Dealing with Kindle for PC/Mac 1.19 and KFX in calibre

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by odamizu

Amazon links to older versions of K4Mac that worked for years now do not work. The only Amazon link that now works is 1.28.0.

They removed download links for outdated PC/Mac software to discourage new installations, but did not take the further step of preventing those versions from being able to download books once installed. Hopefully that will continue to be the case.

I assume they are still allowing those versions to function in order to avoid the resulting customer support calls that would be generated by those who are unable to update for some reason.

Originally Posted by odamizu

I wonder if this is just to protect KFX or if they'll soon thwart our efforts to get KF8. I wonder if the option to "download for transfer via USB" will soon disappear.

I have wondered whether Amazon's apparent lack of interest in updating DRM for their older formats was an indication of a planned phasing out of those formats over time. So far I have not seen any signs of that being the case and I think that it is very unlikely to happen.

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I have updated the first post in this thread to reflect the current DRM and file download situation.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by odamizu

Wow, is it just me or does it seem like Amazon is actively monitoring this thread and the Apprentices' blog and GitHub discussions, and swiftly closing workarounds.

Perhaps it's more surprising that it's taken Amazon this long to start their spoiling tactics. Didn't the Kindle jailbreaking guys take their technical discussions private in order to stop giving Amazon clues about what loopholes they were utilising?

[W00fer]

The one from Softonic and your MD5 are the same.

The ones from Amazon AWS are TEMPORARILY links, that have a date and timestamp so they are not permanent on that location. So I don't think Amazon removed those links, they just expired.

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[odamizu]

Originally Posted by W00fer

... The ones from Amazon AWS are TEMPORARILY links, that have a date and timestamp so they are not permanent on that location. So I don't think Amazon removed those links, they just expired.

The links for K4Mac 1.23-1.28 were all active earlier this week. I find it highly suspicious that everything except 1.28 suddenly expired at the same time.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by odamizu

Wow, is it just me or does it seem like Amazon is actively monitoring this thread and the Apprentices' blog and GitHub discussions, and swiftly closing workarounds. Amazon links to older versions of K4Mac that worked for years now do not work. The only Amazon link that now works is 1.28.0.

I wonder if this is just to protect KFX or if they'll soon thwart our efforts to get KF8. I wonder if the option to "download for transfer via USB" will soon disappear. Yikes!

Yes. I would be amazed if Amazon is not monitoring all of these sources and more. I certainly would if I was in their position. And of course all of the sources for the tools are available on Github, including all pull requests. Amazon are a very innovative company and they employ substantial talent. The scheme they have adopted to change encryption on the fly is very impressive. From what I can see they have planned for their encryption scheme to be broken periodically and for it to be changed immediately. It appears changes to new voucher envelope versions are trivial and implemented by changing the version number and two values.

At the moment K4PC 1.28 is using version 4 voucher envelope. As I understand it, versions prior to 1.27 used versions up to 3. In 1.27 version 4 was included but not used. There is also facility for further versions to be incorporated. I expect the next version of K4PC will likely have version 5 implemented but not used. Then, when version 4 is broken, Amazon will activate version 5 encryption and require the latest version for the books it particularly wants to protect, at the moment Pearson textbooks. If version 4 is broken today, I would expect a new release of K4PC immediately incorporating version 5.

IMHO I doubt Amazon seriously intends to prevent removing DRM for most of its e-books. As I posted earlier, the fact that DRM can be removed may well result in increased sales of Amazon e-books. What this seems to be all about is preserving a probably very lucrative textbook sales and rentals business. But this does not mean that it will never be tried. Right now I suspect the voucher envelope based DRM scheme is an interim measure. I'm sure Amazon is probably working on a more robust scheme, at least for Pearson textbooks, as I write this. I just hope that Amazon does see some benefit in the present situation and does not start treating its readers as the enemy, like so many others.

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by darryl

... I would be amazed if Amazon is not monitoring all of these sources and more.

I agree that they've been monitoring all along, but it never felt like they were monitoring with this much attention before. The speed at which they've responded to v6.8 is startling. I don't recall them ever taking such immediate action to clamp down a new version before.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by odamizu

I agree that they've been monitoring all along, but it never felt like they were monitoring with this much attention before. The speed at which they've responded to v6.8 is startling. I don't recall them ever taking such immediate action to clamp down a new version before.

I think this is partly because they have prepared for it and therefore can. As mentioned, I think their Pearson textbook business would be under threat without secure DRM. With 1.27 and 1.28 they had version 4 inactive but all ready to go. All they had to do was start encrypting with version 4 and prevent downloads of Pearson textbooks to 1.26 and before. The next version will no doubt have version 5 ready to go if version 4 is cracked, and so on. I expect Amazon will in future continue to respond very quickly. kfx is not a good conversion format in any event. The existing situation is very satisfactory and will remain so as long as Amazon allows the download of kf8 files for most books.

