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

[DBDigital]

Sadly this is worse than you think and not only affects books published after Jan 3rd. I tried to get a couple of books published long before that tonight and couldn't download them with 1.15 which worked a couple of weeks ago.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DBDigital

Sadly this is worse than you think and not only affects books published after Jan 3rd. I tried to get a couple of books published long before that tonight and couldn't download them with 1.15 which worked a couple of weeks ago.

Downloads still working for me; will test again tomorrow.

Is it all books, or only specific ones? Some are only available as KFX.

[DBDigital]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Downloads still working for me; will test again tomorrow.

Is it all books, or only specific ones? Some are only available as KFX.

I haven't tried all books, but several I bought tonight. They were all published 2019 or earlier.

It might be they are slowly rolling out KFX to all books. I hope I am wrong though. Either way looks like Kobo is going to be getting more money from me. I just wish they had the magazines I subscribe to. It is one thing I still get from B&N as they don't have any DRM. At least the ones I get.

Edit:
Interesting. I had updated to the current PC program earlier today to see if that worked considering the books were published in 2019, however they were delivered in KFX format (as I feared). Well I just deleted the current version, and reinstalled 1.15 and it worked this time! Strange, as the books gave me the same download error as the newer books since-jan-3 did earlier.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DBDigital

Sadly this is worse than you think and not only affects books published after Jan 3rd. I tried to get a couple of books published long before that tonight and couldn't download them with 1.15 which worked a couple of weeks ago.

Maybe 1.15 i no longer working. Try 1.17.1.

[lkmiller]

Originally Posted by Jacques Q.

... it is beyond my understanding that a book published, say, when a writer is 25, who then dies at age 90, will remain protected by copyright way, way over a century after initial publication (with inheritors often doing all kind of sh*t with it at that), it just makes no sense.

Because publishers and authors' estates that keep the dead authors' work in print deserve compensation too. Otherwise those books would cease to exist.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

Because publishers and authors' estates that keep the dead authors' work in print deserve compensation too. Otherwise those books would cease to exist.

Nope. Books that people wanted to buy (or that a publisher thought would sell) will remain in print when copyright expires. Indeed, they're likely to be available more widely, and in less expensive editions.

[lkmiller]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Nope. Books that people wanted to buy (or that a publisher thought would sell) will remain in print when copyright expires. Indeed, they're likely to be available more widely, and in less expensive editions.

I was responding to someone who didn't see a problem in stealing ebooks by dead authors. The publisher will have a copyright on their particular edition even when the content is in the public domain.

[ownedbycats]

Slightly on the topic, and something I've been curious about. I have a (physical) edition of the Secret Garden published by Dalmatian Press. Don't see many changes from the original (they changed a few instances of 'gay' to 'carefree', lol). Yet the copyright page says "This edition copyright 2004..."

What exactly is being copyrighted here?

[Quoth]

Their format /layout and significant edits (such as gay to carefree).

[lkmiller]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Nope. Books that people wanted to buy (or that a publisher thought would sell) will remain in print when copyright expires. Indeed, they're likely to be available more widely, and in less expensive editions.

To clarify, definitely not advocating for the original copyright to be extended. But the authors' estate and/or a publisher need to make money or the work will go out of print. So piracy of dead authors is harmful too.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

To clarify, definitely not advocating for the original copyright to be extended. But the authors' estate and/or a publisher need to make money or the work will go out of print. So piracy of dead authors is harmful too.

No, unless the Estate self publishes and has the rights the Estate can do nothing.

The Publisher my have the rights and not reprint or do an ebook.
Or
If the Estate has the rights, no publisher might wish to publish, they could only self-publish.

Instead of copyright being extended, it should have remained at Life + 50 as it still is in some countries. Also any extension should only have applied to fresh deaths, not retroactively applied. That was corporate theft from the community.

I'd argue that even life + 50 years is too long. That's adult grandchildren. Should have been shortened to between 25 and 50 years. Virtually the entire benefit of copyright beyond 25 years is to already wealthy companies and corporations.
Also if a corporation own the rights of dead person they should be obliged to at least electronically publish or rights go to public domain if physical copies of the book, music, TV/Cinema, Play, Opera or painting etc can't be consumed by the public. Before electronic publishing the valid argument was the cost of print run, film print, vinyl/CD/Cassette/VHS/DVD duplication etc.

