Really?
Meanwhile, I can still read physical books I've had since I was a child, 40 years ago. The Kindle is undeniably more convenient than physical books, but this is absolutely an unnecessary sunset of these devices.
I've stuck with Kindle, but that's 80% inertia (Amazon has most books, the device works well enough) and 20% existing library is Kindle e-books.
If this is a hint at much more formidable DRM coming out, could a silver lining for authors and publishers be more sales?
Or is mass piracy going to just continue, full steam ahead?
(Authors and publishers need any bit of good news they can get right now.)
Amazon accumulating even more control over the ebook market is not good news for authors and publishers.
None of my books stop working after 12 years, but my kindle, which still works fine, has indeed failed to do it's most basic job.
Being more technically capable than typical, I’m hardly a normal customer to try to target, but the way I see it all this does is piss off the minority who care and are capable of getting around restrictions. Those who don’t care or aren’t capable will just continue getting cluelessly fucked over as always. These measures less about effectiveness, and more like a money themed emotional support affirmation for someone in a suit. It helps them feel like they are accomplishing something, but that’s it.
I haven’t checked lately, but I expect that “AI” tools that easily and accurately rip and format data from a picture feed of a screen will become the way to go for bypassing whatever clever encryption schemes come along. This also has the benefit of ignoring the steganographic tracking data hidden in paid files, making piracy ultimately easier for the uninformed. This sort of thing was always possible, but was a bit janky and laborious.
If anyone has similar tools they like I’d love to hear.
Mass piracy will continue full steam ahead at current rates.
Most of these sites allow you to read on a computer screen and those can be captured and OCR'd. And if they don't allow that, you can take a photo of your device and OCR that. And if you can't do that, you can manually type in the book. There's always a way, and it will always happen to any books that publishers are making any kind of profit on.
These devices came out in 2007-2012
14-19 years is a respectable lifetime for a handheld electronic device.
But there's a very simple reason that Amazon is cutting support for these. Many people (myself included--I have a 4th Gen still kicking around) keep one around because, after Amazon removed the Download option for Ebooks awhile back, having one of these old Kindles is the only way to download ebooks in a format from Amazon that can have their DRM cracked.
All Kindles newer than a certain date use the KFX format, with an encryption scheme that is constantly changing (basically any time someone figures out how to break it, Amazon updates it). Killing support for these old devices is basically Amazon's last step in removing "legacy" encryption schemes that can still be broken.
It would be the equivalent of Nintendo delivering a new firmware update for their Wii and Wii-U systems, in order to patch out a recently-discovered exploit. It serves no other purpose than to demonstrate the extreme contempt for Amazon's end-users and the lengths they're willing to go to combat user-freedom^W "piracy".
Bad news: Amazon is monitoring them and hasn't let up on efforts to update the DRM.
(Which in this case is likely DRM-related, which drops my sympathy meter below zero.)
And I haven’t even touched all the problems with normal sideloaded books like broken embedded/publisher fonts.
Kindle settings > help > contact us > email if you want to voice complaints.
For anyone looking for recommendations, I really enjoyed Pluto, Yokohama Shopping Log, and Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games.
Ed25519 isn’t so new that the hardware wouldn’t be capable.
I think you are very much out of touch with the average book/e-book consumer.
I do enjoy owning physical copies of books I liked, and they are part of the “decor” at home at this point. I have limited space so I have 2 completely stacked bookshelves, and then piles of books around the kitchen on top of the cupboards etc.
So I don’t think it needs to be “either or”. :)
There are (and have been) DRM-free eBook stores. You _might_ be able to strip the DRM from your Amazon books. However, the process and ease of doing so seems to change often, I don't know if it's easy or hard right now.
In the future, consider supporting ebook manufacturers and stores that don't lock down your device, and sell DRM-free books. Kobo is one example. We have a bunch of these in our household. They don't require an account, I can just upload books via USB port on any computer, and they are pretty hackable.
Havoc•1h ago
They also killed the ability to download books from the website a while back so directly of travel is pretty clear here.
rationalist•1h ago