I’d advise anyone buying e-books on Amazon to think it through carefully. My account was banned recently because, years ago, I ordered two paper books that Amazon said would be split into two shipments. Both books arrived without any issues, but later Amazon refunded me for one of them, claiming that one package never arrived. This happened 4–5 years ago.
Apparently, during a recent review, they decided this counted as fraud and banned my account. As a result, I can no longer log in and lost access to all my Kindle e-books. They also remotely wiped my Kindle, so my entire library is gone. I appealed the decision, but I’ve been waiting for over six months with no resolution.
A friend of mine received a double shipment for a $300 order. Being honest, he contacted customer service to arrange a return. Everything seemed fine until a few days later when he noticed they had also refunded his original payment. He reached out again to let them know, and they said they’d just recharge his card. Apparently, that transaction failed (no clear reason why), and without any warning, they banned his account, wiping out his entire Kindle library in the process. Amazon works wonderfully right up until it fails spectacularly.
I wonder just like retailers are required to account for local sales taxes (I know it is not that clear cut), there should be some enforcement mechanism to settle disputes locally. Setup an agency which "legally" provides support for google, Amazon, and all those unreachable entities. Provides local jobs as well as quick grievance redressal. Maybe something like consumer protection agency but not federal, maybe at least one per county maybe more depending on the population.
Edit - I don't mind paying for the service. Maybe charge everyone $99 to file a case to avoid everyone piling on, but it helps resolve most egregious ones, and fee could be refunded at the agency's discretion.
I can't speak for how effective the process is, but this is the idea behind the EU/UK GPSR's Authorised Representative framework - though not exactly local (that would be excessive, since GPSR also applies to much smaller sellers too)
Two problems with that argument: 1) Amazon would also have to reimburse small claims court fees if you win, and 2) arbitration is worse for the consumer in pretty much every other way.
[Edit, because one-word replies are uncivilized: one reason to be suspicious about binding arbitration is that the company against whom you'll be pleading is a repeat customer of that arbitration service. It's a non-transparent / non-public process, so it's hard to have confidence is fair, and over which we (ie, the public) have no influence if it were not.]
"We examine whether firms have an informational advantage in selecting arbitrators in consumer arbitration [...] We first document that some arbitrators are systematically industry friendly while others are consumer friendly. Firms appear to utilize this information in the arbitrator selection process. Despite a randomly generated list of potential arbitrators, industry-friendly arbitrators are forty percent more likely to be selected than their consumer friendly counterparts. Better informed firms and consumers choose more favorable arbitrators. [...] Competition between arbitrators exacerbates the informational advantage of firms in equilibrium resulting in all arbitrators slanting towards being industry friendly. Evidence suggests that limiting the respondent’s and claimant’s inputs over the arbitrator selection process could significantly improve outcomes for consumers."
The solution to authoritarian problems is to organize.
In this case, we're overdue for a service that we all pay into, like a collective credit card, that only continues making payments to companies like Amazon if all of the members are happy. When you get banned without due process, payments stop until the matter is resolved.
Also, the collective can bargain-down rates. If it senses price increases beyond inflation, it just sends the adjusted amount, like 95%, until the matter is resolved.
We need this collective bargaining for housing (like tenant unions), the workplace, politics, pharmaceuticals, etc. The scale of this is so large that the collective could exist beyond any specific industry. So that it would operate as a meta economy beside the so-called free market economy (late-stage capitalism) that we operate under today due to the lack of antitrust enforcement.
Groups like the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) are working towards these sorts of goals on a number of fronts:
Something similar happened to me with Blizzard. I'd buy subscription time and, a few days later, they'd cancel my subscription and refund the charge. After a few rounds of this, they suspended my account.
In that case, I appealed and was told, for the first time, that the reason for the refunds was that the card I'd been paying with didn't match the stored payment information saved to my account.
Both cards were equally valid and there was no indication anywhere that having saved payment information disqualified you from paying by any other method. As best I can tell, Blizzard just updated their policies one day for no particular reason, then made not complying with the new, secret policies a bannable offense.
i suspect the reason for such a policy is to ban fraud/stolen credit cards (probably used by professional bot farmers selling in-game gold for real life money).
The collateral damage on regular, innocent players is just an acceptable outcome.
I never bought any ebooks off Amazon without removing the drm at the time. I did buy a lot of shows and movies, but if they take those away, I'll just pirate them, given I've already paid.
