Comments on: Kindle user claims Amazon deleted whole library without explanation

By: Svein Olav G. Nyberg

Svein Olav G. Nyberg — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 07:46:00 +0000

If your router is password protected: Just don’t enter that password into the Kindle.

By: The Rizz

The Rizz — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:02:00 +0000

Because there’s no such thing as open access points.
Also, some of those readers are 3G enabled, so no WiFi needed.

By: DontArgueWithMe

DontArgueWithMe — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:34:00 +0000

You aren’t looking in the right places. Easily %90 of what I read is self published. By far most of them are pretty good. Certainly not bound to be classics, but readable.

Yes, you find the occasional piece of crap. Those are the ones I’m careful to leave a review for!

By: Eltanin Publishing

Eltanin Publishing — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:42:00 +0000

If publishers sell their books without DRM (as many small publishers do on Amazon, including Eltanin Publishing, of which I am a part), then all of this is a moot point. You can download the ebook file, back it up as you see fit, and load it onto any ereader you choose. Readers should push for this, and publishers should seriously consider this. Tor, a division of Macmillan, has gone DRM-free. I am sure more will follow, just as music downloads now have fewer restrictions than then once did.

DRM only annoys the law-abiding folks. Pirates know how to strip it easily.

Also, I want to point out that although initial reports said her kindle was wiped of content, she later said something like it didn’t help her if the books were still on that kindle – she couldn’t read them because the screen was broken, and she was upset that she could access her books from other devices. An understandable complaint – but the “remote wiping of a device” might never have happened.

Cathy Ryan
Editor-in-Chief, Eltanin Publishing

By: rmstallman

rmstallman — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:25:00 +0000

See http://stallman.org/ebooks.pdf for my campaign against ebooksthat are more restrictive than printed books.

By: LoftyPursuits

LoftyPursuits — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:58:00 +0000

Oh yes, They have been doing this for years with college text books. They release a new edition with almost no changes but the cover, and the class no longer uses the old edition, and there goes the available used copies.

By: dingbat

dingbat — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 22:43:00 +0000

As a Kindle author, I always put DRM on my offerings, because I like to think I will get paid for each copy. Unlike my physical books which can be shared with a handful of people; digital books can be shared with thousands at the click of a mouse. However I am horrified at the injustice of Amazon ‘wiping’ content after it has been sold..

Also the ease with which DRM can apparently be circumvented, leads me to the conclusion that in future my books will be DRM free. I just hope that someone is kind enough to make the odd donation, so that me and my family can continue to eat..

By: Sigivald

Sigivald — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 19:12:00 +0000

… isn’t the music industry precisely the example of publishers embracing the revelation that DRM is a miserable failure and doesn’t preserve sales?

Can you even buy DRM-protected music anywhere?

Apple and Amazon, for instance, both sell entirely DRM-free music, do they not?

By: Sigivald

Sigivald — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 19:07:00 +0000

Yup. And even then (as the owner of a Kindle 3G, I know from experience), it only uses that when you have “Wireless On”.

If there’s a separate “WiFi” vs. “Whispernet” on/off setting I’ve never seen it.

By: Sigivald

Sigivald — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 19:05:00 +0000

You assume “they were snooping with WiFi” because the battery drained?

They control the hardware and software – they don’t need to leave WiFi on to do that.

It could trivially detect the act of reading, and turn WiFi on for just long enough to send a few packets, once, to tell them you’d read the sample books.

If they cared.

Which they don’t.

As Max said, a simple bug in the software seems much more likely than a complicated and poorly implemented spying system that would make the user think the device was crappy.

By: olems

olems — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 08:17:00 +0000

Some pretty unfounded speculation you’ve got going there. Amazon.com and amazon.co.uk might technically be two different stores, but they use the same account database. If you’re shut from one you’re shut from them all. That UK customer support contacted her is reasonable since that’s who she had recently been dealing with due to a hardware fault on her Kindle, plus it seems likely that the office in Ireland deals with all accounts in Europe.

It’s common practice for norwegians to use the UK store for hardware and paper books since it’s favourable for shipping and sometimes prices, while they force you to use amazon.com for ebooks. There’s no rule against using the same credit card between several stores, it’s actively encouraged by amazon.

In any case, the issue here is as much about the manner in which the account is closed as the fact that it was. I’m sure there are many accounts that get closed for legitimate reasons, but mistakes happen and then you’re apparently screwed. Potentially facing significant losses, with no chance of appeal.

Besides that, I’m curious about what legal footing amazon.co.uk uses to prohibit non-UK european citizens to freely purchase a good within the internal market (especially considering the ebooks “ship” from Luxembourg and not UK).

By: Dmitri Gabinski

Dmitri Gabinski — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 05:51:00 +0000

Calibre is a great program. But there’s another way to read everything: jailbreak you device, then install CoolReader 3 for Kindle. CR reads most or all e-book formats (I use FictionBook2 mainly and ePUB, haven’t explored other ones).

