Amazon and DRM changes

[ownedbycats]

I found this thread on Hacker News about the changes, including this:

gnicholas 1 day ago | prev | next [–]

Amazon also changed the way their Kindle Cloud Reader (the Kindle web app) works so that it now displays an image of text instead of HTML text. This appears to have been done for anti-piracy reasons, but it has the knock-on effect of breaking accessibility browser plugins that people with disabilities rely on to make Kindle books accessible. In case anyone is not aware, image-of-text is considered a newbie mistake from an accessibility perspective, so it's odd for Amazon to take this step backward.
Amazon rolled out this update over a year ago, and my startup still gets emails from people who are upset that they can no longer read books they purchased with the BeeLine Reader plugin, as they expected they would when they bought the books.

There's nothing we can do to get Amazon to fix this, but we are now launching partnerships with other ebook platforms that are more accessibility-friendly.

May Amazon rot.

[innocenat]

Wasn't last year when Amazon change the cloud reader to read KFX instead of MOBI? The timeline seems to concur.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

I agree with the sentiment. It is far from unusual for posters here to forget that there are countries outside the United States represented here, and snide sweeping put downs like the one you quoted are representative of that mindset.

Maybe it will help for German bookstores that also have books in other languages - I don't know which ones.
I have created a German forwarding address here and buy from thalia.de, for example.
As a lending library, Onleihe Zella-Mehlis allows remote registration (eg from Austria) - annual fee €6.00

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I found this thread on Hacker News about the changes, including this:



May Amazon rot.

Ah, thank you, I believe you found the real reason for the changes. Automated scripting and scrubbing of KU for the whole pupose of building an illegal library. That is why KU specifically is targeted. Wirhout access to a real device, such things are not economically feasible for large scale pirates. The honest (morally at least) people that merely remove DRM for format shifting on other devices and NOT share with others are the minority that gets left behind in the dirt.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Amazon also changed the way their Kindle Cloud Reader (the Kindle web app) works so that it now displays an image of text instead of HTML text. This appears to have been done for anti-piracy reasons, but it has the knock-on effect of breaking accessibility browser plugins that people with disabilities rely on to make Kindle books accessible.

Amazon changed that a couple of years ago. It used to be possible to extract DRM-free copies of Kindle books that were read using the Kindle Could Reader using a script that accessed the browser's storage. It was floating around the Internet but was never part of the popular DeDRM tools. I was aware of that technique and thought that it might come in handy if Amazon ever blocked the other methods commonly in use.

I suspect that Amazon's awareness of that capability led them to switch to their newer locked-down and inaccessible KCR system called "karamel" internally.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Wirhout access to a real device, such things are not economically feasible for large scale pirates. The honest (morally at least) people that merely remove DRM for format shifting on other devices and NOT share with others are the minority that gets left behind in the dirt.

Real pirates / large scale pirates don't need Amazon at all!

[Patitapetit]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Real pirates / large scale pirates don't need Amazon at all!

Really? So they (real Pirates) write books. Bravo!

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Patitapetit

Really? So they (real Pirates) write books. Bravo!

They can pirate any book on paper from anywhere, or from Google Playstore ebook.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I found this thread on Hacker News about the changes, including this:



May Amazon rot.

What they are saying is that you can't find the text in the DOM. You can still select and annotate text, so it is not 'just an image'. It creates annotations that you can export.

There's no copy paste, and yes, not accessible to screen readers. But there's a Kindle app that has those features.

I think one of the 'other' DRM removal tools was reconstructing ebooks by automating process of snipping fragments of HTML from the DOM and turning pages. So that won't work any more, either.

Google does the same with their web reader. So does Kobo's. So they must rot as well.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by tomsem

There's no copy paste, and yes, not accessible to screen readers. But there's a Kindle app that has those features.

I don't care whether there's a proprietary app available. In a world that is already mostly inaccesssible to disabled people, anything that deliberately removes accessibility for reasons like this is immoral.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Patitapetit

Really? So they (real Pirates) write books. Bravo!

They write cookbooks. They know all about barrrbecue,

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I do have a thought here: Kindles and Kindle app maybe be used to collect information for advertising. This can't be done if:

a) the book is taken out of the ecosystem entirely;
b) the Kindle is permanently offline.

*May* be?

I'm darn sure they collect information!

Case in point, I rarely buy Kindle books. However, not long after Kindle finally got library lending through Overdrive, I'd borrowed some EPUB books from my local library. I had NEVER borrowed any Kindle books through my library. Suddenly, even though I'd not searched for those books on Amazon or bought any from those authors, those particular titles and authors were plastered all over my Amazon.com page as reading recommendations.

Just saying...

[DNSB]

Circumstantial, yer honour. Nothing but circumstantial!

[Patitapetit]

Originally Posted by graycyn

*May* be?



Case in point, I rarely buy Kindle books. However, not long after Kindle finally got library lending through Overdrive, I'd borrowed some EPUB books from my local library. I had NEVER borrowed any Kindle books through my library. Suddenly, even though I'd not searched for those books on Amazon or bought any from those authors, those particular titles and authors were plastered all over my Amazon.com page as reading recommendations.

Just saying...

So why u Here?

[Josieb1]

Just caught up on this thread. I exclusively read on a kobo now, managed through calibre, but I still buy books from Amazon. I have a Voyage so downloading is still okay (right now). I’m happy to always own an eink kindle so I can download purchases but if the downloads stop then I’ll buy from kobo or ideally Smashwords. I want my ebooks drm free and stored in calibre.