Should I avoid putting these on my kindle?

[Tuongsp91]

Just a bit curious about this as a new kindle owner. I've been downloading a good few books and downloaded one load of books. Now these are meant to be free books but I noticed they aren't free on amazon. Should I avoid putting these on my kindle as I could be accused of pirating or something? Im a little unsure how it all works?

I am fine to convert whatever PDF's I have and read them on the kindle too?

[cvkemp]

Yes I do it all of the time.

[GlenBarrington]

As long as you are certain you acquired them legally, I'd say to load them.

I load books from Baen onto my Paperwhite all the time.

Amazon makes it a tiny bit more difficult to load non Amazon sourced books onto a Kindle, but it doesn't make it impossible, nor does it tie you to them exclusively. The people running Amazon know the convenience of Amazon's book buying structure will far outweigh the value of a few lost sales.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Tuongsp91

Just a bit curious about this as a new kindle owner. I've been downloading a good few books and downloaded one load of books. Now these are meant to be free books but I noticed they aren't free on amazon. Should I avoid putting these on my kindle as I could be accused of pirating or something? Im a little unsure how it all works?

I am fine to convert whatever PDF's I have and read them on the kindle too?

It's fine to put books obtained elsewhere for free onto your Kindle. Provided you're sure that they're not pirated, but were legitimately available for free.

If you've obtained copies of recent, popular books for free from a site that doesn't belong to the author or publisher, they are almost certainly pirated.

E.g. If you've downloaded the Harry Potter books for free from some random website, they're pirated.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

E.g. If you've downloaded the Harry Potter books for free from some random website, they're pirated.

Interesting example. I have long wanted to read HP in the original UK English edition, but nobody (not even Pottermore) offers the UK edition for sale in USA (French, Spanish, German etc, yes). I’m sure I’m missing something in the translation to the degraded form of English that is in common use here.

It is a totally bizarre digital rights situation, though it is no doubt worse if you live somewhere like Bulgaria and cannot buy anything legally.

But I’m not motivated enough to seek out pirated copies.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Interesting example. I have long wanted to read HP in the original UK English edition, but nobody (not even Pottermore) offers the UK edition for sale in USA (French, Spanish, German etc, yes). I’m sure I’m missing something in the translation to the degraded form of English that is in common use here.

It is a totally bizarre digital rights situation, though it is no doubt worse if you live somewhere like Bulgaria and cannot buy anything legally.

But I’m not motivated enough to seek out pirated copies.

Bulgaria is a EU member and I'm sure you can buy most of the things there that you can buy elsewhere in Europe. Just saying.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Interesting example. I have long wanted to read HP in the original UK English edition, but nobody (not even Pottermore) offers the UK edition for sale in USA (French, Spanish, German etc, yes). I’m sure I’m missing something in the translation to the degraded form of English that is in common use here.

It is a totally bizarre digital rights situation, though it is no doubt worse if you live somewhere like Bulgaria and cannot buy anything legally.

But I’m not motivated enough to seek out pirated copies.

The illustrated Kindle in motion editions are original text that you could buy. (Still says HP and Sorcerer's Stone on cover though, that title is translated).

[darryl]

To address the more practical aspects of the matter, we do know that Kindle devices and apps send information to Amazon, but we do not know exactly what is sent. Amazon certainly appreciates the value of data. I would be quite surprised if Amazon did not gather some information on side-loaded books, if only to track what ebooks its customers choose to buy elsewhere, or should I say acquire elsewhere. The minimum information I expect they would gather is numbers of books, but I would not be at all surprised to find that they gather very detailed information on each book. It would be difficult to identify whether such books are pirated or acquired legally, though it would certainly be possible in some cases. I have not heard of a case where Amazon has identified a pirated ebook on a Kindle let alone taken any action. Nor Kobo or any other company making ereaders. I don't think the chances of them doing so are particularly high, at least at the moment. But the fact is if you do put pirated books on these devices and apps you are taking a risk which we simply don't have the information to quantify. Irrespective of any morality it is therefore a risk best avoided. Most ebooks have become very affordable, and for those that aren't the library systems are very good. Why take the risk?

