Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Of course, but claiming that Amazon are destroying society (or whatever the claim was) is rather an extreme extrapolation from the introduction of a new file format, don't you think?
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That is partly true but partly also, im my opinion, oversimplifies the points the OP has been trying to make. Amazon have not simply introduced “a new file format”. They have introduced a file format that promises new features at the cost of freedom (on the alf-using user side as well as the publisher side) albeit there being no necessity. And Amazon have introduced this file format only after having lured enough people into their ecosystem... Remember when there were no real restrictions in place to prevent jailbreaking or when swapping fonts was only a matter of copying a file to the Kindle file system root? History has shown that Amazon, after years of lenience, is becoming ever more determined on closing their system in every way possible (while not improving the user experience to the same degree) and kfx is just their most recent and most aggressive attempt. Having started restricting additional software features to store-bought books some time ago, the introduction of kfx marks the point where more or less basic features (the truth is that Amazon have been only catching up with the introduction of better typesetting and hyphenation) are tied to a new (undocumented) format with encryption and cannot be taken advantage of otherwise, which basically means that if you stop buying books from Amazon, you also start devaluing your device...
People may say that, well, you can't have it all (either you can sync your brought books across devices or you can to treat the with a calibre plugin to enable hyphenation etc.) but the point is that you absolutely can have it all, you just need to continue to purchase each and every one of your books from Amazon.
I sincerely hope that Amazon will change their policies and restrictions but right now I think, discussion of these more recent changes is absolutely legitimate.