Amazon dropping support for more Kindles

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

AFAIK Voyage, Kindle Basic 7th gen, Paperwhite 2 and 10th gen Kindles.

Does anyone know if 5.12.2 can be modded to prevent DRM removal? That's what the Kindle 7th gen is running.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

If Amazon manages to close all the loopholes for DRM removal, their exclusive content won't be "on the internet" anymore. How do you think books end up there? People remove the DRM and upload them. They won't get there by some magic not available to everyone.

ARCs & Beta reader copies
Screen captures or photos (where it's not on paper).

Exclusive retail of creative content is immoral.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Quoth

ARCs & Beta reader copies
Screen captures or photos (where it's not on paper).

Pretending unbreakable DRM would not affect the availability of pirated books is disingenuous. When people have to actually work to prepare pirated copies to upload, a lot less people will be involved in uploading pirated content. It's that simple.

[lkmiller]

Originally Posted by Ebookus

Amazon claims that 3% of users are affected by this change, which seems to suggest that at least 97% of users likely don’t remove DRM. Although i buy fewer books from them now, I won’t be buying from them again.

I don't see the co-relation here. Believe it or not there are some people who just read on these older Kindles and don't use them for DRM removal. And there are a number of people who do not have one of these older Kindles who do remove DRM. I was removing DRM from Kindle books for years before I had any type of Kindle.

[lkmiller]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How many of those 97% pirate eBooks instead of removing DRM?

That has absolutely zero to do with it. They're talking about 3% downloading Kindle books via one of these old Kindles vs 97% who exclusively use something else besides one of these to download Kindle books from Amazon.

eta: there could be pirates, drm removers, people who do both, people who do neither in the 3% just as well as the 97%.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How many of those 97% pirate eBooks instead of removing DRM?

I'd say probably less than 1%. Most people barely know how to operate a computer, so they certainly aren't going to be looking up how to pirate an ebook. Most probably don't even know about DRM and couldn't care less about it. They probably don't know anything about Calibre either.

We are the outliers of the whole ebook world. Most people just buy their ebooks and get on with their lives, we are the only ones obsessing about them.

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Pretending unbreakable DRM would not affect the availability of pirated books is disingenuous. When people have to actually work to prepare pirated copies to upload, a lot less people will be involved in uploading pirated content. It's that simple.

I was thinking about this the other day. Back in the late 90s when I was first on the internet, I came across pirated books. Seemed to be mostly high-profile authors and best-sellers. I think they had been OCR-ed and then crowd-sourced the proof-reading and corrections. A lot of work and only worth doing for the most popular books.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by latepaul

I was thinking about this the other day. Back in the late 90s when I was first on the internet, I came across pirated books. Seemed to be mostly high-profile authors and best-sellers. I think they had been OCR-ed and then crowd-sourced the proof-reading and corrections. A lot of work and only worth doing for the most popular books.

That was my experience as well. I have no doubt that is what would happen again if removing DRM became more difficult than a couple of button-clicks again.

[Courant]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

I don't see the co-relation here. Believe it or not there are some people who just read on these older Kindles and don't use them for DRM removal. And there are a number of people who do not have one of these older Kindles who do remove DRM. I was removing DRM from Kindle books for years before I had any type of Kindle.

If you have a Kindle, why remove the DRM? I only remove DRM in order to use a different e reader.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Courant

If you have a Kindle, why remove the DRM? I only remove DRM in order to use a different e reader.

- to edit the formatting
- to make a personal backup and not having to depend on Amazon
- you might want to buy a different ereader in the future

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

- to edit the formatting
- to make a personal backup and not having to depend on Amazon
- you might want to buy a different ereader in the future

Exactly. There are far too many ebooks with rubbish formatting. A couple of minutes fixes them.

DRM is evil.

Also eventually copyright expires, but the DRM preventing use is still there. What if Amazon decides they can't be bothered doing ebooks or selling kindles. The files with DRM are no use when either the Kindle wears out or iOS / Android don't support the App, because it's out of date due to Amazon losing interest.

See Plays For Sure, Google Graveyard and more. Amazon did abandon an ebook ecosystem before and the income from ebooks is now almost nothing compared to Amazon revenue.

If I wanted to just borrow books the local library is free (ebooks and paper).

Edit:
Part of the problem of formatting is Publishers (especially big ones) using a PDF work flow for paper. Also using InDesign which was designed for fixed layout paper and fudged for reflowable. The better approach is a workflow that is for epub, proof via epub and then reformat for the paper edition. I never see an issue with illustrated fixed layout ebooks that ar3e not PDFs. Publishers used to paper do reflowable formatting badly. You wonder do they even look at the result on a small phone, several sizes of eink and a big tablet.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Quoth

If I wanted to just borrow books the local library is free (ebooks and paper).

Libraries rarely have what I want when I'm wanting to read it. That's why I'm more than happy to pay for the one-time experience of reading a book at my convenience. I no more think of that experiential transaction as "borrowing" (or renting) a book than I think of having a meal in a restaurant as "borrowing" a meal." Nor do I think of paying to see a motion picture in a theatre as "renting" a movie.

In fact: I get more satisfaction/enjoyment out of reading a book (once) than I do from having dinner out or going to a movie. So the price of admission for new drmed ebooks is still more than worth it to me.

We (readers) are not all future reading-material stockpilers, re-readers, and library curators. Those are the only people to whom the whole "Amazon wants to sell you a license to borrow a book: drm-is-evil" argument is going to resonate with. The rest of us just want to read a book (when we want to read it) and move on to the next one.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

- to edit the formatting
- to make a personal backup and not having to depend on Amazon
- you might want to buy a different ereader in the future

Also,

- You want to continue using your perfectly good Kindle, but Amazon no longer allows it to connect to their servers, and no longer allows you to download your purchased content to your computer to sideload to your Kindle that Amazon just disabled

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by haertig

Also,

- You want to continue using your perfectly good Kindle, but Amazon no longer allows it to connect to their servers, and no longer allows you to download your purchased content to your computer to sideload to your Kindle that Amazon just disabled

There is nothing at all wrong with my Kindle Touch. No reason for Amazon to just drop support for it.

[nana77]

Originally Posted by Quoth

What if Amazon decides they can't be bothered doing ebooks or selling kindles. The files with DRM are no use when either the Kindle wears out or iOS / Android don't support the App, because it's out of date due to Amazon losing interest.
See Plays For Sure, Google Graveyard and more. Amazon did abandon an ebook ecosystem before and the income from ebooks is now almost nothing compared to Amazon revenue.

Pardon, but, controversely, how might them loose interest when, anyway:

Moreover, about 72% of American book lovers use Amazon Kindle to read digital books, making it a popular choice.

(It was from this link that has already been posted on the forum: https://coolest-gadgets.com/ebooks-statistics/).