There are so, so many better ebook readers to choose from. Honestly just a phone with an oled screen is better than kindle.
Amazon is making it impossible to remove the DRM from Kindle Books
Submitted 5 months ago by dantheclamman@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Rooty@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Kindles are pretty decent ereaders if you don’t connect them to amazon’s ecosystem and just keep them in airplane mode. And unlike phones, they can hold a charge after a few years.
RickAstleyfounddead@lemy.lol 5 months ago
No it isn’t Eink is eink
Treczoks@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Amazon is making it impossible for me to consider a Kindle.
fodor@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Authors would be foolish to publish on Amazon. Guarantees your book will be forgotten.
Localhorst86@feddit.org 5 months ago
Back when Randall Munroe released his “What if” in eBook format, it essentially was only available with DRM.
When I emailed him about it, asking for a place to buybit without DRM, he responded with DRM being mandatory by his publisher, and finished his email with a link to this comic of his:
xkcd.com/488/ReverendIrreverence@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Jrockwar@feddit.uk 5 months ago
I would recommend people buy their books off ZLibrary instead, where they come with no DRM.
cloudy1999@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
We’ll soon be back to monks transcribing at this rate.
ToxicWaste@lemmy.cafe 5 months ago
again displaying, that DRM only hurts legitimate users. a pirate has never had the problem of backing up, moving or sharing his library…
Tattorack@lemmy.world 5 months ago
This is why I bought some Chinese android ereader than an amazon Kindle.
ronweasleysl@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
I have a pocketbook instead of a Kindle cause of this lol
wingsfortheirsmiles@feddit.uk 5 months ago
Was going to say, this has solidified my next ereader choice being Kobo
Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Just got two kobos this month, for me and my wife. I had had one back in 2012 and wasn’t reading much in recent years, but she had owned a handful of kindles before (never any other eReader) and lost all her book collection after her credit card was cloned and amazon deleted all accounts that had ever used it “for safety”.
Her kobo arrived earlier and for a whole week she would come tell me all the amazing stuff she could do on it that she never thought possible. Incredible technological advancements like sending a file directly to it.
I was like “it’s OK honey, you’re out of that abusive relationship now”
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Switched to kobo.
BitsAndBites@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I bought my first ereader this summer and got a Kindle and hated it. Returned it and got a Kobo. Its fantastic, I can just load my ebooks like it’s an external drive. I dont have to email all my ebooks to Amazon just to get them on my own device.
Flisty@mstdn.social 5 months ago
@BitsAndBites @Lushed_Lungfish also also, if you're local library uses overdrive/Libby you can just have free books, easy peasy
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 5 months ago
I’ll be switching to kobo next time round, but I’ve never not been able to dump books onto my kindle by usb. I do it with my phone over USB sometimes. Since when has not doing that been a thing?
sunbytes@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’ve been with them for a couple of years now. Unfortunately the devices just doubled in price but I’m very happy with them otherwise.
Comrade_Squid@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Chivera@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Anna’s Archive
napkin2020@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
As much as I hate proprietary shit, Kindle is just the best ebook reader out there. It lasts forever, in terms of both battery life and the device itself, smooth, top notch UI… etc
When I first bought my new Kindle PW, I immediately turned on Airplane mode and never turned it off. I use Calibre & DRM free ebooks and I had 0 issues.
jnod4@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Of course it’s the best there is, they have billions made on the backs of millions workers, they can and will invest so much money in a product until it eclipses everything else so they have a monopoly on a niche. After all the competitors are starved because no company that only makes ereaders will have a profit so thick to create a competing product, they can introduce things like proper DRM or whatever their heart desires.
Related, Article about how ama. used their unfairly gained wealth to copy successful products, rigged search results, to promote their own brands
Kauhuhu@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Having used both, i prefer the kobos. They just eat up everything you throw at them.
gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Just chiming in as another kobo guy. I like it’s UI better personally but most importantantly it displays books, holds books, battery lasts forever, and is an eink display - like it’s an ereader, I’m not in the percentage of people who can meaningfully discern between the two.
Kobo being theoretically repairable and not supporting a trillion dollar inshittification machine was good enough for me to swap.
Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Kobo with calibre-web sync. Hands down the best ereader I’ve ever owned.
Localhorst86@feddit.org 5 months ago
I bought a kindle when amazon sold them for a special price of 25 Euro. It’s a cool device for reading books, but I found their UI horrendously cluttered and filled with “suggestions” instead of focusing on the content I already have. I have since jailbroken the device and am using koreader on the device to read my ebooks transfered as epubs via calibre.
That has the advantage that when I buy DRM-free books in epub format, I am not relying on amazon to properly convert the file to a kindle proprietary format.
grahamja@reddthat.com 5 months ago
I bought a digital movie from Amazon prime in 2015. It fell off and they didnt give me a refund. The music I got from a burnt CD in 2004 is still on the C: drive of my current PC. I don’t think it pays to do the right thing in the long run.
Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
🌏👩🚀🔫👩🚀
Corridor8031@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
It annoys me so much that they have convinced anyone that this stuff is for protecting against piracy of something like that, while this is just another tool for them to force you into using their platform and ecosystem. It does nothing against piracy.
fodor@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
And to repurchase. Never forget that aspect of the scam. Sell but don’t actually sell, make the customer keep on paying.
nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Books were among the first things to be pirated and are still among the easiest because the amount of data is so small. People we’re doing that on dial up Internet.
MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Yeah you can easily pirate any book, or even just get then free at the library. This just fucks over the authors and people who want to buy their books legally. People don’t buy books because they have to, they want to.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Yep, I could pirate all my books and audio books if I wanted. All it would do is fuck over the author tho.
As much as I hate audible it’s the only legal choice I have for many of the books I listen to. Since basically every other legal option has out of the nearly 500 or so audio books I have less then 50 of them.
It’s annoying.
biofaust@lemmy.world 5 months ago
So happy I just exported my collection last week and have closed forever my Amazon account the same day.
I must say, escaping Amazon is the significant action I took in my life that was completely inconsequent on my daily living.
amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world 5 months ago
How can you export it? I would love to get rid of Amazon for books
biofaust@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I used Calibre with the DeDRM plugin. But I had a very old reader, using the AZW3 format, for anything newer than that, you will also need the KFX input plugin.
But maybe now it’s already too late for all this.
Mellibird@lemmy.myserv.one 5 months ago
Once they started mentioning stuff like this I sold my Kindle and got a moann. Its a little odd to use at times, but I love the size and the fact that I can just throw whatever book on there that I want. I use Anna’s archive for whatever book I’m looking for or go through my friend’s calibre library and I have over 200 books on my reader. I can also use libby with no issues. Its been fantastic breaking away from being stuck in the kindleverse.
brsrklf@jlai.lu 5 months ago
My kindle is from 2011, got it for free from someone getting rid of it. It’s old and dumb as shit and Amazon fortunately doesn’t care about it anymore.
Since I got it, it never had an Amazon DRM-ed e-book loaded on it. I intend to keep it that way.
tomjuggler@lemmy.world 5 months ago
So I had an e-reader once but left it in the drawer because I found reading on my phone (dark mode) was so much more convenient.
I use librera which has tts and I alternate between reading with my eyes and listening to the robot voice narration (eg while driving). Those language packs have come a long way!
selkiesidhe@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
I have five published books, all without drm. Amazon better not put that shit ON my books. It’s not there for a reason; I want people to share.
Eagle0110@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Curious, as someone who’s an actual author, do you have any legal option at all for preventing Amazon (which I assume technically act as your publisher in this case?) to pot DRM on your books, or demand them to remove DRM if they added DRM without your notice?
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Likely not, Amazon is a private market place and if their requirements to use it requires the drm his option is very likely use the drm or fuck off.
Not having good publicly controlled legal market places is one of the biggest failings of the internet.
killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 5 months ago
But have you considered that Jeff needs another few billies?
Treczoks@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Thank you!
CMDR_Horn@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The real question is how can I find out what those 5 book are without you doxing yourself.
Redfugee@lemmy.world 5 months ago
My kindle only knows about library books.
nuggie_ss@lemmings.world 5 months ago
I love Amazon.
Their website makes it so easy to look up books for Anna’s Archive.
xvertigox@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s a great way to find the ISBN to chuck into annas or MaM
ChocolateFrostedSugarBombs@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I need to root my Kindle…
tomkatt@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Might be too late. Winterbreak hasn’t worked since 5.18.1 and the latest firmware is 5.18.5. If you’ve been updating your firmware normally, jailbreak has been unviable since around April or May.
Surp@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I feel like nothing is impossible.
Corelli_III@midwest.social 5 months ago
kaotic@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I mean, this is how you get me to stop buying Kindle books.
Iamaquantummechanic@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I stopped when they removed the “download and transfer via USB” option. Before that I bought books, downloaded a copy and removed the DRM.
Now I just download books without DRM for free.
Cheems@lemmy.world 5 months ago
What do you mean buy kindle books
willington@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Bad corporate behaviour is a political problem.
Here we are talking about technological solutions for political problems. Why?
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Such is the nature of the hacker spirit
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
This entire thing has been made needlessly complicated. Easy fix though.
- Get whatever ebook you want.
- Borrow some code from GitHub and teach a raspberry pi with a camera and a few servos to snap pictures of pages, turn the pages, snap again into a PDF.
- A script then parses all the images and OCRs them for the final PDF.
- You now own a backup of your DRM book, which you own forever. Pretty sure this is actually legal under DMCA since you are taking a backup of something you allegedly own. The encryption circumvention is irrelevant.
- now, break the law and throw the PDF on the internet to everyone. Go little bot! Go go go!
jabjoe@feddit.uk 5 months ago
The goold old analog hole.
ysjet@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The encryption circumvention is irrelevant.
Oh you sweet summer child, judges will bend over backwards to slap people with multi-decade-to-life charges for ‘hacking,’ even if the ‘hacking’ is just the rightsholder accidentally presenting data to you.
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
They already ruled on this in favor of allowing you to back up what you already own. See video games, DVDs and CDs, video tapes, this is well established already.
duckofdeath87@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Just do it in a country with reasonable laws
tomkatt@lemmy.world 5 months ago
To be fair, if you OCR the pages via camera, you haven’t actually circumvented DRM. That means it’s a completely legal backup, as the DRM on the original file was untouched and unaltered. This definitely does fall under fair use.
Amir@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
What does this mean? What prevents me from OCRing the pages on a video that quickly goes through it?
dantheclamman@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You are making a common mistake of being too literal!
Amir@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Well yeah, but fearmongering about text DRM is just annoying to see. There are many battles to fight, and epub extraction from a Kindle is very low on the priority list