Amazon shutting down CC's Cloud Connection

[chaley]

Today we received this from Amazon:

On August 16, 2019, Calibre Companion's integration to the Amazon Drive API will be discontinued. Customers of Amazon storage will continue to have access to their content through our first party applications for Amazon Photos and Amazon Drive. Please make arrangements to discontinue all traffic to the Amazon API before August 16, 2019.

We don't know if all apps are impacted by this decision or whether CC is special.

[jackie_w]

All in all it's just another brick in the wall.

... with apologies to Pink Floyd

This Amazon thing won't actually make any difference to me, but these corporate walled gardens seem to be getting higher. I was reading earlier today that Apple may be about to make life difficult for calibre and Sigil on Macs. A plague on both their houses.

[stumped]

I doubt that many folks trust amazon drive anyway. I use it for the free with prime unlimited photo storage but that's all. and i duplicate all those photos on google drive anyway, just in case...
in the last couple of years they...
. offered, then removed an unlimited drive storage option
. offered then removed the upload your own music to amazon music. and said download it back again or lose it forever.
. they have made so many changes to whether send to kindle goes to amazon drive or someplace else that i lost the plot on that ages ago
i also think that they, like microsoft, reserve the right to inspect and zap any cloud files of yours which they suspect may be pirated- no warning, no fair trial, no appeal..
[ plex fans who jumped on the unlimited cloud deal fell foul of that]

a cloud product that comes and goes on a corporate whim is not worth investing time and content in

[jdege]

That's one of the reasons I'm hoping CC starts supporting PCloud.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

... with apologies to Pink Floyd

This Amazon thing won't actually make any difference to me, but these corporate walled gardens seem to be getting higher. I was reading earlier today that Apple may be about to make life difficult for calibre and Sigil on Macs. A plague on both their houses.

How is Apple going to make life difficult for Calibre and Sigil users?

I've said this for a long time and I'll say it again here. When dealing with eBooks, Windows is the way to go. It's easier to use as the tools work.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How is Apple going to make life difficult for Calibre and Sigil users?

It was a month ago, but I think this was the thread I had just read which caused me to mention, in passing, potential problems for Mac users of calibre/Sigil. I don't own any Apple devices (nor ever likely to) so I didn't pay too much attention to finer details - something to do with developer signing/notarization.

There has also been a flurry of activity today in the thread for Sigil's epubcheck plugin - something to do with python 3.6 and certificates on MacOS.

Neither of the above is CC-related as far as I know.

[dmcritchie]

As it happens, I just changed from Dropbox to Amazon drive because of login and other problems with Dropbox. Now, Amazon drive sees my entire Calibre library, but when I try to download a book to two of my Android devices (which used to work with Dropbox until I needed to login again) I get the "Cannot save book XXX to device memory".
And it is not a read-only SD card problem because CC was able to download books when I was using Dropbox.
Does this problem sound like it could be caused by the Amazon drive policy change?

P.S. another vote for pCloud...

[chaley]

@dmcritchie: See the FAQ [Android] CC suddenly says it cannot write books to my SD card. What do I do?. There are lots of ways that CC can lose permissions on a folder.

[dmcritchie]

@chaley, thanks for the reply. Yes, I had already read that FAQ. And as I wrote, *both* these devices (Galaxy S7 and Nook eReader) were able to write to the SD card when I was using Dropbox. Then I switched to Amazon drive and suddenly neither of them can.

I am willing to believe that one of those devices lost permission to write to the CC folder, but hard to believe that both of them lost it at the same time.

Of course, I can't try to go back to Dropbox because of its login problem...

Will try OneDrive, see if I have more luck, and report back.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by dmcritchie

@chaley, thanks for the reply. Yes, I had already read that FAQ. And as I wrote, *both* these devices (Galaxy S7 and Nook eReader) were able to write to the SD card when I was using Dropbox. Then I switched to Amazon drive and suddenly neither of them can.

I am willing to believe that one of those devices lost permission to write to the CC folder, but hard to believe that both of them lost it at the same time.

Did you try regranting permissions after you received the error?

I ask because the Amazon connection works fine for me. Of course, Amazon says that it will stop working on 16 August so I don't think that it is worth a lot of effort to make it work now.

Of course, I can't try to go back to Dropbox because of its login problem...

You can't use the workaround, using gmail authentication?

[dmcritchie]

>Did you try regranting permissions after you received the error?

I had done that for the Nook, but no joy. I just did it now on the S7 and found that its CC folder was in internal memory. But I reselected it anyway, and still wasn't able to save a book.

BTW, when I do this on either device, I am never asked to allow a permission. CC does tell me that my library will be moved though, so I believe I am following your instructions correctly. And the "move" is instantaneous, so CC appears to see that the old and new folders are the same and skips the copy.

>You can't use the workaround, using gmail authentication?

Yes, I suppose I could do that, but I don't like the idea of granting Dropbox any access to my Google account. It may be benign, but I don't trust any of the big boys to do the right thing w/r/t my privacy anymore.

I'm syncing to OneDrive as I write and will see if it works any better for me. If no joy, I'll have to send you a debug log, I'm afraid.

More when I know more...

Thanks, @chaley!

[dmcritchie]

@chaley: OK, I switched to OneDrive and I can now save books in the CC folder on both my Nook and my S7 once again. So it does not appear to have been a permission problem.

Perhaps Amazon is deprecating new connections but allowing previously established 3rd-party connections to continue to work, which might explain why you can still save books from Amazon drive...

Anyway, as you say, not worth a lot of effort since they're going to cut CC off soon, but thought you might like to know in case other problem reports come in. I hope MS doesn't follow Dropbox and Amazon in making life difficult for CC and its users.

[Serenity23]

Sorry to bump such an old thread, but I wanted to confirm if Amazon Cloud works for new folks? I got an internal error that doesn't show a log in screen, but wanted to double check before I cancel my Amazon Cloud account (lol).

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by Serenity23

Sorry to bump such an old thread, but I wanted to confirm if Amazon Cloud works for new folks? I got an internal error that doesn't show a log in screen, but wanted to double check before I cancel my Amazon Cloud account (lol).

Wait with cancelling - CC is buggy.
I have Problems with Box and with Login with OneDrive.

[arsalan.siddiqui]

Please provide reviews on Google play store/ Amazon Play store etc so that other people stop buying this tool.