[HN Gopher] Amazon now discloses you're buying a license to view...
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Amazon now discloses you're buying a license to view Kindle eBooks
Author : DavideNL
Score : 190 points
Date : 2025-02-22 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.the-ebook-reader.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.the-ebook-reader.com)
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| the flag flies high and the seas are smoother than they've ever
| been.
| 9dev wrote:
| Anchoring in Port Anna, are ye, or are there any other exciting
| harbours to set sails to, fellow adventurer?
| RedCardRef wrote:
| The ePub comes from Port Anna, then a quick sanity check via
| EPUB FIX [1] then finally to the official
| amazon.com/sendtokindle
|
| All of the above if you want a wireless experience, you can
| just use Calibre and plug in the reader via USB for a
| smoother experience.
|
| [1] https://kindle-epub-fix.netlify.app/
| homebrewer wrote:
| Or better yet, jailbreak your kindle before the hole is
| closed, install koreader, and read epub natively. It's a
| much better reader compared to the built-in one anyway.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43073969
| alkh wrote:
| Thanks for the useful link! I guess I am being overly
| paranoid, but I always also add a virus total check on top
| of it to make sure the file is clean [1] [1]
| https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/upload
| exe34 wrote:
| /sendtokindle seems a bit brave if you obtained your epub
| off the back of a lorry..
| SSLy wrote:
| Myanonamouse
| chrisblackwell wrote:
| Interesting quote.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Oh what I'd pay for a 100% legal version of Plex (e.g. allows
| me to easily buy and stream my media)
| caseyy wrote:
| Someone should create a video streaming service with a vast
| catalog. That'd attract all the subscribers even at a higher
| subscription cost, and they'd surely be able to pay their
| licensing fees. So long as they don't need to grow infinitely
| for their shareholders and enshittify their offerings, it
| will be a sustainable and profitable business[0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros
| chomp wrote:
| I don't think I would ever buy an e-book. It makes no sense to
| me. If I want a copy for my personal collection I'll keep it in
| hardcover. Otherwise I'll just use Libby and check it out when it
| becomes available.
|
| There are cases where I will toss an independent author a few
| dollars in exchange to read their book, but there's no way I
| would ever pay Amazon or another publisher.
| lolinder wrote:
| I _really_ want to find a good way to buy DRM-free ebooks.
| Libby was great early on and is still fine, but at least in my
| library system the wait times for a lot of titles are measured
| in months.
|
| I know some people make this work by just having a queue that's
| constantly cycling, but I don't read print books (as opposed to
| audiobooks) like that. There's only a subset of all books that
| I would ever want in print at all, and when I want them I want
| them for a specific purpose (to consult for a quote or
| something) _now_ , not months from now. Purchased ebooks fill
| that role, but I'm only interested in buying if they're DRM-
| free.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Some publishers sell DRM-free e-books directly on their
| website. This is the best way to buy books, because it grants
| the greatest amount of money to the original author.
| WolfeReader wrote:
| If you browse on Kobo, each book will tell you if it's DRM-
| free or not. Lots of small publishers will also sell books
| directly from their website, DRM-free in my experience. And
| Humble Bundle book collections are DRM free too.
| corney91 wrote:
| > And Humble Bundle book collections are DRM free too.
|
| Not all of them. I've had at least one bundle where you
| redeem it via the Kobo store for DRMed ePubs. Most I've got
| via Humble Bundle have been DRM-free though.
| akudha wrote:
| I've bought some stuff from sites like Humble Bundle. I think
| that's still okay
| bloomingkales wrote:
| In retrospect all the ebooks I bought were a waste of money
| because I can't get them off Kindle easily, if at all, to
| digest via an LLM.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| You can (could?) get all of them up until the end of the
| month when Amazon removes the ability to download them from
| your amazon.com account page.
|
| There may or may not be easily findable plugins for [popular
| ebook desktop app] to remove the DRM.
|
| I buy ebooks, remove DRM, and store them on my network
| storage drive so I can read them on any device I own.
| dharmab wrote:
| Calibre and DeDRM are the apps you're looking for; DeDRM
| doesn't include the decryption keys, you'll need to supply
| your Kindle's serial number or extract the keys from an old
| version of the Kindle app.
| scrose wrote:
| Awhile back I worked with someone who wrote a script to
| scroll through ebooks he purchased, screenshot each page and
| then aggregate the screenshots into a single PDF file.