By: Eleri Hamilton

Eleri Hamilton — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:16:00 +0000

If someone take the time to do the initial layout in an e-reader friendly style, then making a PDF works fine, and can actually do a metric frakton of nifty things. But people are lazy and just make a PDF out of their existing layout, making them night on impossible to use in an e-reader. Having to do two seperate layouts for one book is a PITB. :/

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:28:00 +0000

Only if you were so stupid and bought the 3G version.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:28:00 +0000

Try reading in full sunlight.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:27:00 +0000

Only on the 3G models.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:26:00 +0000

Yup.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:24:00 +0000

It could have just gotten stuck at indexing. Indexing is known to drain the battery on the kindle.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:23:00 +0000

What a load of bullshit paranoia. If it does not have the wifi password, it can’t connect.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:14:00 +0000

And then send it to your kindle. The cycle is complete :D.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:06:00 +0000

God, I hate their tax fraud and tax evasion bullshit! This is actually the most morally fucked-up and scandalous thing about Amazon in my book, not the meaningless pseudo-shitstorms like this article.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Huh, it took me at most half an hour to remove the DRM from my kindle ebooks. I’d almost say Amazon is making its DRM easy to remove on purpose :D. Maybe they know they don’t need the DRM to make you stay with their ecosystem. ^^

By: vexorian

vexorian — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:57:00 +0000

What you mentioned is not a problem of ebooks. But a problem of DRMed ebooks. Were ebooks DRM-free, the storage would be simple and we would just need to make sure our viewer software remains backwards compatible.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:41:00 +0000

You can easily jailbreak your kindle (it’s running a customized linux install). Calling it more restrictive than an apple device is just telling us you did not do the research.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:37:00 +0000

Thanks! I think now I know where to cloud-backup my ebooks and still be able to re-download them directly from the reader :).

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:34:00 +0000

I have a kindle, buy the books on amazon and back-up the DRMed files as well as the de-DRMed files (you can just copy them to your PC via USB). So far I have only bought ebooks outside of amazon once, directly from the author as DRM-free EPUBs, but in case I find ebooks elsewhere or cheaper than at amazon it’ll be a breeze to buy them.

I usually convert with calibre and in the seldom case that books don’t work on the kindle, KindleGen (Amazon’s official EPUB to MOBI conversion tool) does the trick.

Google Apprentice Alf for the DRM removal calibre plugins. They work on Windows, OS/X and Linux. The devs over there hang out in the comments and patiently help newbies in case they don’t get it to work right away.

I’d personally recommend you to get a kindle because of the ecosystem and the build quality of the devices. Also, the Kindle works best for me as a Linux user, because I do not have to download a windows program to authorize my ereader. Device registration works by just logging into Amazon on the kindle once. Also, the Kindle for PC app fully works via WINE.

Ever since I’ve got my kindle, I’ve read more and discovered so many new authors! An ereader is an amazing device to own as a bookworm. :)

The kindle can directly download mobi files from the web (even from direct links in ebook files), I use this feature for books from Project Gutenberg (see http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1030992&postcount=5 )and Mobilereads (see http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1027924&postcount=4 ) as well as fanfics on http://archiveofourown.org/

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:12:00 +0000

Ebooks have the tiniest files size and whether they are EPUB or MOBI, inside those files they are basically HTML files. All of those things make long-term archiving way easier than any other medium, so I really don’t understand the uninformed whining everywhere. You do sound a bit like a luddite ;-P.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 20:55:00 +0000

Let me be pragmatic here. Removing the DRM from Amazon Books is so ridiculously simple that anyone not backing up DRM-stripped copies of their ebooks is just bringing it onto themselves. Seriously guys, there is a calibre plugin for it. The backed-up files are tiny. You have no excuse,

Of course it is illegal, but no one ever was and no one ever will be sued for breaking the DRM of their ebooks to back them up. Amazon are also way less aggressive than Apple in protecting their DRM. The tools to remove Apple’s DRM are quite hard to find, while the ones to remove the Amazon DRM are on a easily googled wordpress blog that Amazon has not taken down for years and also wildly distributed elsewhere. They are frequently mentioned on the amazon.de kindle forums without those mentions being deleted.

You don’t even need to extract keys, the serial number of your kindle is enough to decrypt your ebooks. You could almost think Amazon was doing it on purpose. I think they know exactly what they are doing. They are making they DRM easy to strip with easily accessible tools on purpose. Because once ebook DRM falls in a few years, they will probably get more customers through it and just offer them to upload their other ebooks into the Cloud, thus servicing the ebooks better than some competitors without cloud storage,

I am anti-DRM, but at least I’m pragmatic about it. You sound about as pragmatic as Richard Stallman is about using proprietary software. The Kindle DRM is about as scary and hindering as CSS on DVDs.

By: Theresa M. Moore

Theresa M. Moore — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:43:00 +0000

I own worldwide rights to all my books, and set them as DRM free on Amazon. I sell my ebooks DRM free direct. The problem I see here is that Amazon thinks it is entitled to ownership of the content and sees itself as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to its customers. If you don’t like what Amazon is doing, stop buying from it, and I have always sold more ebooks through Apple’s devices than through the Kindle. This is probably due to so many pissed off customers going elsewhere. When you are dealing with proprietary software like on an ereader, you get what you pay for. The device makers are in deep competition for your buying dollars and will do anything to attract more customers. The problem is with keeping the ones they’ve got; and Amazon is batting 0 for 6.

By: rmstallman

rmstallman — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:33:00 +0000

See http://stallman.org/ebooks.pdf for my campaign against ebooksthat are more restrictive than printed books.