On February 26th, Kindle customers will lose the ability to download eBook purchases directly to their PC. If you want to switch to a rival eReader brand in the future, I suggest that you use the soon-to-be discontinued “Download and Transfer via USB” feature to archive your Kindle library.

  • _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    19 hours ago

    Wait, people who have Kindles buy their books from Amazon?

    I always just got mine from a certain private mouse tracker.

    • RetroGoblet79@eviltoast.orgEnglish
      33·
      2 days ago

      As it should be.

      I don’t mind a monopoly on a physical product as long as I can jailbreak it, install my own custom hardware, or modify it however I want.

      • Noxy@pawb.socialEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        You don’t mind the harm to consumers and the anti-competitive results of Amazon establishing a monopoly on e-readers? Interesting take…

        • EngineerGaming@feddit.nlEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          Amazon even has a monopoly on e-readers?? I thought that was a more evenly-shared market, with Pocketbook being the most popular, while Boox and others have a sizeable part of the pie. Where I am, Kindles aren’t even sold officially, so I don’t see them much.

  • Flatfire@lemmy.caEnglish
    4·
    1 day ago

    I wonder if this is at all related to the EU changes to eBook DRM standards, where the standard Kindle Adobe DRM isn’t compliant

  • Harbinger01173430@lemmy.worldEnglish
    262·
    2 days ago

    I am sorry, what?

    Turn on PC or phone. Download ebook from torrent site. Enjoy.

    It’s not difficult to switch?

  • Xed@lemm.eeEnglish
    10·
    2 days ago

    I use a library app called Libby to read non torrented books. But I’m not sure if it’s available on the kindle. It’s good to support your local library, even if it’s only digitally

  • utopiah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    371·
    2 days ago

    reMarkable, PineNote, Bookeen, etc…

    I’m not saying anybody deserve to be mistreated … but come on, at this point if you buy something from Amazon it’s Stockholm syndrome. Just do NOT. It’s that easy.

    F*ck Bezos and other billionaires. Stop making them even richer from your pain. Stop your mind from being literally enslaved!

    • major_jellyfish@lemmy.caEnglish
      18·
      2 days ago

      There is a whole community of people out there who will pretty much refuse to buy brand new electronics. And thats for very obvious and valid reasons.

      Kindles can be found for dirt cheap if not free 2nd hand. And so many users have a kindle for this reason. Myself included. Id never throw out or discard an electronic device that continues to work. For the same obvious reasons as why i dont buy new ones.

      And so this information is super relevant and important to users like me. Regardless of how much people like you might be convinced that “we had it coming” or whatever.

      • utopiah@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Sure, it’s the same problem with most of electronics, it’s the console business model, or ink printer, where the device itself is “too” cheap and companies make money on content. Unfortunately it comes with shackles. I’m all for breaking the shackles but unfortunately has to be aware of what they are getting into, not just the trouble but also potentially supporting the company promoting DRMs and more.

        I work in XR and Meta/Facebook is the embodiment of that problem. The Quest is too cheap compared to alternatives like Lynx (standalone designing in France, unfortunately still running on Android but at least rootable) or even the “old” now Valve Index, which in addition to its price also requires a gaming desktop.

        So… it’s a money making machine for corporations. Hopefully recycling is done in a way that provide 0 support for the corporations locking down its device, promoting its marketplace BUT also, sadly less realistic, doesn’t also prevent companies who try to sell genuine alternative that do NOT promote such business model from existing.

          • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            2 days ago

            unfortunately though, due to the same issues there isn’t a very large second hand market of those either. Like the cheapest remarkable second hand I could find was still 300$ and the cheapest pine note was 270$ for preowns.

            when you compare it to the kindle which has preowns starting at 40$ it’s a hard buy

          • major_jellyfish@lemmy.caEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            3Easier said than done. Had a quick search. In 45km of my home there is not one reMarkable, PineNone or Bookeen. There is 2 kobos. And around 200 kindles. Kindes are starting at 5 bucks for ones that look a little beat up. Kobos are 80 bucks. You can still avoid buying most books from amazon. Obviously not all. Even owning Kobo there are some books you end up buying from Amazon. They have the largest foreign language library. There are thousands of popular books which you cannot get in a foreign language anywhere else these days. And you have to acknowledge that most people in the world are not reading books in English.

            Sometimes you can get a solid deal. If youre super patient or lucky. But the 2nd hand market will generally always follow the market distribution of retail.