Unfortunately not everything is available on the high seas. For instance, it's impossible to find older seasons of MasterChef Australia (in HD). Heck even trying to view it legally, outside of AU, is a mission - Amazon is the only entity that has the older seasons. I ended up subscribing to a Prime account just for this.
PIA also supports port forwarding from non-US regions. And the Linux solution is better and provides a stable port, unlike Proton's 'run this command every 60 seconds and hope'.
I only use OpenVPN (another reason to move away from Mullvad), not their own clients. I moved away from PIA in the past, I don't remember why, it was a long time ago.
I was happy with Mullvad for a long time, especially being able to buy their scratch cards, but now I had to move to Proton due to the deprecation of port forwarding and openvpn at mullvad.
But PIA is american anyway so that won't work for me, I'm not signing up with new american services anymore since Trump came to power again.
That's the point of DRM-free ebooks though, isn't it? You download them and keep them safe so if the provider decides to cut access to your account, you remain in possession of the goods.
So the correct advice would be to avoid anyone buying DRM-encumbered digital property - the same as RMS has been making for who knows how long!
It's safer to assume that Amazon is always acting in bad faith and search to purchase your DRM free e-books from other vendors. There's plenty of other options out there besides Amazon
Pretty sure all of Baen's books are DRM free, and they offer virtually every ebook format around. They even used to include CDs with their hardbacks that would would include a huge subset of their collection. But they aren't a retailer, they're a publisher, so you're only getting the titles they publish.
Banning long-time customers in otherwise good-standing for a mistake they made years ago, which would already be settled financially and such a minor cost is wild.
I can imagine something like this has happened to almost everyone.
So much for being the world’s most customer-centric company. That mission is dead.
This may be your opinion, and mine as well, but it’s still in paragraph 1 of Amazon’s own about page. It seems they’ve forgotten their own guiding principles.
> Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. We strive to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, Earth’s best employer, and Earth’s safest place to work.
99.99% of the time when you read something on the internet and your reaction is "that's wild" / "wow that's crazy" / "that's unbelievable", then what you are reading is in fact likely nowhere near the actual truth / real.
My experience with online services and software in general is it makes mistakes A LOT. Like A LOT A LOT. And I have absolutely no problem believing there little to no humans in the loop here.
One of the primary functions of DRM is to remove a paying customer's access to the works they paid for. There's nothing "wild" or "crazy" or "unbelievable" about it.
They failed to deliver a Pixel phone to me - they never even tried to deliver it and the status said "permanent delivery failure" so I assumed they'd automatically refund me.
Fast forward a few months, I never received a refund and they claim they have no record any more. I could chargeback my credit card but I imagine I'd also be permanently banned from Amazon - so instead I accept they've just stolen $1000 from me with no recourse...
(if anyone from Amazon is reading this, my email is in my bio!)
It seems wild to me to just accept a loss of $1000 for something that isn't your fault. I'd be persistent in each contact with Amazon and if you're really not getting anywhere I'd go to small claims court or do a chargeback.
Like, I know there are some really rich people around, obviously you see them driving around in fancy cars and living in big houses, but you kinda forget that some people can just lose $1000 and ignore it like it's nothing. Crazy.
Yeah, I get that Amazon is incredibly convenient, but $1000 is $1000 no matter which company takes it from you. If some local mom and pop shop effectively stole $1000 from me, you can bet your ass I'd never patronize them again.
They never said they continued to patronize Amazon. Given the thread kicked off with claims about loosing access to DRMed content due to an unrelated delivery/payment issue, the person involved may be concerned about loosing access to digital content. Some people spend a lot of money on books, movies, etc.. The $1000 may be a drop in the bucket.
> I could chargeback my credit card but I imagine I'd also be permanently banned from Amazon - so instead I accept they've just stolen $1000 from me with no recourse...
To some this could imply they wanted to continue doing business with Amazon, so accepted the theft. Not losing access is, in a way, continuing to do business. Not sure if that's what they meant, but I can see it being interpreted as such.
Amazon has no moat today. What is even unique on amazon store these days? Fake chinese crap is what. Which you can also find on ebay, same item same product photos and probably still shipped to you in 2-4 days like what prime has been reduced to. If you can wait you can opt for the 3 weeks from china option at literally a quarter the cost.
Just ask for the refund. If they lock your account you can always make a new one (gonna be a scary day when that isn't possibl cuz they use biometrics or something.....).
But if they just close your account in response to asking for a rightful refund.... Literal thievery
Something similar happened to me. The delivery company returned two packages, two separate orders, as damaged back to Amazon. They were marked as "delivered". They automatically refunded just one item in one of the returned orders.
