Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I agree with you to a certain extent, but I think it's important to point out (for the benefit of other people) that (to the best of my knowledge), there's no clause in Amazon's TOS which says that you can't read content not purchased from Amazon on a Kindle. As you say, there are numerous places other than Amazon from which Kindle-format books can be obtained. In addition to buying Mobi-format books from sites like Baen, personally I take advantage of special offers at other bookstores and buy numerous books in ePub format, which I then convert to Amazon's KF8 format using Calibre.
If you're comfortable using tools like Calibre (and it's not at all difficult to use), owning a Kindle doesn't tie you to Amazon's infrastructure at all. Of course, most people don't give a damn about that - they buy a Kindle, buy their books from the Kindle Store, and are perfectly happy doing so.
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Fair point. No, I don't think the Kindle TOS (necessarily) denies reading such converted files, but I merely used the TOS here as a general wording of e-book stores TOS probably denying the removal of DRM - and some local legislation too. Some may even deny basic conversions, although that is rarely illegal (removing DRM is more often illegal).
Of course to read Amazon books on Kindle you don't have to remove the DRM (because Kindle supports Amazon DRM), so maybe Amazon doesn't care what you do, but if you read DRMed books from somewhere else on Kindle you have to strip the DRM and that probably is at least against the TOS of the selling bookstore. Amazon also would probably object you to removing DRM from Amazon books, whether you read them on Kindle or anything.