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.
You must log in or register to comment.
Like hell I don’t. Calibre plus NoDRM says otherwise.
Buy, rip, refund, repeat.
Nah, no need to be a shitheel. I’m cool with paying for books, authors gotta eat. I wouldn’t refund a book I’ve read.
Any Kindle owner should go find out how easy it is to get library books on their Kindle. It’s totally the way to go. You don’t have to buy their shit and deal with their rules.
yo ho yo ho…a pirate’s life for me…
Sorry, what are we talking about?
I’ll just keep using my local public library.
Most of them lend eBooks these days so I know I won’t get to keep them regardless, but I also don’t have to pay for them.
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.
That’s why you shouldn’t buy books from Amazon or other online ebook stores instead just download the ePubs elsewhere.
I’d also highly recommend KOreader if you have a Kindle or Ereader which supports it, as it supports many more formats and has a nice interface.
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.
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)
I use Calibre to remove the DRM from all ebooks I buy. Not that I buy a lot of them, but hell if I’ll let Amazon be the keeper of the keys.
Yup, making a DRM-free backup somewhere is the only way to protect the content you paid for from the whims of the overlords.
🏴☠️
As someone who publishes on Amazon if you buy my book and Amazon takes it from you PM I will send said customer a epub version for free.
I’m an author of two books, and whenever someone asks me for a copy (or even says they want to read it), I straight-up hand them a free ebook. I just want people to read me.
This is why I pirate my media, and you should too!
Readarr + calibre makes it very convenient and easy (the rest of the arr suite is great for other forms of media too)
Well, it would be if Readarr worked consistently.
The only issues I ever had were around authors having a bunch of books that weren’t released or were in different languages, that was solved by narrowing the profiles for what readarr finds which was a 2 minute task
Years of ongoing issues with their metadata server bricking its ability to search for content. It wasn’t an issue with your setup, it’s an issue with Readarr itself. They always fix it, but it’s kind of a joke how many times they’ve had the same problem over the years.
I haven’t used Kindles personally ever, but I helped my neighbor export their kindle collection a few years ago.
It dumped it into mobi files to use with calibre. Then from there, you can convert them into epubs.
I recall it being straightforward. Probably something a kindle owner should do periodically to back up their collection.
Another problem with DRM’d platforms is that you don’t really know how long this will be easy or even viable. I recall these tools breaking in the past as Amazon changed their encryption, and it took time for them to be updated.
For anyone with a large library on Kindle, Audible, or any other DRM-infested platform, I recommend stripping that DRM sooner rather than later. You might think “I can always do it later” but there’s no guarantee that will be true.
Also, shoutout to ebooks.com for having a dedicated DRM-free section and a simple checkbox to filter search results to only show DRM-free items. Not sure where to go for DRM-free audiobooks though. Anyone got suggestions? Personally I will simply not buy books with DRM, regardless of how easy it might be to crack it. If I’m going to have to break the law anyway (thanks, DMCA!), I might as well pirate it and find some other way to toss the author a few bucks.
You can get Audiobooks from Spotify using the app Soundbound. You need to insert a list of plugins, then it works.
Apart from that, youtube? Or sailing the high seas?
I use downpour.com for drm-free audiobooks. They let you straight up download the mb4 files haha it’s awesome.
It’s such a win-win b/c I get to buy audiobooks drm-free and I get to avoid supporting audible which has terrible business practices such as locking authors in exclusive deals.
Also thanks for the ebooks.com recommendation! I was reading this thread specifically to see if anyone knew of a good place online to buy drm-free ebooks :)
My understanding is they arent mobi files anymore but a proprietary DRM format. That being said, there are many wonderful calibre plugins that break the drm.
MOBI has been deprecated for a long time. Standard formats now are AZW3 (KF8) and KFX. They’re a bit more advanced than MOBI, and thank goodness, since it was a terrible format. AZW3 is essentially a MOBI/EPUB container, and I believe KFX is equivalent to EPUB2, possibly with some EPUB3 features.
It’s better to keep them as mobi files than converting to epub. Mobi works on almost every device, and converting to epub can always result in messed up formatting or chapters.
If you absolutely have to convert the files to epub for some reason, at least keep the original mobi files as well
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.
I just use my kindle as intended: using Calibre’s “email” button to load 100% legally obtained books via it’s _______@kindle.com address.
IDGAF. If they start yanking books off my device I’ll put it in airplane mode.
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.
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.
it’s the same with Google Books. you can’t copy text from the book you bought into your notes. you’re not allowed to copy text. i want to buy books legitimately for my research, but i cant use any of this shit.
What do you mean? Bookmarks with no labels and highlights with no indexing isn’t enough for you? What do you want, integration of open source note taking software with Google Books?!? That’s ridiculous, nobody would ever use that…
Okay but for real. I got through college using One Note’s snip tool to take pictures of the text and paste it into my digital notes. So that’s a way to do it. It does suck that we have all this tech but we won’t let it talk to each other because rich people have to get richer, even around academia.
i used the notes feature once and something happened and they all disappeared. all of the work was just gone. cool 😎