|
| The simplicity of the approach seemed pretty awesome
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| There are times when I would like to read a book on a digital
| device, without waiting for weeks for it to become available.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Oh, if Libby does it, you are paying already. My local library
| has almost nothing.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I buy a lot of hardcovers but sometimes an ebook is just easier
| to read
| nickthegreek wrote:
| When I delay amazon shipping til the next week, they give me
| digital credits. I have over $35 in digital credits right now.
| I love to spend them on ebooks to support an artist or author
| directly with them bezos bucks.
| IshKebab wrote:
| It's ok boys, now you're allowed to pirate all books ever
| published as long as you don't seed.
| phony-account wrote:
| Almost the worst thing about Amazon and this gouging way of
| renting books is that it 'legitimizes' piracy. My partner works
| in publishing and we know a lot of authors. If you think piracy
| is going to sustain that industry and give you and your
| children books to read in the years and decades to come, you're
| very mistaken.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| Plenty of books I've tried to purchase epub or PDFs of only
| have Kindle rental versions.
|
| If the publishers of these authors wanted me to let me own a
| PDF, I'd gladly purchase, but until they actually do that I
| have several easy alternatives to getting sucked into
| Amazon's ridiculous ecosystem.
|
| And this is a larger subset of books I want to buy than I
| would want, surprisingly.
| jazz9k wrote:
| I say the same thing about GNU licensed software: if the
| author just gave me my preferred licensing terms, I
| wouldn't be forced to use it in proprietary software
| without compenstion.
| OKRainbowKid wrote:
| How is pirating books to read them by myself comparable
| to proactively selling other people's work?
| drawkward wrote:
| Neither belonged to you in the first place.
| OKRainbowKid wrote:
| And yet, one of these options is much more benign than
| the other.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| As an author, I barely get any money from Amazon. In some
| cases, with the cut Amazon and the publisher take, I make a
| few pennies on a $30 book.
|
| If you buy my book directly from my publisher's website, I'm
| extremely grateful. I get a fair amount for that. If you buy
| it from a local bookstore, at least they benefit.
|
| But if you buy it from Amazon, you might as well just get it
| from Anna's Archive. At least you're not supporting the
| jungle.
| Flimm wrote:
| I would love to buy ebooks directly from publishers, but
| publishers generally sell ebooks with DRM just as bad as
| Amazon's DRM, if not worse. If publishers insist on vendor
| lock-in, then I might as well stick with Kindle where most
| of my ebook collection already is.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Can you clarify if you're talking about physical and/or
| ebooks?
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Both.
| llm_trw wrote:
| I contacted a well known author about the shit latex
| rendering of his ebooks on Amazon. She said sorry and send
| me the a pdf copy he build with my name on all the pages. I
| really like the fact that I have a book dedicated to me by
| the author, but why the fuck do we need Amazon in this
| interaction?
| ipaddr wrote:
| In fairness you are the reason for needing Amazon. If you
| purchased it elsewhere Amazon would cease to exist.
| bumby wrote:
| What's an authors perspective on libraries, including
| ebooks from apps like Libby?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Then why do you sell on Amazon?
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Publishers decide where to sell, not authors.
| mystraline wrote:
| What's that capitalist moniker: adapt or die.
|
| When we pay for a good, be it digital or physical, we want
| possession and ownership of that good.
|
| When your class of people demand 'licenses to read' instead
| of the actual ownership of the book, you can shove it.
|
| I would rather _pay_ pirates to get actual non-DRM books than
| buy the temporary permission to view., especially since the
| eBook is more expensive.
|
| I will buy physical books, drm-free books, and pirate. I'm
| not paying hard earned money for a temporary license.
|
| If your publishers and authors can't understand first sale
| doctrine and actual ownership, then you can close up shop and
| quit.
| autobodie wrote:
| Moniker or not, I don't see Amazon or Kindle going anywhere
| anytime soon.
| matwood wrote:
| I think it's wrong to pirate books, but making it harder and
| harder to use the thing someone buys will push people to
| pirate. The onerous DRM from the likes of publishers and
| Amazon will eventually back fire on them. They are fighting
| hard to not have books end up like music, but I feel it's
| inevitable.
| MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
| I think it's contextual whether it's even wrong to pirate
| books. A new book that just came out? Sure. If I want to
| read a copy of "Titus Groan" by Mervyn Peake, who died in
| 1968, you'd have to do some marvelous convincing to make me
| feel bad about pirating it. Piracy would be wrong if the
| copyright system was reasonable. As is, it's the lesser of
| two evils compared to following the law as written.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Well it does - if the business of Amazon is immoral, buying
| from them is immoral. Therefore piracy becomes the lesser
| evil.