            So long as kindle is domninating. 2nd hand users are gonna be heavily pressured into buying kindle.

            I wholeheartedly agree that we shouldnt support amazon and i do think they are making kindles a pain.

            But i dont think you can expect people to just find 2nd hand alternatives like what you listed. Especially when you consider the demographic of people shopping for eraders.

            This is why i find these kinds of comment chains futile. We all love to vote with our money, but its not that simple for a lot of people. Maybe instead of this “you get what you deserve” attitude we could put more energy towards promoting the jailbreaks and trying to make those as accessible as possible for your chineese grandma to be able to do it herself on her Windows Vista. Not to mention that there is 0 value in telling anyone that bought a new kindle that they deserve whats comming. At best they sell their kindle when they buy a kobo perpetuating the cycle. At worst they trash it and contribute the already growing problems of ewaste.

    • matterofact@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      10·
      2 days ago

      Thing is, the pinenote is €610, and the kindle paperwhite is £160, cheaper on discount.

      I get your point and there’s a reason why the kindle is as cheap as it is, but I can understand why someone would see those prices and go for the kindle.

      • madjo@feddit.nlEnglish
        15·
        2 days ago

        Or go for the Kobo, which is similarly priced as the Kindle. The Kobo Clara Colour is £150

        • Deway@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          I’ve had three ereaders, all three were kobo.Yet I wouldn’t recommend them anymore. There’s a mandatory online activation now. There are ways to bypass it but it’s not great.

          Many models are unstable with KoReader so it’s not even an alternative anymore.

          The day I replace my eReader is going to be a hard day.

          • madjo@feddit.nlEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            I’ve bought myself a Boox Go Color 7. I love that one, even though it’s twice as expensive as a Kobo or Kindle.

          • nasduia@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            Absolutely the reason I bought mine too. While we are probably a small niche, looking for this functionality was how I found Kobo in the first place.

  • ftbd@feddit.orgEnglish
    28·
    2 days ago

    It eludes me how people pay to ‘buy’ something that they cannot download in the first place. If I don’t have it as a file on my computer, I don’t own it. You wouldn’t pay to ‘buy’ a physical item if that meant only being able to look at it at the store, without the ability to take it home and do whatever you want with it.

            • Theonetheycall1845@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              22 hours ago

              Safety eject option locked until subscription is paid. “911. I have a dildo shoved in my ass and my safety eject subscription ran out. Please help!” you know, it sounds crazy and like this could never happen but I say it’s just crazy enough it will happen. Look at who the American president is. That’s all the proof you need.

    • stebator@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      I agree. However, some dishonest services allow to download, but downloaded file is DRM. It is even worse.

      • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        2 days ago

        Most services are forced to carry DRM only versions of Ebooks by the book publishers. But there are ways of legally removing the DRM - it’s a faff but doable. I buy epubs and don’t use Kindle (haven’t for a long time) as it’s much harder to remove the DRM and actually own your books.

        But way I look at it - if I bought the Kindle version of a book, I can just download a DRM free version by sailing the seas. Fuck Amazon.

  • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    10·
    2 days ago

    In the meantime, hackers have just released a new jailbreak and made it a more open platform than ever :^)

  • Singletona082@lemmy.worldEnglish
    100·
    3 days ago

    thus I have my personal library backed up on calibre. Wonderful software that’s been around for twenty fiveish years.

    • somenonewho@feddit.orgEnglish
      201·
      3 days ago

      I love Calibre. I’ve recently broken my E-Reader (Tolino) but all my books are backed up on Calibre so the only loss is the hardware (still sad but not as annoying)

        • amphy@lemmy.caEnglish
          2·
          1 day ago

          This. I’ve personally found it easiest to use Calibre to strip DRM & get things tidy, then use Audiobookshelf to manage both my ebooks and audiobooks

            • amphy@lemmy.caEnglish
              2·
              23 hours ago

              Yep! Here’s an ebook I have hosted through Audiobookshelf, reading it over the Internet using my domain & reverse proxy.

              (The top bar is shown/hidden when you tap the screen, so it’s not always in the way like this)

    • casmael@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      Yeah is this going to break calibre functionality? I remember using it to rip books from my kindle library but not how, exactly 🤔

      • BirdObserver@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        3 days ago

        It’ll break saving books you bought from Amazon, but you’ll still be able to send books you got from other places to it from Calibre. Fortunately barely any of my ebooks on my kindle are from Amazon (though my next ereader isn’t going to be a kindle, that’s for sure).

