You don't own your Kindle books, Amazon reminds customer
www.nbcnews.com

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.

  • Narauko@lemmy.world
    1·
    4 months ago

    Finally got around to backing up my over 200 audiobooks in a DRM-free format after this post reminded me it was on my to-do list. Libation is pretty damn good.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
      0·
      4 months ago

      Don’t do that. Authors make next to nothing from their books. You don’t have to support Amazon, but at least buy a paper copy or audiobook to support the author.

      Unless it’s J. K. Rowling. Fuck Rowling.

      • Localhorst86@feddit.org
        0·
        4 months ago

        I remember an email I sent to Randall Munroe once, asking where I can buy his ebook “What if” without DRM.

        He emailed me back that unfortunately there is no place to buy it without DRM, because of the publisher, but he also linked this comic in his email:

        https://xkcd.com/488/

        • NateNate60@lemmy.world
          0·
          4 months ago

          Here’s a DRM-free copy for sale:

          It’ll look like this:

          Once you buy this, it is truly yours. Nobody can take it away from you. You don’t have to agree to any EULA to read it. No account needed, no activation, no sign-up. You can even resell your copy if you want. There are no technical restrictions on it whatsoever. You can enjoy it any time of day, anywhere in the world, and there’s no need for an Internet connection.

          • notabot@lemm.ee
            01·
            4 months ago

            I enjoy reading dead tree books as much as anyone, and whilest the publisher/distributor can’t take it away, there are plenty of ways you can lose access to them. Fire and flood being the two obvious ones, whereas digital books can be backed up offsite. It’s also easier to carry many books when they’re digital compared to physical.

            For books I care about I try to get both a physical and a (drm free) digital copy for the best of both world.

  • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I looked in to the whole DRM removal thing. From what I could tell, everything was majorly out of date, required a really old version of Calibre, and didn’t work with newer books.

    Edit: So, this is out of date info. There’s a fork and it works with a fairly recent version of the PC app. Basically no fuss.

    • Boozilla@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      The DeDrm plugin and the most recent Calibre worked for me just yesterday on a brand new book. Something that’s easy to miss is that you need to put in the serial number of your kindle device and make sure you download the e-book for that same device. Otherwise the plugin won’t be able to decrypt it.

      • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        Yep, looked it up again today and some proper information has been posted publicly in the interim since I last tried. I was able to strip the drm from a handful of my books today using it and an older version of the Kindle PC app.