| jonhohle wrote:
| Or patronize your local library.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| well, patreon definitely sustains the industry
|
| people on royalroad make $10K a month, many more make over
| $1K...
|
| and then there's AO3, the monster in the dark with everything
| for everyone
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I would at least suggest buying a copy (not from Amazon) first,
| the author deserves a cut IMO and books tend to be relatively
| cheap. Kobo's store does have DRM, but it's easily bypassed by
| Calibre, or you can buy elsewhere (local is always good if
| possible) and then pirate an ebook copy.
|
| I think there's an ethical way to both get free use of what
| should be yours to use, and also support the people who made
| it.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Kobo's store does have DRM, but it's easily bypassed by
| Calibre
|
| See, but that's not _actually_ the same thing as DRM-free. It
| 's adversarial interop that's temporarily allowed to work,
| but if said interop becomes popular enough the publishers
| _will_ force Kobo to fix it.
|
| At this point I'm really only interested in spending money on
| books that I can actually own--either physical copies or
| (where available) fully and legally DRM-free ebooks. I want
| my purchases to send the right message to publishers: that
| DRM-free can work.
| shawn_w wrote:
| A fair number of the books I've bought for my Kobo are drm
| free.
| lolinder wrote:
| Yeah, and that's great! Where that's an option I'll
| definitely go for it. I'm just uninterested in spending
| money on a book that has DRM, regardless of how easy it
| is to bypass. I think it sends the wrong message.
| teemur wrote:
| Is there a way to know beforehand if the e-book from Kobo
| is DRM or not? I thought they were all DRM free, but the
| last book I bought suddenly was DRM and haven't yet
| bothered to research (I have a couple of different size
| e-readers and just copying the file over has been handy.)
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Sure, then you can always buy a physical copy and pirate a
| digital one.
| WolfeReader wrote:
| Kobo actually offers plenty of DRM-free books too. Google
| Play Books work the same way as well - either no DRM or
| Adobe's.
| freshchilled wrote:
| > Kobo's store does have DRM, but it's easily bypassed by
| Calibre
|
| I'd say this is the case for Amazon as well, if you have an
| actual Kindle. I was able to convert my whole library to
| standard epubs last weekend using Calibre.
| criddell wrote:
| You're lucky. There are now some KFX protected files that
| the DeDRM plugins don't work against. I expect it to get
| tougher and tougher going forward.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| How were you able to do that? You can still download to USB
| but that is going away. I'm not aware of any way to convert
| the files on a recent Kindle to epub, does that exist?
| mfashby wrote:
| Yeah I believe calibre can pull the files from the kindle
| as well as push to it. But I've only got an old kindle
| not a new one.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > Even if Jupiter is allowed to do it, that doesn't mean a
| cow is.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quod_licet_Iovi,_non_licet_bov.
| ..
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Very apt. The average individual downloader-not-seeder
| wouldn't have 1/10th of the cash required to fight a legal
| battle in court, whereas large firms seem to be able to just
| do whatever they want.
|
| The average person is put through hell and bankrupted. The
| large firm, at worst, pays a fine that amounts to some
| fraction of quarterly profit.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| My strategy is to read a pirated copy for 2-3 chapters and then
| decide whether I want to buy the book. It's similar to the 90s
| when I used to read volumes and volumes in a bookstore but only
| with enough money to buy one or two every quarter.
|
| BTW I wish No Starch ships cheaper to Canada. It quickly adds
| up when I buy more. One of the best publishers out there I
| think.
| avipars wrote:
| Zuck?
| heroprotagonist wrote:
| And apparently, as long as you don't read them, if you only
| need a license to view...
|
| I hope the huge new antipiracy push that is coming will require
| litigators to prove that you're actually viewing the material
| you pirate.
|
| Which would make Plex and friends with their metrics a bad idea
| to trust with all of your pirated content.
|
| Though the antipiracy push is going to focus on the torrent
| sites themselves.
| llm_trw wrote:
| The torrent sites is how meta and friends get their books.
| They are safe.
| adamm255 wrote:
| Amazing how quick that story blew over.
| spudlyo wrote:
| There are so many incredible works of literature that I've yet
| to read available in glorious DRM free epub on Standard EBooks
| and Project Gutenberg, I don't know why I'd deal with this shit
| for imaginative fiction .
| thayne wrote:
| Only if you have Meta's budget for lawyers.
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| Or $5/mo. Just enough for a VPN
| cebert wrote:
| A VPN won't protect you.
