Amazon removed books from my Kindle

[Sumanuil]

Originally Posted by haertig

That's one reason to remove DRM. And there are probably 10,000 other reasons to remove DRM that you haven't thought about yet.

I have, that's just the main one for me.

[Scoob]

As of this weekend STEAM now has a checkout banner reminding you that whatever you buy isn't a game but a license to play your game.
Does Amazon explicitly come out and say something similar, that you aren't buying an ebook you're infact buying a license or some such to read your book? I mostly read KU titles and free book club things so I haven't bought a Kindle book for a while now.

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

The problem is, when you convert something to AZW3, Calibre sets the EBOK tag automatically and there's no way around it.

That strikes me as a calibre issue, not an Amazon problem.

Originally Posted by shamanNS

You edited QualityCheck plugin to set PDOC instead of EBOK?

Originally Posted by zzjing

Yep.

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I just did the same, to see if I'd succeed. Yep, now I can set the cdetype to PDOC for all the AZW3 files in bulk (Calibre sets it to EBOK by default, and there's no way to change this behavior) ...

Perhaps Sirtel or zzjing could share how they modified the QualityCheck plugin and/or share with kiwidude (QualityCheck plugin creator) and ask him to incorporate it into the plugin.

(Personally, it doesn't matter to me since I use Send-to-Kindle to transfer all my personal docs — yes, yes, I know Amazon is going to steal my soul as a result, blah, blah, blah ... — but sharing this modification may calm some of the uproar over here among those who want to sideload via USB.)

ETA: If anyone's willing to use Sigil, Doitsu's KindleGenQt plugin can be modified to create AZW3 with cdetype PDOC.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Scoob

As of this weekend STEAM now has a checkout banner reminding you that whatever you buy isn't a game but a license to play your game.
Does Amazon explicitly come out and say something similar, that you aren't buying an ebook you're infact buying a license or some such to read your book? I mostly read KU titles and free book club things so I haven't bought a Kindle book for a while now.

Under the "Buy now with 1-Click" button it states "By clicking the above button, you agree to the Kindle Store Terms of Use" and that links to a page which states in part "Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider."

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by odamizu

That strikes me as a calibre issue, not an Amazon problem.

It may be a calibre issue, but it doesn't mean it's ok for Amazon to just delete random files from users' devices without any action on the user's part.

Perhaps Sirtel or zzjing could share how they modified the QualityCheck plugin and/or share with kiwidude (QualityCheck plugin creator) and ask him to incorporate it into the plugin.

All I did was to replace EBOK with PDOC in check_fix.py in the plugin archive. I'm not sure that's a method everyone would want to use, as it replaces a feature (fix ASIN for Kindle Fire) with its opposite. Ideally the fix would be added as an additional feature, not replacing an existing feature, but I'm no coder and that would be beyond my scant skill set.

[Quoth]

It's not a Calibre issue. It's purely an Amazon bug. They can't be doing it deliberately as the publicity and possibly fines would be disastrous.

There are multiple issues now with the Amazon Kindle system and mostly it's stupidity.

[Scoob]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Under the "Buy now with 1-Click" button it states "By clicking the above button, you agree to the Kindle Store Terms of Use" and that links to a page which states in part "Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider."

Thank you. Hopefully there is a retailer out there with the opposite stance of Amazon.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by odamizu

I thought it was only books that were not purchased from Amazon but made to look like they were (EBOK) or they were purchased from Amazon, stripped of DRM, edited, made to look like an original Amazon purchase (EBOK) then sideloaded via USB.

As long as it was purchased from Amazon, and the database says it should be on the device, then it should stay there.

An e-book on the device shouldn't have to exactly match the current version that would be downloaded from Amazon to be considered "legal to stay on the device".

Even stripping the DRM shouldn't matter, as I'm pretty sure Amazon doesn't keep track of the exact days a publisher requested no DRM for a book. So, even if the current book on Amazon has DRM on download, it's possible that an older one did not. It's only fairly recently that all books from Amazon have a form of DRM.

[DiapDealer]

So the answer is no, then. Unmodified side-loaded purchases are not being deleted by Amazon with this bug. Only files that have been diddled in some way. I'm not making a value judgement here, but when tracking down bugs, it doesn't help to confuse the issue by providing technically inaccurate info. What Amazon should or shouldn't do is not relevant when trying to tell people IF they will be affected by the bug, or how to potentially work around being affected by it.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

when tracking down bugs, it doesn't help to confuse the issue by providing technically inaccurate info. What Amazon should or shouldn't do is not relevant when trying to tell people IF they will be affected by the bug, or how to potentially work around being affected by it.

Too bad that these words of wisdom are doomed to not be taken to heart, lost in the noise, etc.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Scoob

Thank you. Hopefully there is a retailer out there with the opposite stance of Amazon.

That stance is from publishers, not amazon (excepting KFX).

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It's not a Calibre issue. It's purely an Amazon bug.

Only if it is a plugin setting EBOK, otherwise calibre is triggering an amazon bug by setting an amazon defined value, which makes it a calibre issue.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Sumanuil

I only remove DRM in the first place because Amazon's transcriptions are frequently terrible. For example, they changed every every "torc" into "tore" in a book literally called "The Golden Torc". Another turned every "cl" into a "d". If they had a human being checking the output, I wouldn't need to.

Those look like OCR issues, which are publisher responsibilities. amazon does not "transcribe" or proof read, and there is no reason to expect them to do so, any more than every bookstore should read every title that they stock.

When such errors are that extensive and reported to amazon, amazon will issue a warning to the publisher to fix them or have the book pulled from amazon.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Under the "Buy now with 1-Click" button it states "By clicking the above button, you agree to the Kindle Store Terms of Use" and that links to a page which states in part "Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider."

A license does not give the grantor the authority to do whatever they want whenever they want. Does the Amazon license say something like "By purchasing this license, you agree that Amazon can remove this content from your device unilaterally for any reason they choose". I kind of doubt that. When you license something, there are terms that both the licensee and the grantor are expected to follow. The grantor does not have carte blanche to do whatever they want.

Not that the above matters in the case we are discussing. If Amazon removes content from your device that you didn't get from them, and thus no license from them is involved, under what legal premise do they claim they get to remove that content? There would have to be some kind of clause in the Kindle hardware/firmware "license" that says "By connecting this device to the internet, you agree to allow it to connect to Amazon servers and for Amazon to modify/delete any of its contents, including non-Amazon content, if said content contains the letters E B O and K".

Knowing Amazon, the above clause probably DOES exist in small print on line 9247 of the purchase/license agreement.

[Sumanuil]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Those look like OCR issues, which are publisher responsibilities. amazon does not "transcribe" or proof read, and there is no reason to expect them to do so, any more than every bookstore should read every title that they stock.

When such errors are that extensive and reported to amazon, amazon will issue a warning to the publisher to fix them or have the book pulled from amazon.

Ok, I just didn't know who was doing the OCR. And people have complained.