[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

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.

No lack of freedom for me. AZW3 is still available.
And people said the same thing about AZW3, once. And look where that got us.

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?

While I do not appreciate the new restrictions on jailbreaking, I am sympathetic about their need to restrict sideloaded fonts.
The font hacks described here can make your device malfunction -- their effects are quite invasive.

Amazon has the responsibility to make sure that their devices resilient to malfunctioning.
That being said, users should have the ability to unlock their device and tinker with it (and run the risk of breaking it) if they want to.


Same reason the collections database was moved to the system partition.
People exploited the unofficial feature, and someone messed up their device with it, and Amazon restricted it from being accessed without access to the firmware.

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...

I don't consider those basic features. I consider them advanced extras, together with user-chosen fonts.
I devalue them all equally, not my device.

Plus -- my device still does everything it did when I bought it. Devaluing means taking something away, not adding something new but only under certain conditions.