Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirtel
No, that's not what anyone here calls a walled garden. What we mean is that recently Amazon has been trying to take away DRM removal options - constantly updating the Kindle app to not work with the deDRM plugin, now removing D&T for 2024 Kindles and so on. If it becomes impossible to remove DRM from Amazon ebooks, then those who still purchase their ebooks from Amazon will be locked in a walled garden, i.e. they won't be able to take their ebooks outside the garden.
Kobo and Google haven't made any attempts to lock their users in more than usual. So far, at least.
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Of course. But that has nothing to do with whether or not to buy a Kindle Paperwhite 6. And we're always lumping it together. If you like the PW6, buy it. Because Amazon (in a hypothetical future) preventing the removal of DRM from its books is going to affect all e-readers on the market equally. You won't be able to download and transfer Amazon books via USB on any of them (although you will always be able to read them on a Kindle Paperwhite 6 via Wifi and not on a different brand of e-reader). The warning "exclusive" to the PW6 is the one that grates on me. It's one thing to warn about Amazon's "walled garden" and quite another to exclude the Kindle Paperwhite 6 as a purchase option for that reason. Because if that's a reason for exclusion, all e-readers of any brand should be excluded. If you are so worried about Amazon preventing the removal of DRM from its books, warn about that. The solution to that problem is not to stop buying a 2024 Kindle model and buy an e-reader of another brand. If you are so concerned, recommend buying from other bookstores.
(In any case, I think most Kindle users are Kindle users because it is so easy to buy a book from Amazon and read it directly on their e-reader. I'm convinced that those of us who buy off Amazon or download and transfer their books via USB to our Kindle are in a minority, albeit a rather noisy one).