I know are doing that, yeah. Wouldn’t that violate ToS though? I’m sure even without direct downloads, there will be ways to pirate Amazon books. I mean last time I checked, Netflix didn’t let me download the video files but that doesn’t keep people from pirating the content.