In the 1990s when streaming/IPTV, electronic format books and music was proposed the argument was the Internet sales would give the "long tail". It's patchy with books and less popular music and nearly non-existent with TV/Cinema. Stuff gets deleted from Netflix.

[lkmiller]

Just saying that the author being gone doesn't justify ripping off whoever is publishing it.

[ComputerGranny]

Back with another question. I've tried to search this thread and can't find anything that seems to address my problem. I bought a used Kindle Paperwhite 7th generation, firmware version Kindle 5.15.1. I registered it at Amazon. Bought a new book published in January 2023. I read this book originally on Kindle Unlimited. Because I wanted to keep the book and convert to an epub, I bought it.

I have used the download and transfer option to download the file. The filetype that downloaded is AZW3. I used Calibre to import it. I was able to do that. However, when I tried to convert it to an epub, I got an error message saying that it has DRM and Calibre couldn't convert it.

I have installed all the plug-ins that I can locate. The latest I could find was DeDRM_tools_10.0.3. I tried to customize the input and output plug-ins for KFX with the serial number but got the message that there was nothing to customize. I cannot see any plug-ins that seem to be for AZW3. Am I missing the plug-in for AZW? Is it the same as for KFX?

I also tried downloading into K4PC 1.17. Got crazy collection of files that I don't know what to do with. Also tried copying files off the Paperwhite directly into Calibre. There were numerous folders. I found some kfx files in assets/attachables folder. Calibre could not remove drm on those either. Tried importing from entire folder, didn't work either.

Sorry to bother you all again, but I really don't know what to do.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ComputerGranny

Back with another question. I've tried to search this thread and can't find anything that seems to address my problem. I bought a used Kindle Paperwhite 7th generation, firmware version Kindle 5.15.1. I registered it at Amazon. Bought a new book published in January 2023. I read this book originally on Kindle Unlimited. Because I wanted to keep the book and convert to an epub, I bought it.

I have used the download and transfer option to download the file. The filetype that downloaded is AZW3. I used Calibre to import it. I was able to do that. However, when I tried to convert it to an epub, I got an error message saying that it has DRM and Calibre couldn't convert it.

I have installed all the plug-ins that I can locate. The latest I could find was DeDRM_tools_10.0.3. I tried to customize the input and output plug-ins for KFX with the serial number but got the message that there was nothing to customize. I cannot see any plug-ins that seem to be for AZW3. Am I missing the plug-in for AZW? Is it the same as for KFX?

I also tried downloading into K4PC 1.17. Got crazy collection of files that I don't know what to do with. Also tried copying files off the Paperwhite directly into Calibre. There were numerous folders. I found some kfx files in assets/attachables folder. Calibre could not remove drm on those either. Tried importing from entire folder, didn't work either.

Sorry to bother you all again, but I really don't know what to do.

You need to customize the deDRM plugin with the serial number, not the KFX plugins. Then you'll be able to get an AZW3 file which Calibre can deDRM with the Download and Transfer option.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by ComputerGranny

I have used the download and transfer option to download the file. The filetype that downloaded is AZW3. I used Calibre to import it. I was able to do that. However, when I tried to convert it to an epub, I got an error message saying that it has DRM and Calibre couldn't convert it.

I have installed all the plug-ins that I can locate. The latest I could find was DeDRM_tools_10.0.3. I tried to customize the input and output plug-ins for KFX with the serial number but got the message that there was nothing to customize. I cannot see any plug-ins that seem to be for AZW3. Am I missing the plug-in for AZW? Is it the same as for KFX?

The KFX Input and Output plugins are not going to be of any use in this case. KFX Output is for creating KFX and so does not apply at all. KFX Input is for converting KFX to other formats but it only works if you remove the KFX DRM first, which is not possible for Kindles running firmware versions after 5.12.1.

As Sirtel pointed out DRM is handled by the DeDRM plugin and it needs to be configured to work properly.