Thread: Who Really Owns Your E-Books? Switching from Kindle to Kobo
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Old 10-23-2024, 02:45 PM   #20
DNSB
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cactus Chef View Post
I think it's unfortunate that people tend to conflate owning a Kobo with the whole "liberating your ebooks" thing. There's nothing stopping you from reading only DRM-free ebooks on your Kindle, or stripping the DRM from your Kindle books and loading them back onto your Kindle, if you're really worried about a repeat of Amazon's 1984 fiasco.

Nor are the books inherently DRM-free if bought on the Kobo. If you followed the vendor's preferred path on both devices, the experience would be exactly the same: you have a Kindle/Kobo device, you buy a book from the vendor's store, your book is encrypted with DRM and locked to your device(s). The only advantages the Kobo offers from that perspective is supporting the industry-standard EPUB format, and staying with a consistent DRM scheme that has been cracked for awhile, rather than changing it every 15 minutes.

I do appreciate both things about the Kobo, but I wish reviewers would take a little more time to explain that one does not instantly mean the other, as this leads to disappointed Kobo buyers.
Sorry but you don't seem to know much about Kobo's use of DRM. You buy an ebook from Kobo and you have two options for non-Kobo Plus books. Option 1 is that you download the book to your computer which process gives you two options. Either you download the ePub file for a DRM free book or you download an Adobe ACSM file if the book is encrypted.

The second option is if you use the Kobo Desktop app (KDA) on a PC or Mac, the Kobo app on iOS or Android or a Kobo ereader. Those ebooks are downloaded either with no DRM or DRMmed with Kobo's proprietary encryption which can be handled by calibre's OBOK plugin. If you do not have a Kobo ereader connected to your computer, the OBOK plugin will display books downloaded by KDA. If you have a Kobo ereader connected, OBOK will show the synced books on the ereader.

For Kobo Plus, there is no download option and KDA will not download a copy and leave it on your computer.

As for not worrying about Amazon's 1984 fiasco, you might want to check thr 2024 version. See the Amazon removed books from my Kindle plus other messages scattered around Mobileread.
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