Amazon now discloses you're buying a license to view Kindle eBooks

That was very memorable. Of all the books it could happen to, it had to be that one.

This seems like an isolated case where an illegitimate provider committed fraud in the early days of the program. Amazon refunded and surely readers were able to purchase a valid copy not much later.

Are there any examples where legitimately purchased licenses were made unavailable?

The difference is most of those things aren't built with tangible, perpetual representations in mind.

For literally all of the time that the written word has existed, if you bought a physical copy it was yours for whatever version of perpetuity you'd like to use.

Of course libraries exist, as do rentals, but it's clearly understood what the deal is with such services.

The specific issue i see here is that this is changing retroactively and without recourse, the ability to download a copy of the item you purchased, which was the deal at the time of purchase.

If you buy anything from now on, however, knowing the details of the sale, that's on you.

I also think temporary licenses if they are marketed appropriately. This disclosure is a small step in the right direction, but I don't think it's enough yet.

Any words like "Buy", "Purchase", "Own", etc should be absolutely banned. They should be forced to to use verbs like "Rent". Saying you're purchasing a license is better than saying you're purchasing the book, but if it's not a perpetual license, they should be required to specify the duration (or, if indefinite but revocable, it should be so stated).

Things like:

- "Rent for 1 week"

- "$2.99 to borrow for a month"

- "Rent for as long as we decide to allow"

I also think if the marketing materials explicitly disagree with the terms within a clickwrap license agreement, the marketing materials should be binding.

Wouldn't be so sure about trusting PlayStation content to be there in a few years:

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/

Kindle has been around for over a decade. And Amazon is huge. Why the distrust? Honest question. I'm trusting Steam with over 400 games. I don't read a lot of ebooks but I don't see why Amazon would redact something I've paid for.

Software, especially on mobile platforms, feels a little more ephemeral anyway. An app left unmaintained won't support high DPI, won't support new screen sizes, won't have dark mode, doesn't support 64-bit CPUs, or even just gets deliberately turned shitty via updates because there was money to be squeezed. So if I buy an app and come back in 10 years I'm pleasantly surprised to ever find that it still exists and works.

That's very different from buying digital music (which I buy from Apple DRM free) and digital books, which should not change after I buy them, don't need compatibility updates, and really ought to work as long as I have the files, even if someone goes out of business and I can't redownload them.

Books really have much more in common with music than they do with software, and it's unfortunate that digital books and ebook readers escaped the "I bought hundreds of dollars of music and I should be able to play it on whatever MP3 player I want" arguments that freed us from music DRM lock-in.

As far as I understand, the "anti-circumvention" provisions of the DMCA don't make exceptions for fair use, so it's illegal to circumvent copyright protection even if a fair use defense would mean you're not infringing the copyright.

From Wikipedia[1] ("1201" here refers to the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions):

  Although section 1201(c) of the title stated that the section does not change the underlying substantive copyright infringement rights, remedies, or defenses, it did not make those defenses available in circumvention actions. The section does not include a fair use exemption from criminality nor a scienter requirement, so criminal liability could attach to even unintended circumvention for legitimate purposes.

  Literary works, distributed electronically, that are protected by technological measures that either prevent the enabling of read-aloud functionality or interfere with screen readers or other applications or assistive technologies, or for research purposes at educational institutions;

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...

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 a 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.

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.

Fair use is just a defense if you have to go to court for a copyright infringement claim. So after you spend many thousands of dollars, you can claim fair use as one of your defenses. (In fairness, certain types of fair use are fairly well established so no one will probably take you to court within those guardrails.)

Anna's Archive too

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?

Amazon is removing the ability to download (DRMed) copies of Kindle book to your local store.

The torrent sites is how meta and friends get their books. They are safe.

> 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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Well it does - if the business of Amazon is immoral, buying from them is immoral. Therefore piracy becomes the lesser evil.

Or $5/mo. Just enough for a VPN

> 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.

> 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.

Kobo actually offers plenty of DRM-free books too. Google Play Books work the same way as well - either no DRM or Adobe's.

I built a DRM system for the major record labels. If you moved your music to a new computer it had to download a new license. It was disheartening reading that they shut down the license server in 2009. I read a lot of posts from suitably aggrieved buyers.

I'm glad the government is forcing companies to be a little more honest about these "purchases." These companies wouldn't have done it on their own.

Of course, someone will say it is government overreach and competition will solve this instead.

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.

It says "Buy now with 1-click"

What would a true purchase of digital content look like? Just the lack of DRM? You could still lose your copy and the company you purchased it from could no longer exist.

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/

Myanonamouse

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

Ebooks.com has a filter for DRM free ebooks, unfortunately it's only a small subset of publishers that allow it currently

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.

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.

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.

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

"doesn't affect me!" Yet.

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.

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.

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