I had to call them to get a refund for all the items on all the orders, and even then they had a lot of difficulty figuring out what was happening. Isn't Amazon supposed to be a world leader (maybe after Walmart) in this stuff?
the bigger the company is the less they can invest in customer support. Because what the client will do anyway, leave them to some alternative? sue them? very unlikely
No way I'd give away 1000 € in exchange to be allowed to buy from some store. Actually, I don't even have an Amazon account, but if I did, I'd prefer to be banned than to burn 1000 € like that.
Much less money lost, but Amazon is notorious for not providing free game codes that are supposed to be included with GPU purchases. The customer rep at first apologized and offered a small refund (less than the cost of the game). A later rep started implying I was trying to defraud Amazon.
Many people online share similar experiences. Wonder how much money this wide-scale fraud saves them.
Amazon doing dodgy things with PC parts is why I will no longer purchase them from there - I'll happily take the extra £10-20 hit to buy it from another "proper" retailer (ie, Scan or Overclockers here in the UK), knowing that issues can be resolved more easily
Man, for $1000 I'd definitely be checking to make sure it got refunded, and manually requesting a refund after a week had passed.
Waiting a few months is not smart because not every delivery service is going to store the delivery status details. I've generally found that after 3 months, data starts disappearing from services and refund options can become technically impossible. Like, on eBay, even if a seller wants to refund you after more than 90 days, they can't. Part of this is for accounting too -- at some point you just have to be able to definitively close the books and say here are the sales we made, that number isn't going down in the future because of potential outstanding returns.
Amazon no longer having a record of it is absurd given the volume of data they store about all transactions.
For a phone in particular I'd be demanding serial number/IMEI information for the police report and ensuring that the stolen phone was properly reported as stolen. Since they record all of that when they ship it should be readily available.
And risk being locked out of the world’s online marketplace and all of Amazon’s other businesses? Maybe a bit hyperbolic but that’s where we are headed for sure.
It's perfectly feasible to never use Amazon. I don't know your situation, but i think people should go out more and prefer quality over quantity. Most of the stuff that Amazon sell is crap anyway.
> but i think people should go out more and prefer quality over quantity
Whether you find higher quality in your local area depends on your local area and what you're buying. More generally applicable, you can find higher quality with independent online stores.
True, especially the goods shipped "with prime". It's always a 5-10 bucks premium over the AliExpress price of the same item. It depends on how much in a hurry I am.
> so instead I accept they've just stolen $1000 from me with no recourse...
So you basically approve of this behavior. I personally learned some time ago to stay away from these companies.
wait is your email really username@username.net? I registered java.lang.string (at) gmail back when I was learning java 20+ years ago. Haven't really used it in over a decade though.
I only got unbanned when I got hired at Amazon and emailed the head of the fraud team lol. I had the same issues you had with being stonewalled and ghosted while banned. Anyways, just downloaded them off of Anna's Archive or join private trackers. There's also still methods to de-drm the Kindle books, but many people will do it for u via requests on private trackers.
I saw the writing on the wall when they recently removed the facility to download your own books. I downloaded all of them, removed the DRM with Calibre, and now obtain e-books through other sources.
They screwed me in a different way. I simply didn't log into Amazon for a couple years as I've tried to minimize my use of Amazon. When I went to log in, they locked my account without any way to unlock it. Talking with support multiple times did nothing. Now all my digital purchases are gone.
Edit: If anyone knows a way to get them to unlock the account, I'd appreciate it. They won't issue a password reset or anything similar, which seems ridiculous considering they never claimed fraud. Simply that it had been too long since I logged in.
If you're in the US just look up the small claims process local near you, and do it.
The fee is small and you'll learn how it works, and that's worst case.
I'm also particularly skeptical of Amazon because our Kindle Direct Publishing account was banned also for no reason. They said something about me having had a previous account before, but I'm not sure that was true and I think it was a very extreme measure. We were actually selling books at the time until we got banned. They obviously also "forgot" to pay out the most recent month.
I buy all my ebooks. I search DRM free, if there is DRM only I'll buy it the cheapest I can then download it from Annas Archive. I like to support authors but I need to own what I buy.
Unfortunately bad press is likely going to be the only thing to give you your account back.
You should write a blog post and let the internet and the media do its magic
Pretty much what I was going to say. I think Twitter (or whatever social media people use these days) would be a more appropriate place to put the company "on blast".
