[metr0man]

If anyone cares I have figured out how to replace the ad screensavers. At least temporarily. It's also a cumbersome manual process.

However, since I saw a special offer today that I liked and took advantage of (10 dollars off 20 dollar amazon gift card) i've made the decision to keep the ads. If i'm actually going to use this system I shouldn't circumvent it.

That's purely an ethical choice though. I'm a firm believer in the whole "you buy it you own it" principle of hardware. If you buy a piece of hardware you should be free to do whatever you want with it PERIOD as long as you're not breaking any laws. The ads are just GIF files sitting there on your hardware. It's your hardware, you should be able to mess with GIF files on your own hardware. It's your device. Just like a PC, or iPhone.

Of course if you break Amazon's TOS (not a law btw, and applies only to their 'service', not the hardware itself) they also have the right to, say, block you from their online Kindle store, you may own your hardware but you don't own the Kindle Store, I believe that as well. Those are the conditions they set down when giving you access to their online store.

I also have no idea what happens when wi-fi is on, and Amazon makes the decision to update the ads in the future. There must be some connection or mechanism for "switching on" certain ads (like aforementioned gift card ad which just appeared today despite sitting on the Kindle since day one). Will they detect that you've tinkered with the ads, and do something? I have no clue.

So the faint of heart or overly anxious should probably not try it.

Purely on research front, I tested it out by replacing an Oil of Olay ad with one of my own and it worked (I've since put the Olay ad back in it's original place). Long story short, you enable viewing hidden files in your Folder View options (PC), go into the system folder on your kindle and in an assets subfolders are number-string folders, each ad has it's own folder with GIF assets. It's literally just an image replace.

It's cumbersome because you would have to replace each one individually. Putting aside the ethical thoughts elaborated on above, it's just way too much effort for me. Curious that it's so publicly available and easily accessible. It's definitely a risk tinkering with them since Amazon could do any number of things if they found out.