Amazon removed books from my Kindle

[shalym]

Originally Posted by morpheus

Another victim here. My Kindle Scribe is usually offline, but I noticed last year I lost a lot of sideloaded books that I added via USB & Calibre.

Unfortunately it happened to me again recently just before I boarded a 16 hour flight because I had to sync with a PDF document that I'd emailed to myself. I was pretty bored for 16 hours with none of the books I wanted to read!

I wasn't aware of the azw file format or what Calibre was doing with EBOK vs PDOC.

It's very disappointing - either it's a stupid bug or Amazon thinks they have the right to mess with personally owned devices. Either is not a good answer. Keeping wifi off isn't much of an option either for people who use the Scribe to take notes.

I believe that this only happens if the Kindle has the wifi turned off for a long period of time. For those people who leave their wifi turned on all the time, the books don't get deleted.

I could be wrong though...I've never experienced the problem. Of course I also leave wifi on almost all the time.

Shari

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by shalym

I believe that this only happens if the Kindle has the wifi turned off for a long period of time. For those people who leave their wifi turned on all the time, the books don't get deleted.

I could be wrong though...I've never experienced the problem. Of course I also leave wifi on almost all the time.

From what I have read about others' experiences and my own experimentation the triggers are:

1. Having a book with a valid ASIN and EBOK cdetype on your device.
2. Amazon does not have a record that says you are entitled to the book whether you did not purchase it from Amazon, it is an expired KU loan or whatever other reason.
3. You have not connected to Amazon for an extended period (airplane mode, camping with no WiFi connections, whatever.
4. Connect to WiFi and Amazon purges your device of what they seem to consider as illicit content.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

nded period (airplane mode, camping with no WiFi connections, whatever.
[4]Connect to WiFi and Amazon purges your device of what they seem to consider as illicit content.

Except, legally, they can't do that. There is a longer answer. In fact, even if a bug, this is criminal behaviour by Amazon, even if the content was illicit, though usually it's not.

[BionicGecko]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Except, legally, they can't do that. There is a longer answer. In fact, even if a bug, this is criminal behaviour by Amazon, even if the content was illicit, though usually it's not.

This discussion comes back often, and for this I tend to side with Amazon somewhat. The books are not deleted as part of some Orwellian plot aiming to erase history; it is just a side-effect of the misuse of the EBOK tag in a proprietary field used by Amazon to identify books they provide vs other books. As they operate a loan service (either through KU or Libby), there is a legitimate use case for deleting books that appear to be Amazon-sourced without a valid license.

Amazon doesn’t delete personal documents, regardless of what they are. If one is concerned about losing sideloaded books, they can just flag them as PDOC.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by BionicGecko

This discussion comes back often, and for this I tend to side with Amazon somewhat. The books are not deleted as part of some Orwellian plot aiming to erase history; it is just a side-effect of the misuse of the EBOK tag in a proprietary field used by Amazon to identify books they provide vs other books. As they operate a loan service (either through KU or Libby), there is a legitimate use case for deleting books that appear to be Amazon-sourced without a valid license.

Amazon doesn’t delete personal documents, regardless of what they are. If one is concerned about losing sideloaded books, they can just flag them as PDOC.

No, it's not legitimate even if a bug. They need a court order in most countries. It's no different to a library manager entering your house without permission and removing an overdue library book.

I'm assuming it's a bug they need to fix. They should never delete anything on an app or a Kindle unless the user has flagged it, maybe on their "Content" web page. Amazon are entitled to delete "cloud" content, if they give a warning in advance. They've done that, which is legitmate (mp3s?).

