Comment on Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books
GoumLeChat@jlai.lu 1 year ago
That’s why I avoided Kindle and picked a Kobo. Sure you can remove DRMs from the books you’ve bought. But at some point they could block you from doing that. They can change anything at anytime and there’s nothing you can do about it.
That is no different than Kobo. Thus far, Rakuten have been pretty good about not caring more than the bare minimum. But there is nothing stopping them from doing the same bullshit with firmware updates to the kobos and drm updates to the store and apps.
I am finally migrating from kindle to kobo (tried kindle to boox last year and it was bad…) but I am under no illusions that I am just hoping one company is better than another. I mean, the other is Amazon so it is a pretty safe bet. But still.
there is nothing stopping them from doing the same bullshit with firmware updates to the kobos and drm updates to the store and apps.
I never connect the Libra to any network, how can they do anything? I did actually install some updates since there were a few annoying bugs, but I just downloaded the firmware on the pc from pgaskin.net/KoboStuff/kobofirmware.html and updated it offline. Now all those bugs seem fixed and poor Kobo still hasn’t seen the interwebs
Ah, my deepest apologies. I was not aware there was absolutely no issue or threat to anyone because you didn’t connect a kindle to the network either.
there is nothing stopping them
how can they do anything?
Well there’s a key difference, Kobo allows epub. I don’t think they could legally remove it from devices already on the market?
Kobo allows epub
Kindle doesn’t? Mines 2 years old but my co worker got one for Xmas and theirs loads the epub I sent them no problem at all
Honestly the Kobo is better as a physical device imo but the Kindle is perfectly simple to commit crimes on if you have Calibre
I’ve always heard that they didn’t. Just checked about it and they started to support it in 2022. But it’s still not native, it gets converted to their proprietary format.
And Kindle supports mobi files? It is just that those tend to get preprocessed into azw or the other one files. Much like Kobo tends to work best if you preprocess those epubs into kepubs.
The issue is that Amazon has repeatedly changed their mobi variants to fight against de-drm tools as well as increasingly locking down their apps and even devices to make it harder to get data off (and now on) to them.
There is absolutely nothing stopping Rakuten from doing the exact same with Kobo. And people should be aware of that rather than just stanning their favorite company.
Just dont update and keep it off the internet I guess
Anivia@feddit.org 1 year ago
It’s pretty easy to jailbreak a Kindle and block firmware updates. But the fact that it is necessary in the first place sucks