just to be clear, this does not affect the people who actually pirate ebooks, you can still download mobi files all over the internet and transfer them onto your kindle. it's only an impediment for people who legally purchase kindle ebooks that have DRM intact and want to transfer them to the device via USB.
it's not targeting the ebook pirates who knows about libgen, it's just meant to annoy the people who borrow an ebook from their library and want to keep it an extra couple days by turning off their kindle's wifi. that's what they mean by "piracy".
Nobody does that. Download and Transfer was used because it would give AZW3 instead of the newer KFX file format. DRM on KFX is much harder to remove, if at all. AZW3 is possible, hence why they are closing this "loophole".
It's still stupid because basically any book can be pirated in about 10 minutes with a knife and a sheetfed document scanner.
Guilty as charged! I've used it to de-DRM and transfer my bought ebooks to read them on my pocketbook. But, good to know that me, refusing to buy another kindle as a successor to my Kindle Voyage was the right decision. Every aspect of amazon these days is garbage experience - be it retail, books or video. Also got rid of prime years ago.
"Nobody uses this except for those that do, and those people are filthy dirty rotten thieves who are garbage." Or, you know, people who want to backup their purchased media precisely because of this sort of move.
> What on earth is wrong with the people who write this kind of garbage?
They're employees of scummy companies that also happen to exist largely to sell Amazon products. This site (goodereader) sells a lot of Kindles in their store, and you don't have to do much googling to see how former customers feel about them. Of course they're Amazon lackeys.
Edit: It's been interesting to watch the votes on this comment swing up and down so much. Lots of activity but overall pretty split opinions it seems!
The part about it not being something many use is probably true in percentage terms. The part about it being used for piracy is hard to prove. Piracy in this context would likely be giving it to others - I personally think it's unlikely.
> same. I've bought it. I'm reading it on my kindle, phone, Linux laptop, etc and nobody's going to stop me.
Technically piracy (not that I particularly care). Technically in the USA removing DRM is also piracy, so I guess they're right? Again, don't actually care and would do the same, but I find your response ironic.
The law is pretty complicated though. I think if it's for yourself it's fair use, but 17 U.S. Code § 1201 says otherwise. I'm not a lawyer, sad.
Piracy is ill-defined and so it's hard to say what is or isn't for such an informal term, but even if it weren't: removing the DRM of stuff you purchased legally, and for your own use, is not "piracy" by any reasonable use of the word.
I think most people's definition is roughly "obtaining and consuming media you haven't paid for in violation of copyright." Sometimes it's just about obtaining something in violation of copyright, even if you've already bought it (e.g. "I always buy things and then pirate them anyway because I hate the DRM but still want to support the creators."). Very few would consider stripping DRM on files you already have to be piracy, even if the DMCA forbids it, because the vast majority of people consider transfer of copyrighted material to be foundational to the meaning of the word.
Probably at Amazon HQ there lives a shitty PowerPoint, and one of that PowerPoint's slides says, "What to do with pirates who don't believe they are pirates". And this solution was in the speaker notes.
This. I can only open kindle books on the kindle app. Other apps allow for pen markup and better reading experiences like text to speech... I can't see myself buying any more books from the kindle store.
What one earth is wrong with the people who write this kind of garbage?