[kezdro]

Originally Posted by darryl

As mentioned, I think their Pearson textbook business would be under threat without secure DRM.

Speaking of which, as far as I can tell all the Pearson textbooks that required the latest Kindle version have disappeared from the store (although older editions sometimes remain). Ones I know had such a Kindle edition available but can no longer be found:

• Brock Biology of Microorganisms (16th Edition)
• Human Anatomy & Physiology (11th Edition) by Elaine N. Marieb & Katja N. Hoehn
• The Cosmic Perspective (9th Edition) by Jeffrey O. Bennett, Megan O. Donahue, Nicholas Schneider, Mark Voit
• University Physics with Modern Physics (15th Edition) by Hugh D. Young and Roger A. Freedman
• Social Problems 8th Edition by John J. Macionis

[darryl]

Originally Posted by kezdro

Speaking of which, as far as I can tell all the Pearson textbooks that required the latest Kindle version have disappeared from the store (although older editions sometimes remain). Ones I know had such a Kindle edition available but can no longer be found:

• Brock Biology of Microorganisms (16th Edition)
• Human Anatomy & Physiology (11th Edition) by Elaine N. Marieb & Katja N. Hoehn
• The Cosmic Perspective (9th Edition) by Jeffrey O. Bennett, Megan O. Donahue, Nicholas Schneider, Mark Voit
• University Physics with Modern Physics (15th Edition) by Hugh D. Young and Roger A. Freedman
• Social Problems 8th Edition by John J. Macionis

Thanks for posting this. I just checked and the first 2 books are available for purchase and rent on Amazon US. I haven't checked the others, but it looks like you may have encountered some temporary glitch.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by darryl

Thanks for posting this. I just checked and the first 2 books are available for purchase and rent on Amazon US. I haven't checked the others, but it looks like you may have encountered some temporary glitch.

I just checked and those books are not showing up for me. I had a link to "Human Anatomy & Physiology" and now it sends me to a missing page: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R8HBP18

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I just checked and those books are not showing up for me. I had a link to "Human Anatomy & Physiology" and now it sends me to a missing page: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R8HBP18

Interesting. When I search for "Human Anatomy & Physiology 11th edition" on Amazon (.com and .ca), I get the hardcovers for purchase or rental but no ebooks. I did a Google search and it came up with Amazon links that went to dead pages. Oddly, Pearson still shows it as a ebook which can be purchased but I didn't feel quite up to actually paying for it.

I wonder if Amazon pulled them or Pearson did?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I wonder if Amazon pulled them or Pearson did?

I suspect that the pages being completely gone is a sign that Pearson pulled them. If Amazon had done it they would likely have just been marked as temporary unavailable.

This may be a case of the DeDRM tools causing them a noticeable loss of business. I wonder whether there are going to be further repercussions.

[kezdro]

Originally Posted by darryl

Thanks for posting this. I just checked and the first 2 books are available for purchase and rent on Amazon US. I haven't checked the others, but it looks like you may have encountered some temporary glitch.

Did you check the editions? Both of them have a prior edition still available (which doesn't require the latest Kindle version).

[darryl]

It appears that the latest edition of these books is not available, though in at least some cases earlier editions are. This does indeed seem to confirm that Pearson requires Amazon to have effective drm. My speculation is that this may only be temporary whilst the situation is reviewed. Amazon does seem to have planned for the scenario where its drm is broken in this way and for a quick reaction. It also seems to have catered for this happening again and again. Given that the current drm remains unbroken, it would not seem to be necessary for Pearson to permanently withdraw its e-book versions from Amazon. This, of course, does not guarantee that this will not occur.

Many drm schemes are not circumvented because they are not sufficiently widespread so as to attract the attention of those capable of circumventing them. The purpose of the tools so far as Amazon's e-books are concerned is largely to give people freedom to do particular things with e-books they have "purchased", such as back them up or convert them to other formats for reading on non-Amazon devices. The tools by design do not decrypt books which are not "purchased". I doubt the Developers contributing to the tools gave these Pearson e-books any thought whatsoever, and likely would have had no interest in breaking drm which applied only to Pearson e-texts. The downside of Amazon using generic drm on these Pearson books rather than custom drm is that this generic drm is far more likely to be circumvented.

As for further repercussions, we can but wait and see.

[pdurrant]

If it's for the textbooks, it would be nice if Amazon only applied the version 4 to the textbooks.