Amazon ends allowing downloads

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Frankly I don't know anyone who doesn't have data on their smartphone. It's not particularly expensive here.

Expensive here.

[jhowell]

Everyone is upset with Amazon over the removal of D&T, rushing to download their entire library while they can. But what if Amazon isn't as truly evil as they appear to be? There is a planned announcement from Amazon's hardware division today at 10AM eastern time. Perhaps it will go something like this:

"Welcome and good morning. Starting today we have discontinued the popular Download and Transfer via USB feature of our web site. And now I am here to announce its replacement, the new Open Download feature. That's right starting today you can download DRM-free copies of all of your purchased books in the industry standard EPUB format so that you can read them on whatever device or platform you desire. Downloads are now easy and unlimited. In fact you can download every book in your library with a dingle click!

Sorry, just kidding. Now moving on to the real announcement...AI-lexa!

Our new super-LLM has been trained on the entire content of Amazon's vast Kindle book collection. Now instead of having to slog through long and boring books just to impress your friends and partners you now can now have AI-lexa hallucinate a one minute summary of the book so that everyone else will believe you have actually read it. Put down that old Kindle and get back to doomscrolling TikTok on your phone today!"

[lbschenkel]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Everyone is upset with Amazon over the removal of D&T, rushing to download their entire library while they can. But what if Amazon isn't as truly evil as they appear to be? There is a planned announcement from Amazon's hardware division today at 10AM eastern time. Perhaps it will go something like this:

"Welcome and good morning. Starting today we have discontinued the popular Download and Transfer via USB feature of our web site. And now I am here to announce its replacement, the new Open Download feature. That's right starting today you can download DRM-free copies of all of your purchased books in the industry standard EPUB format so that you can read them on whatever device or platform you desire. Downloads are now easy and unlimited. In fact you can download every book in your library with a dingle click!

Sorry, just kidding. Now moving on to the real announcement...AI-lexa!

Our new super-LLM has been trained on the entire content of Amazon's vast Kindle book collection. Now instead of having to slog through long and boring books just to impress your friends and partners you now can now have AI-lexa hallucinate a one minute summary of the book so that everyone else will believe you have actually read it. Put down that old Kindle and get back to doomscrolling TikTok on your phone today!"

I know it was in jest, but I'm going to cross-post my own comment elsewhere:

Originally Posted by lbschenkel

So, right now at Feb 26 13:14 UTC:

• amazon.com.br already removed the "download & transfer" menu item. It's gone.
• amazon.co.uk still offers the option.
• amazon.com still offers the option.

I didn't check other domains because those are the only ones I ever bought books from.

Initially I thought it was due to time zone, but then it doesn't make sense that the BR store removed the option before the UK one. Anyway, to me this indicates it wasn't a "bluff" and it will be gone everywhere in a matter of hours.

I believe there's zero hope of have any backtracking on today's announcement...

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Frankly I don't know anyone who doesn't have data on their smartphone. It's not particularly expensive here.

Not everyone WANTS a Smart phone. My landlord is happy with his flip phone.
(he has a Tablet for work)
I have a Smart phone, but it is mostly for calls and a Vkeyboard (the tap 123 for messages is my downfall)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

Not everyone WANTS a Smart phone. My landlord is happy with his flip phone.
(he has a Tablet for work)
I have a Smart phone, but it is mostly for calls and a Vkeyboard (the tap 123 for messages is my downfall)

I think a simple smartphone would do well. LCD screen, phone app, calendar, directory, and messaging apps.

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by theducks

Not everyone WANTS a Smart phone. My landlord is happy with his flip phone.
(he has a Tablet for work)
I have a Smart phone, but it is mostly for calls and a Vkeyboard (the tap 123 for messages is my downfall)

I got rid of my smartphone coming up to a year ago, it was all part of de-googling myself, got rid of my tablet first, went to Linux Mint on a laptop, then got rid of my smartphone, then got rid of my gmail account and went to Posteo for my emails (a German privacy respecting email provider, you have to pay but it's only 1 euro a month)

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I think a simple smartphone would do well. LCD screen, phone app, calendar, directory, and messaging apps.

