Kindle has new a DRM scheme?

[MoeReed]

Originally Posted by greenapple

Just updated my Kindle for PC software. I notice that now the download for each book goes to its own folder. My latest downloaded book contains files with these extensions in the folder:

.voucher
.md
.azw
.res
.phl

It used to be that I'd drag the .azw file from My Kindle Content folder and drop it in Calibre. But now it doesn't work. Could anyone please help? I just bought a few books and I can't load them in Calibre.

I know I am late to the party here, but I just discovered this problem last week. Amazon's new scheme completely locks you into their reader and their software. They make it impossible to read your books in any other reader (and this includes free books that previously had no DRM, such as those out of copyright). This is analogous to buying music in some proprietary unconvertable azm3 format that can only be played on the distributor's hardware and software. Evil.

You have no idea how angry I am at Amazon over this new DRM scheme. The misadventures started when I was told to upgrade my Paperwhite firmware from v5.6.5 to v5.8.8 in order to solve a problem I was having with the paperwhite. I (stupidly) did so.

Afterwards Amazon officiously also updated my PC kindle app. Whenever I opened a kindle book on the PC, the new DRM version of said book was downloaded, replacing the old version. In the background the same thing was happening to the paperwhite itself. About a week later I tried to use Calibre on my Linux machine and was horrified to learn that NONE of the books could be synced/read. After some digging around interspersed with some cursing I decided to roll back to the previous firmware version.

Well, Amazon has made this impossible, so essentially they made my Kindle unusable in Linux and Calibre. So I had a very lengthy chat with Amazon support regarding this issue. Finally they said there is nothing they could do, but "is there anything else we can help you with today?" (I really wanted to explain to him what the word "else" means in English , but I just closed the chat window).

If I have to choose between Calibre/Linux and Amazon - Amazon loses. I downloaded all of my eBooks from Amazon, removed the DRM, converted them to ePub and back to azw, deleted all the books on my Paperwhite and put the books back on (if you try to put them directly on the Paperwhite it no longer works - Amazon will require that you download the uncrackable DRM version. Amazon may close the loophole I just described above, btw).

Then I deleted every eBook I had from the Kindle store and purged every item in my Amazon wishlist. I can buy stuff from other sites. I am afraid that Amazon may try to "upgrade" my paperwhite again, so I even block my own kindle in my router (there are residual issues if you just delete the wifi password). Goodbye Amazon!

Previously I only used Calibre very rarely, but I am working on making the 100% transition. There is only one issue I have left (already posted in another thread).

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by MoeReed

I know I am late to the party here, but I just discovered this problem last week. Amazon's new scheme completely locks you into their reader and their software. They make it impossible to read your books in any other reader (and this includes free books that previously had no DRM, such as those out of copyright). This is analogous to buying music in some proprietary unconvertable azm3 format that can only be played on the distributor's hardware and software. Evil.

Have you read the sticky post at the top of the forum on the topic? The first post outlines possible solutions / work arounds.

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

[MoeReed]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

Have you read the sticky post at the top of the forum on the topic? The first post outlines possible solutions / work arounds.

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

No, I did not see this. I could not even get onto mobileread much less join until just days ago (firefox issues with the captcha, long boring story) so by the time I finally got to this site I had already converted all of my eBooks and purged my data from Amazon.

I did just run that command line script (thank you for the tip) in my Windows VM in case I do decide to ever buy another book from Amazon - which I will try to avoid - I do not like their anti-competitive policies plus they are hostile to privacy (why would anyone ever willingly put an Amazon echo in their house?? You could not pay me enough money to have one of those around!)

thanks again,
Moe