Quote:
Originally Posted by jhowell
Because they can no longer connect, Amazon has no way to know which ones now exist only as serial numbers registered solely to allow the use of Download & Transfer to extract books from Amazon's ecosystem. I suspect those are the majority.
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You are correct, but does it matter? I think it doesn't matter much. J. Random Shareholder doesn't care if my Kindle DX is being used to read books or if its just a placeholder for purchases and downloads and DRM-stripping. They care about their stock dividends, and they care about actions which could (will) reduce those dividends.
Amazon could offer some kind of discount or rebate to us legacy device owners to get us to "upgrade". I can see Amazon not doing this for several reasons. Selling these devices at a loss is a hit to the bottom line which share holders don't want. Not all of us legacy device owners will take that action (I wouldn't trade my DX for a new Paperwhite at any price) which is a long-term customer loss which is another hit to the bottom line. Are Amazon willing to take these hits? D&T will stick around until the answer to this question is "yes".
All of this is tempered by the publishers. They could try to pressure Amazon into trying to pressure us in ways that make DRM-stripping more difficult, but it still ends up being a question of profits: are the publishers willing to take the hits to their bottom lines? I don't know. Big Content are inconsistent about whether greed or control is their higher priority.