Comment on New Kindle e-readers no longer appear on computers
vxx@lemmy.world 4 weeks agoYeah, until they do this:
Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) over USB Mapping
The MTP extension defined in this section provides a mapping of WMDRM: Network Devices Protocol messages to the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP). The WMDRM: Network Devices Protocol extension to MTP defines operations that enable DRM-protected content to be securely transmitted from the transmitter to the receiver.
atocci@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The Kindle doesn’t use Windows Media DRM for its DRM protected ebooks, they use Amazon’s own DRM. Even if they did use WMDRM though, this is just an extension MTP that would enable it to be used for streaming WMDRM content. It “provides a mapping of WMDRM: Network Devices Protocol messages to the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP)” and that’s necessary because MTP would otherwise not provide the data necessary for for the DRM protected content to play.
There’s still nothing here that would prevent you from copying your own “legitimately obtained” epub files or Amazon-encrypted AZW files to or from your PC.
I do see this article was the first result when I searched “MTP DRM” on Google though 😉
vxx@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
First step is to make it able to transfer DRM, second is to implement it only allowing DRM.
I don’t think they would invest money into something that they wouldn’t have to change if they didn’t try to get control over your data transfers, and the only logical reason I can see is DRM. They’re expecting a return of investment for every penny they spend.
USB protocol isn’t broken, so why would they change it?
What would be reasons that make this investment worthwhile?
atocci@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Microsoft’s solution above is tacked-on and inelegant, it’s a bandaid to fix a problem with WMDRM that MTP devices were causing in the first place. MTP wasn’t built for enforcing DRM and and Amazon would just be setting themselves up to face the same issues if that was their goal here. Also, unlike Microsoft, they don’t have the advantage of being the original creators of MTP. If they did want a completely DRM controlled environment, turning the Kindle PC app into something more like iTunes where it’s the only program able to communicate with Kindles would have been a much better first step than implementing an industry standard file transfer protocol. They could have jumped straight to your second step like that.
My best guess as to why they’re making the switch to MTP is because the USB Mass Storage currently requires them to maintain a separate partition with a fixed size formatted in NTFS on a Linux-based device just so it can occasionally be exposed to a PC it’s plugged into, and that’s… kinda stupid. MTP provides them the option to just not do all that. MTP is the standard mobile devices use these days, it’s going to be easier and cheaper for them to develop around and they won’t need two different file systems and partitions on one device anymore.
vxx@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Kindles have an NTFS partition? I thought they use FAT32 so they’re compatible with Linux, MacOs and windows.