        • casmael@lemm.eeEnglish
          4·
          3 days ago

          Cool guess I’ll download anything I bought from Amazon before the cutoff then it’s been ages and I can’t remember what’s there o7

      • Singletona082@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        Probably some kind of plugin or script to run… i forget the specifics because literally grab the kindle version, then search z-library.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      48·
      3 days ago

      PSA: “Archiving” is a general legal-neutral and safe term you can use with co-workers.

      Wether i am also a pirate one may speculate but i am always an archivist.

      • stardust@lemmy.caEnglish
        24·
        3 days ago

        Turns out it really is archiving when government decides to go renegade and start deleting everything they disagree with or wipe from history. Archive away beautiful data horders.

    • accideath@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      3 days ago

      What can I do with a jailbroken kindle that makes it worth doing instead of just using calibre?

        • ChogChog@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          3 days ago

          You literally just said the two things I wished Kindle allowed me to do natively.

          I hate the fact my Kindle store books will bundle by series, but my non-kindle books will not.

          • ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            2 days ago

            Yea, I had like a 2nd or 3rd gen paperwhite and rooted it for this reason, but my partner’s wasn’t hackable until this moment. So now she can have it too.

      • scarilog@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        I switched from the default reader to koreader, and now I have dark mode (mine is probably about 8 years old and did not originally have this feature). Koreader has so many features and qol improvements compared to the default Kindle experience.

  • umbrella@lemmy.mlEnglish
    35·
    3 days ago

    library genesis exists, people. anna’s archive, anyone?

    digital drm is the one fucking thing they push onto us that we don’t actually have to fucking deal with. thanks to our team of rippers and crackers people who hate this system.

    leave amazon. leave netflix. leave whatever fucking streaming service you subscribe to, and stop being sensitive about rich people’s money.

    • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago

      I have never more strongly considered a subscription to annas archive than when that new dropped.

      • umbrella@lemmy.mlEnglish
        6·
        3 days ago

        if you can afford it, wire the author the 50 bucks or so for the book, and explain why you did it. most of them will be thrilled to get the full 50 for the book, i bet.

        if you can’t, well they wouldnt have gotten any money anyway.

  • Drakena@lemmy.worldEnglish
    111·
    2 days ago

    I resisted eBooks for years, preferring physical books from the library or new/second hand stores. I got gifted a Kindle from a well meaning relative a few years ago and I have a small collection on there, mainly built up when I was commuting.

    This news came just as I am backing up my own data, moving off of the big name Cloud services and going back to open source software. (In confession the convenience of M365 etc won me over so the last 10 or so years I fell into the trap!)

    Anyway needless to say my 40(ish) Kindle books quickly got downloaded and archived this week. Thanks to Calibre I’ve also fixed the covers to a book series that suddenly got updated to an awful ‘new hip’ version! :)

    I’m now intrigued about repurposing the Kindle hardware as it still works and I don’t want it to go to waste, but with this and other recent events I’m done personally proving data or money to these big corporate companies as much as I possibly can.

    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      2 days ago

      ebooks have managed to pull the same scam that game developers pulled on gamers 20 years ago.

      “ebooks will be cheaper! and with the fact that we wont have to pay for printing, shipping, storage, etc, You’ll pay a lower price while the author/publisher still receive more money than they would have from the physical book! its a win/win for everyone!”

      aaaand then as soon as they were accepted ebook prices became the same (or near enough) price as the physical version, and in a few rare cases, even more expensive. Resulting in the massive promised profits for publishers, and maybe authors, but no gain but lots of demerits (like obnoxious drm, and shit like amazon going onto your device to delete it cause they lost the rights or something, which has happened) for end users/readers

      And thats first party, brand new books.

      There is no second hand market for ebooks, like there is from physical. Si theres no browsing a place like Half Price Booked or whatever to find something that isnt in your normal wheel house but thanks to being pre-owed, its cheap enough to roll the dice on.

    • viking@infosec.pubEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      I have a first generation kindle that I bought 16 years ago. They used to be awesome, and Amazon shaped the way ecommerce worked. The lesson here is not to be fully dependent on one supplier, not to boycott everything just because it’s big.

      • Miphera@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Yeah, they were great back then. I have the first generation Kindle Paperwhite (12-ish years), though at this point I only use it to read fanfics lol

        AO3 let’s you download entire fics directly in the EPUB & AZW3 format, doubt they’re ever gonna change that 😁