Dumb phones do messagin, Call waiting.
The answer is NO (I tried a long time ago) He runs a old school Machine shop. The smartest thing is his Tablet, because that is now how his ling time clients now send their prints (and wan invoices. Those used to be by FAX).

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Lots of people using PAYG rather than contract don't have data on the mobile, too expensive, so only use WiFi on the phone, and via known airpoints. When I used to travel I had a VPN server at home and connected to it if using a public WiFi.

A 32 G ereader can store about 18,000 ebooks and 4 G maybe 1800. I've always had plenty to read if out in the last twelve years of having an ereader. I'd only ever buy an ebook online with my PC or laptop.

This would be me. I only have 5gb of data on my $15.00 a month T-Mobile plan, so downloading anything while out is out of the question.

I do all my purchasing/downloading on my pc at home. I don't keep sensitive data on my phone.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Heck, I have unlimited data on my phone.So there's no need to use public WiFi if I have a good enough signal.

Is it real unlimited data? Or a cellphone provider's version of unlimited? One friend of mine signed up years back for "unlimited" data. This turned out to be the first 50GB at full 4G speed and then slowing down as you used more data. By the time they got to 100GB, an 56K dialup connection would have been faster.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I had a VPN server at home and connected to it if using a public WiFi

I have that as well - the VPN is running on my primary router. It's the only way to get to our desktop computers. These have sensitive information on them.

You can get to my one "public" server on a separate VLAN via an NGINX reverse proxy running in a Docker container. That proxy serves up a few applications that I can access from outside (Calibre-Web, Plex, Navidrome, Nextcloud, Lychee). These are also in their own Docker containers.

Any time I connect to public WiFi, I immediately connect to my home's VPN. That's if I'm on my laptop, tablet, cellphone, etc.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Is it real unlimited data? Or a cellphone provider's version of unlimited?

I used to work for an ISP and know others in other ISPs. Also I can read fine print. Fine print will mention "fair use".

No-one offers real unlimited, not even on fibre. Same on Hosting. Some will charge above a certain threshold, or repeated breaking of a threshold, others will throttle and others cut you off.

Mobile/Cell capacity is so limited that "unlimited" is a lie and unfair to the majority of users as the high consumption users are slowing everyone else and being subsidised.

The repeat limit on Cell/Mobile can be from 100G to 500G for "fair use" and can be 1 or 2 T byte on fibre. Maybe much more on fibre. Cable varies in capacity according to size of coax segment, which might have been 100 to 2000 people in the past, but with HFC where fibre goes to a cabinet feeding coax it can be as few as 10 households. With DSL and Fibre the bottleneck is the fibre or microwave feeding the exchange. With mobile/cell tower on fibre the limit the channel size / number of channels / signal strengh and sector size (aerial system). Satellite is the worst for capacity as it might have the speed of one cell/mobile mast but shared to 100x to 10,000x the area.

[kennyc]

**Yep. As promised Amazon has removed the Download and Transfer option from it's Content Library**

[drofgnal]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

This would be me. I only have 5gb of data on my $15.00 a month T-Mobile plan, so downloading anything while out is out of the question.

I do all my purchasing/downloading on my pc at home. I don't keep sensitive data on my phone.

5 gb is a pretty good amount of data. My wife and I share 9 gb of data and the only time we ran over was during a 6 day hurricane induced power outage. I streamed TV using my phone as a hot spot. That ran over quickly, then ATT announced they weren't charging for overages in the hurricane areas, but they did throttle it so TV wasn't available anymore.

[Quoth]

Mobile / Cell "self throttles" if more than about 5 users on on mast sector!

I have two phones. The one with 2FA SMS and a few apps from STUPID companies with no web version stays in the house. The jacket pocket one has nothing of consequence beyond the contact list.

[Graham44]

Well I just did some test purchases from Kobo (knew that worked already), Hive (knew that worked already) and Rebellion Publishing (hadn't tried them until now) and running them through Calibre they all worked seamlessly so this afternoon I am going to say goodbye to Amazon and delete my account

Looking at smaller publishers/ retailers like Rebellion and Hive has actually bought back some of the joys of shopping for books, Amazon had become too big and bloated with unrelated hits to any searches I did to be fun anymore.

Haven't tried Angry Robot yet, *sigh* looks like I will have to buy another e-book