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| If they start logging and one of their customers gets
| sued, their entire business model is finished. So, why do
| you say it won't protect you for pirating?
| jisnsm wrote:
| It's funny but predictable that the same website that has
| always said that piracy is a-okay changes its mind as soon as
| it's Facebook who's caught pirating stuff.
| thewanderer1983 wrote:
| combine Meta's statement with the WEF statement "You'll own
| nothing and you'll be happy". And you'll start to get a feel
| for the asymmetric "rules based order" the elites envision for
| the plebs.
| 1over137 wrote:
| Where's a good place to pirate audio books these days? Is
| bittorrent still where it's at?
| choilive wrote:
| Doesnt directly answer the question, but nowadays there are
| good and free TTS that will essentially turn your entire ebook
| to an audiobook. (Elevenlabs Reader for example)
| agnishom wrote:
| Doesn't directly relate to your comment, But I hate
| ElevenLabs for purchasing Omnivore and shutting it down.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Same way I feel about HP for doing the same to Palm
| dharmab wrote:
| I like these tools for content where no narration exists
| (especially for proofreading my own writing) but they aren't
| anywhere near as good as a good human narrator. e.g:
| https://youtu.be/LPZrReZ5H9Q?t=103
| rhamzeh wrote:
| For audiobooks, instead of pirating I would recommend
| https://libro.fm - you can buy them DRM free and they donate
| part of the proceeds to your library of choice.
| UlisesAC4 wrote:
| Basically torrent is the best option, check readarr.
| megadata wrote:
| I heard a bloke at the pub mention audiobookbay dot various
| TLDs. I have no idea if that's true or not.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| That button should say "Rent this book".
|
| Claiming you can "Buy this book" is a lie and false advertising.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| alias book="license"
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| Yeah. I "bought" a Kindle copy of There Will Be War awhile back
| to get access to a few of the short stories in the collection.
|
| After reading about how they're taking away downloads I went
| and downloaded all of my books and found that at some point
| they must have lost the license to that book because I no
| longer had access to it.
|
| Love it when my "purchases" can be taken away from me with no
| recourse. edit: and I was never even informed that the book had
| been taken away. It just is there in my collection with a few
| invalid characters at the front of the title and no cover
| picture. The link goes to a page that doesn't exist. And
| searching for it shows only paper copies now by third parties.
| So I know this isn't just a bug in the system.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| This does not happen with the Kindle Store.
|
| Anything you've purchased will remain in your library unless:
|
| 1) You delete it (which can happen by accident, due to some
| bad UX).
|
| If you have done this, you can contact Amazon Support and
| they can re-add it to your library for free. It's not
| possible to delete your purchase history on the Amazon
| website, and that includes all Kindle books.
|
| Whenever I've seen people claim that digital content has gone
| from their Amazon account, it always turns out to be either:
|
| a) They didn't buy it on Amazon in the first place.
|
| b) They bought it on a different Amazon account.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Is this at all informative? I think the fact that we're buying a
| license goes without saying, it's the terms of said license that
| matter, so I don't think this adds any useful information.
|
| The page really needs to specify all limitations that differ from
| a physical copy, which would be non-revocable, transferable,
| worldwide, unlimited in time, geographic location, and method of
| consumption, etc.
| drdaeman wrote:
| Not to you and me, but there seem to be a lot of people who
| don't understand the principle and think they're actually
| buying a ebook.
|
| But - yeah - this is not informative at all. Amazon did the
| least amount of work necessary to formally comply with those
| new California requirements (I suspect this is what it's about)
| about the language on digital licensing.
|
| It's something, though. But I agree it would be nice to have a
| license summary label, like those broadband facts labels or
| nutritional labels.
| umanwizard wrote:
| What would actually mean to "buy" an ebook? The concept of
| ownership doesn't really make sense for digital goods -- no
| matter how you define it, it will be meaningfully different
| from owning a physical object.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| It would simply mean to own an individual digital file,
| which would only be restricted by copyright law itself, no
| contracts.
| andybak wrote:
| Is it really that obvious? I genuinely don't know which
| services allow a permanent download that will continue to work
| in perpetuity and those that don't. My understanding of file
| formats gives me some insight but - I shouldn't need to know
| that and some smart, technical people don't have that
| knowledge.
| tsujamin wrote:
| You've still got a couple days to download (DRM'd) copies of the
| books before they remove that option!
