Content Amazon Watermarking eBooks?

[lumpynose]

Just for fun I downloaded the EPUB and MOBI files of a book I'd bought back in 2009. When you bought the tangible book you also got the download versions for free.

Back then I was only interested in the PDF which is what I'd downloaded. When I go to my account page I click on a button and it generates the files. The PDF has a watermark on every page with my name. This time I downloaded the EPUB and MOBI files. The EPUB has my name as part of the book's title. "Book Name (for Lumpy Nose)". I converted the MOBI to AZW3 and opened that in calibre's editor but couldn't find anything with my name.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

So if someone wanted to remove that, then they could open the opf file in calibre's editor and delete it?

It might be safer to overwrite it rather than remove it. So if the text string is, for example, 64 characters long (I didn't count it), then overwrite it with 64 random characters. The point being, not to make the entry any longer or shorter than it was originally, just make it different, but of the same length.

In this case (Amazon azw3 files) it may not make any difference. I don't know.
But generically, overwrites are safer than deletions when you don't know if the software that reads the data is looking for fixed structure sizes or not. It's never 100% safe to go messing with data when you don't know exactly how it is used/interpreted by the software. But it's usually safer to overwrite than to delete.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

So if someone wanted to remove that, then they could open the opf file in calibre's editor and delete it?

I used KindleUnpack to unpack the azw3 files and then looked at the content.opf in the OEBPS directory to find the watermark entry. KindleUnpack gives me the ebook contents in 3 directories with the majority of the data in a mobi8 directory. The mobi8 directory for the 5 books I unpacked contains META-INF and OEBPS directories, an epub file and a mimetype file. The epub file does not contain the same infomation in content.opf as the content.opf in the OEBPS directory but it does match the information shown for content.opf by calibre.

Originally Posted by lumpynose

And I repeat my question about calibre's conversion to PDF. Does Dyxan's PDF show his email because calibre extracted it from that string? I don't find that easy to believe. I still think his information was in the AZW3 unencrypted and plain text and he didn't notice it, e.g., it was on page 1 or something (I'm thinking of the thread here about how the book cover isn't displayed when it's on page 1).

Again, my suspicion is that those ebooks were either not downloaded from Amazon or the watermark was present before the ebooks were submitted to Amazon. As in the ebook my wife downloaded from Entangled.

I do have one ebook that I downloaded as a freebie from the author and the metadata says "This book was given to Name Withheld (12345678) but that is in the content.opf file wrapped in a dc:description tag.

[Steve H]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Someone will need to provide more evidence before I will believe that a new type of readable watermark that survives conversion using calibre has been added by Amazon.

(Amazon has long added non-readable watermarks to the EXTH metadata in Kindle books.)

E-books that I have purchased from Verso books contain a watermark that doesn't seem to come off. I downloaded them in mobi format.

[ekbell]

I've some books that were sent to kindle from an outside vendor (back before amazon removed that option) which have my name and email address between the cover and the table of contents. As expected this has remained through conversion to epub.

The books open after that spot when reading them using the kindle app so it would have been easy to miss before conversion.

[crane3]

I had borrowed 2 books in kindle format from the public library & see some "watermarks"(?) or sloppy cleaning(?) of highliters. The books are light grey and in the format of "24 highlighter", "35 highlighter", "xx highlighter, 'xx' are numbers". The lettering are usually between lines but sloppyly as, at time, they run into the text to make the text less readable.....

Don't think they are considered 'real watermarks' but perhaps leftovers from someone who does highlighting on library books & the highlighting did not get removed when returned to Amazon? Not sure what is going on or who is really responsible; have encountered library books where some people do highlighted some passages or wrote comments/annotations in a messy manner.

edit: Never encountered the "xx highlighter" stuff when borrowing an epub; & these books borrow were the 1st kindle books borrowed as I now have an Oasis.

Also don't think Overdrive is putting the "highlighter" on the various pages or noting that some areas have been highlighted at some point.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by crane3

I had borrowed 2 books in kindle format from the public library & see some "watermarks"(?) or sloppy cleaning(?) of highliters. The books are light grey and in the format of "24 highlighter", "35 highlighter", "xx highlighter, 'xx' are numbers". The lettering are usually between lines but sloppyly as, at time, they run into the text to make the text less readable.....

You are seeing Popular Highlights. That is a feature of Kindle books and has nothing to do with the book being borrowed from a library.

https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/20...ts-on-kindles/

[crane3]

Originally Posted by jhowell

You are seeing Popular Highlights. That is a feature of Kindle books and has nothing to do with the book being borrowed from a library.

https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/20...ts-on-kindles/

Thank you. especially for the ref url as I just turned off the highlighter display; very annoying. The situation is like viewing a movie & listening to some people talking loud enough for a person to hear their comments about the movie at various points.

The highlighter notifications were not applied smoothly as they sometimes show up at an angle where some text is hidden. There may be more hidden "features" for me to encounter at some point.