[BionicGecko]

Are you arguing that Amazon should just leave all loaned books on the lendees’ Kindle until they (the lendee) agrees to remove them? That would break the whole digital lending business model; everyone would just keep loaned books forever. Amazon (or any business or institution lending digital goods for that matter) needs a way to enforce that loaned books are returned when the loan is over.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by BionicGecko

Are you arguing that Amazon should just leave all loaned books on the lendees’ Kindle until they (the lendee) agrees to remove them? That would break the whole digital lending business model; everyone would just keep loaned books forever. Amazon (or any business or institution lending digital goods for that matter) needs a way to enforce that loaned books are returned when the loan is over.

This is nonsense not worth answering. What bit do you not get about that Amazon is deleting non-loan material?

However, neither DRM nor "loans" gives Amazon any rights to delete content on a users device. They need a court order in most countries.
Other ebook libraries don't delete random content from your ereader or app.

How many of these kindle users even use KU?

The normal DRM method on loaned material is that it won't open when expired, which is presumably why you can't change the date on most Kindles.


I oppose DRM on bought content. I think DRM on borrowed/loaned/rented content is entirely reasonable and sufficent.

[shamanNS]

@BionicGecko Then Amazon should create a better way to detected what is and what isn't expired loan. EBOK + not in user account catalog is clearly not enough.

[Hollow Man]

While annoying (it happened to me!), it just doesn't do any good to get irate over the issue. They aren't doing this maliciously; it's overzealous cleanup.

So until the consumer is able to get through to Amazon's programmers to have them come up with a better solution, the easiest thing to do to solve it is to flag those books as personal docs.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by shamanNS

@BionicGecko Then Amazon should create a better way to detected what is and what isn't expired loan. EBOK + not in user account catalog is clearly not enough.

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

While annoying (it happened to me!), it just doesn't do any good to get irate over the issue. They aren't doing this maliciously; it's overzealous cleanup.

So until the consumer is able to get through to Amazon's programmers to have them come up with a better solution, the easiest thing to do to solve it is to flag those books as personal docs.

Yes. I agree.

[BionicGecko]

Originally Posted by Quoth

This is nonsense not worth answering. What bit do you not get about that Amazon is deleting non-loan material?

Originally Posted by shamanNS

@BionicGecko Then Amazon should create a better way to detected what is and what isn't expired loan. EBOK + not in user account catalog is clearly not enough.

AZW3 is not an open format, AFAIK Amazon has never officially released the specs to the general public. People are using it in a way it was not intended to be used. There are no legitimate uses for setting the document type to EBOK on a personal document; the only reason to do so it to use features that Amazon normally reserves for books you buy from them. Amazon has absolutely no reason to develop a complex way to identify Amazon books that doesn't simply rely on the document type, as this is the very purpose of this field.

Amazon has no problem with people sideloading books, and they do provide a way to do so, i.e. Personal Documents. The removal of books only happens to people who "hack" their way around Amazon's format. At the end of the day, if someone deliberately misuses a proprietary field in a proprietary format, they can't make a shocked Pikachu face when things don't go as they expected.

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

While annoying (it happened to me!), it just doesn't do any good to get irate over the issue. They aren't doing this maliciously; it's overzealous cleanup.

Indeed

[JSWolf]

When you convert an ePub to KF8 using KindleGen and then MobiUnpack to split the KF8 from the Mobi, what is the book type set? is it EBOK or PDOC?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

When you convert an ePub to KF8 using KindleGen and then MobiUnpack to split the KF8 from the Mobi, what is the book type set? is it EBOK or PDOC?

Why don't you try yourself?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by BionicGecko

Amazon has no problem with people sideloading books, and they do provide a way to do so, i.e. Personal Documents. The removal of books only happens to people who "hack" their way around Amazon's format. At the end of the day, if someone deliberately misuses a proprietary field in a proprietary format, they can't make a shocked Pikachu face when things don't go as they expected.

And people started to "hack" because Amazon refused to display covers for books marked as PDOC. Now they do, but why play such games? (Of course I know the answer... they want you to buy everything from them.)

[jlinear]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

And people started to "hack" because . . .

One of my primary reasons to "hack" is to rectify the pathetically limited formatting options built into the device.