|
| I just finished importing mine in Calibre and converting them all
| to epub
| agnishom wrote:
| Why bother? Just download them off of LibGen, and save it on
| your hard drive. If you have bought them on Amazon, you have
| already paid off your debt metaphorically and literally
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Maybe it does not matter, but I paid for _that_ file dammit.
| I only go to pirate stuff I already paid for if I somehow get
| locked out of the purchase.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| by that time, it could be too late.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I don't know the details of the law, but I'm morally 100% OK
| with that. If I bought a copy of a book, I feel completely
| justified in reading it in whatever format's convenient for
| me. By analogy if I buy a DVD, I might rip it and watch it on
| my computer. I don't draw a moral distinction between ripping
| a copy of that DVD and downloading a ripped copy of it: the
| end result is a .mov file on my hard drive. Well, same with
| physical books and epubs. I could morally (and I'm pretty
| sure legally) scan and OCR that book myself as long as I
| don't distribute copies of it, so downloading seems to me to
| be just skipping the labor step in the middle.
| awestroke wrote:
| How?
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| here ya go: https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/02/how-to-bulk-
| download-kind...
|
| I did this just yesterday... the calibre reader is a hot mess
| but getting and decoding the books was a breeze
|
| Note that this method is only going to work for four more
| days! I imagine that soon this will only be possible via
| jailbreaking, which is always a PITA
| WillAdams wrote:
| This is the result of a recent law in California:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digit...
| GlacierFox wrote:
| I've only bought a few ebooks but even then, I've immediately
| went and pirated them too to feel like I _have_ something, even
| though it 's only a few hundred kilobytes. I know it's a digital
| book and I know someone worked really hard on it but when I buy
| an book from Amazon or some other site which works this way, I
| feel like I'm buying... nothing. I sometimes buy physical books
| with the intention of keeping them for when I'm in the mood to
| read them, sometimes this might be months or even years. But with
| a digital book delivered with a licence I've always got a niggle
| in the back of my mind thinking about a digital collection
| dissappearing or the service becoming obsolete. In regards to
| non-drm ebooks, the lack of tangibility peeves me slightly but
| isn't so much an issue as I actually have something I can keep.
| But licenced ebooks are fugazi, ethereal nothingness existing on
| the whims of a mega corporation.
| skydhash wrote:
| I don't mind temporary license if I trust in the business
| stability. Meaning either I have a minimum period guaranteed by
| law or the business is not changing the TOS for no reasons. I
| bought software on Apple's App Store and games on PlayStation
| Store and I'm fine that I only have a license tied to the
| existence of my account. But I have limited trust (no real
| reason) in Amazon regarding to Kindle.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| Per fair use law in us - can you just pirate the book after you
| buy it on kindle?
| tingletech wrote:
| As far as I understand, fair use is more a doctrine than a
| law. It seems like more of a moral position than a legal one.
| punnerud wrote:
| Fair use comes from Berne Convention SS10 (snipet): "It
| shall be permissible to make quotations from a work which
| has already been lawfully made available to the public..."
|
| I guess OpenAI and Google use that to be able to build
| search and training ML-models. Almost all countries in the
| world is bounded by that.
| hansvm wrote:
| NAL, not legal advice, just my current understanding:
|
| > after you buy it
|
| Generally, yes. What you do with that digital copy might be
| illegal, but the download was legal. Using a torrent to
| download (and seeding) might still be illegal even if only as
| a means to copying.
|
| > after you buy it on kindle
|
| That's a more interesting question. Given that they only
| grant you a license, you're in gray/black territory. When
| they previously gave you the impression that you were making
| purchase you might have been in gray/light territory, but
| ignorance is rarely an excuse.
|
| > legalities vs practicalities
|
| Once I had one of those torrent honeypots catch a neighbor
| seeding. Comcast wasn't very careful with their timestamps or
| enforcement (or maybe the lawyer wasn't), and it happened
| close enough to an IP renewal that I caught the flak. If you
| don't get a lawyer involved, they'll blatantly ignore your
| right to counter DMCA claims and just infantalize you with a
| sermon about not stealing from intellectual property owners,
| placing you on a list of problem customers and eventually
| cancelling service (that last bit never materialized because
| it was my IP and my devices after the incident, so I never
| had too many strikes).
|
| What happens, exactly, if you "legally" pirate a book after
| you buy it on kindle? Who knows, but it might have negative
| consequences on par with actual enforcement as if you'd
| broken the law.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Same. I buy it and crack it.
|
| I'll take my business to whichever distributor acknowledges my
| ownership of the book. Kobo is crackable, I believe.
|
| Also lib gen.