[haertig]

It's your Kindle, do what you want with it. I'm not condoning pirating books. I'm just saying, "It's your Kindle, do what you want with it". Amazon doesn't have a say in the matter, or at least they shouldn't. It's your Kindle. I dare say that Amazon has much more to lose than you if they were to decide to violate their customers privacy expectations. I'm not saying they can't or won't, just that it would be incredibly stupid for them to do so. They're in the business to make money. You won't make money for long if you abuse and piss off your customers, regardless if your abuse is technically legal.

If you're worried about it, after registering your Kindle, put it in airplane mode. Permanently. Delete your WiFi credentials so it doesn't accidentally connect to the internet. You can sideload all your books, even ones you buy from Amazon. You can sideload OS updates too. There is zero necessity for ever putting the Kindle online (after initial set up) other than convenience, and a few features like syncing your reading location across different devices. To get X-Ray and a few other Amazon features you probably need to go online (download the books directly from Amazon rather than sideloading). But if you just want to read a book and don't care about the bling-bling features, just stay offline permanently.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Tuongsp91

Just a bit curious about this as a new kindle owner. I've been downloading a good few books and downloaded one load of books. Now these are meant to be free books but I noticed they aren't free on amazon. ...

Sellers on Amazon often take books from the public domain, "brand them" and resell them for a $1 or $2 (sometimes more). I don't mind that as long as they add some value, like cleaning up formatting or typos. But a lot of times I'll find the same book that Amazon sellers are selling for $2 or $3 on Feedbooks (or other legitimate websites) for free and well formatted.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Tuongsp91

Should I avoid putting these on my kindle as I could be accused of pirating or something? Im a little unsure how it all works?

Nobody has ever been accused of anything based on what they sideload on their Kindle.
Amazon has the ability to see what is on your Kindle, or at least they can update the firmware to add such ability. To my knowledge, they have never ever accused or even contacted anyone regarding the content on the reader. Nobody has even caught them trying to access such info (*).

If you are still uncomfortable, simply switch off the WiFi and "sideload" your books using USB cable. You can even upload your legally purchased books by downloading them to your PC and then using USB cable to put them on Kindle. When I owned the PaperWhite I did it that way. But not because I was afraid they would see what I am reading - I was trying to avoid an unwanted firmware update and adds and I would keep WiFi off most of the time anyway, because it eats up battery charge.

(*) It is very easy to monitor complete communication of the device with the servers. You simply create a specialized WiFi hotspot and monitor it with a wireshark. I did it with a different reader, to capture firmware files the reader was receiving.

[pdurrant]

Moderator Notice
A post has been deleted.

Please do not boast on MobileRead about pirating ebooks. MobileRead does not condone piracy. Members who promote piracy of ebooks may be suspended.

[Tarana]

Amazon doesn't care what you put on your ereader. There is simply no way for them to determine if what you have on your ereader was purchased from another site or not. For instance, I don't own a Kobo but have 300+ books in my Kobo library. They are sideloaded to my kindle. Amazon is unable to determine that I purchased these from Kobo.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Bulgaria is a EU member and I'm sure you can buy most of the things there that you can buy elsewhere in Europe. Just saying.

I stand corrected. Perhaps Khazakhstan then.b

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Amazon doesn't care what you put on your ereader. There is simply no way for them to determine if what you have on your ereader was purchased from another site or not.

There are plenty of ways -- for instance, they can see if a given book on the Kindle has an ASIN, and if it does, if the book is identical to the book of the same ASIN on Amazon's own servers (hashing it and sending the hash uses almost no bandwidth so you'd never notice this check happening), and whether you are on record as having bought that book. For all we know they may be checking precisely this: but what they do not appear to be doing is treating users significantly differently based on whether they buy Kindle books from Amazon or not.