| exe34 wrote:
| You can remove the drm using calibre+dedrm. Legality may vary
| based on your locality.
| fajmccain wrote:
| I had an issue with calibre+dedrm not working as of early
| 2024 (possibly due to an update the the DRM used by Amazon).
| Have you had luck doing this recently?
| exe34 wrote:
| no I've not used it for a while, and I never will after the
| 26th.
| BigGreenJorts wrote:
| Amazon is removing the ability to download (DRMed) copies of
| Kindle book to your local store.
| jmholla wrote:
| Yup. Next Wednesday (2/26) is the last day.
| underseacables wrote:
| Library Genesis has been a great alternative
| edkennedy wrote:
| What doesn't make sense to me, is there is a more of a need than
| ever to own copies of the books we read. People will be creating
| their own RAG of the books they are reading to make use of the
| knowledge and expand upon the teachings. This way of thinking of
| licensing is antiquated. I'm sure Amazon will make some "Kindle
| LLM" but hopefully by then the industry is radically disrupted.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Amazon Now Openly Discloses You're Buying a License to View
| Kindle eBooks_
|
| "disclosure" of information sounds like a good thing, but in
| terms of contracts, "a disclosure" is actually "a
| restriction/limitation" that you are agreeing to. This is Amazon
| "disclosing" that it is you who is not actually buying a copy of
| something.
|
| Yes, it's better for you that limitations are disclosed, but the
| salient point is the limitation, not the disclosure.
| andybak wrote:
| At least it creates a situation where any vendor that does
| offer "true" purchases will stand out. There's a chance for
| disruption here.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| It would be nice if more physical copies of books came with a
| sort of passport for all major digital versions.
| megadata wrote:
| In other words, Amazon has technically and officially stopped
| selling Kindle books.
| odo1242 wrote:
| Well, no, they never sold Kindle books, they just decided to
| say so in fine print under the Buy button rather than in even
| finer print in the ToS.
| Insanity wrote:
| Maybe not a super popular opinion on HN, but this effectively
| changes nothing for me. I love reading on my kindle, by far the
| most convenient way to buy and read books for me (esp when
| traveling often).
|
| It's good that they are now being upfront about it, but it won't
| impact my buying behaviour and it won't for the majority of
| readers.
| nunodonato wrote:
| and like that, the frog boils
| magospietato wrote:
| This is fine. Text is some of the most free information on the
| Internet. And I am small enough to be unencumbered by licensing
| concerns.
| hatwd wrote:
| This would only be acceptable if the ebooks cost 5 to 10% of what
| the physical book costs.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Many years ago I started splitting my purchases between Amazon,
| Google Books, and Apple Books. It is a small nuisance but it felt
| better than using a single vender.
|
| Now I mostly buy from Kobo and labor.fm and many of the books
| they sell are DRM free. Often the prices are better also.
| auraham wrote:
| I have bought books from Amazon and Manning.com, mostly technical
| books. I have to say, I am so happy with the business model of
| Manning.com:
|
| - they offer good quality books
|
| - they also offer a subscription where you can view all books and
| download one book per month
|
| - when you buy a digital book, they give you the book in several
| formats (kindle and pdf)
|
| - you can read the ebook in multiple devices
|
| O'Reilly should follow the same business model.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| >O'Reilly should follow the same business model.
|
| They used to, but they have their subscription service now.
|
| You can still buy O'Reilly books DRM-free from the major ebook
| sellers.
| Whatarethese wrote:
| Unless it's physical and in my possession I will pirate it.
| lstodd wrote:
| There was Jim Baen, and he said it all.
|
| (also did)
| 42772827 wrote:
| I buy kindle / apple books completely for the convenience factor:
| formatting, delivery, cloud service and occasional updates.
| Though, I do wish there were some kind of change log for what
| they updated.
| guelo wrote:
| My dream regulation would be that they can't use the word "buy".
| Call it license, rent, subscription, etc. but your not buying
| anything.
| wazoox wrote:
| I've only ever bought DRM-less epub (mostly books from John
| Scalzi and a couple of other authors). I won't pirate, because I
| refuse any DRM-laden shite as a question of principle.
| mvc wrote:
| I can't believe anyone feels the need to buy digital copies of
| books anymore, especially from companies who have very obviously
| pirated every copyrighted work in existence as part of their AI
| offerings.
| nunodonato wrote:
| That's why I always recommend people buy Kobos. far superior
| product, far superior reading experience, and you get the extra
| bonus points of not throwing more money at fucking bezos
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