I regularly use soulseek to download archival copies of music that I pay for. The artist makes their money, and I don’t have to worry about my account access.
The only reason for a recent review (like with all the recently banned Facebook accounts from 2009) is firing up AI tools that didn't exist 5 years ago.
Yeah, welcome to tech. Don't get me wrong, I sympathize completely with you. It's an outrage. But it's incredible that Every. Single. One. of these companies has terrible automation with no ability to file a ticket for a human to look at it
Seems this is a possibility with any service. Even stuff like music streaming. I tried to listen to loveless on spotify the other day and apparently it has been removed from the service. It is time to start making rips of physical media I own or rent from the library again. Back to the high seas again too. We traded control for convenience and that comes back to bite us.
I have 5 kindles at home and they're all collecting dusts along with some Alexa and Echo devices, the only thing I need Amazon for is its ecommerce shopping site. The phone just replaces all those gadgets and it probably has nothing to do with Amazon. Still it's a nice move to support ePub and PDFs on kindles.
Amazon used to be really customer centric 5-10 years ago, I remember once I ordered a physical book which was late in delivery and I urgently needed that book, so they gave me a free kindle edition till the book got delivered.
Last week I had a vendor tell me that they did warranty service through Amazon, and I should contact Amazon for a replacement, even though I was outside of their return window. It turned out to be a lie. But Amazon refunded me the full amount anyway, without prompting. The handful of times I've contacted Amazon tech support this has been my experience. The previous one was when they replaced a $250 porch pirated delivery, no questions asked.
This behavior genuinely earns them more of my business.
The "danger" of their policies (and I've benefitted from them, too) is that they obviously can be gamed, and they obviously have to have defenses against that - which means if you cross some invisible line (and now likely AI-monitored) you're doomed; no recourse.
Not sure if this legal or not, the cost of fraud in physical book purchasing (even if it's genuine) will probably never exceed the entire Kindle book library collection.
If this is true, I need to be extra careful buying stuff, virtual or physical from Amazon.
Fyi for anyone reading, it is very easy to break DRM on old kindle purchases. I think they rolled out new DRM for things published this year and it may be harder but still possible. I would encourage anyone here who has a kindle library to back up their purchases.
That’s possible, but I can’t know for sure because Amazon never provided any concrete details. I didn’t receive any warning emails, only a cryptic message after the ban:
> "Amazon.co.uk found that the rate at which refunds were occurring on your account was extraordinary and could not continue."
After looking through my order history, the only refund I could find on this account was the one related to the book I mentioned above. If there was any other activity or misuse, Amazon hasn’t disclosed it to me, which makes it impossible to verify or dispute their conclusion.
Surely, you take them to small claims court over it, they won't bother so send anyone because their lawyers cost more per hour than your entire account was worth, you win by default?
This has terrified me. In the past I’ve received items, then got apologies from Amazon for them not being delivered.
I could have easily gotten a refund, but there was no way for me to say “I received the product!”
So bizarre.
I’m used to dedicating time to dealing with being screwed by random companies. But this doesn’t fit that description- so I don’t go too far out of my way.
Hah, they actually did a slight rollback! When I first heard about them stopping the downloads, I immediately downloaded all the books I purchased from Amazon and went from buying ~1 book per week to 0. Seems a lot of us doing so had some sort of effect.
Unfortunately, it seems like this will be chosen by the publisher, so of course probably most of the books won't be downloadable at all, and Amazon can now point their finger at the publisher instead of taking the blame themselves. Publishers was probably always the reason behind the move, but at least now Amazon have someone else to blame, which I guess is great for them.
I have bought more than 600 books over a decade or so;
But after they decided the ebooks were actually just license to read, I did exactly the same as you, and now rather than happily buying from them, actively discourage everyone in my social circle from using kindle.
I am not going back, whoever they decide to blame.
No, it hasn't. Until very recently, their website said "Buy now with 1-Click", minus the new "By placing an order, you're purchasing a content license & agreeing to Kindle's Store Terms of Use." wording underneath it. The process was identical to buying a physical book: you give them money, and you end up with your own physical or electronic copy of it.
Any interpretation of that transaction as anything but a purchase of a copy is delusional. I couldn't care less what their ToS said about it, any more than I'd care what a sign on the wall of a bookstore said.
The linked article is about Amazon's having realized they had no right to sell the books they thought they had sold and reversing the transaction, not revoking a license to something they thought they had licensed to you.
You seem to be missing the importance of that nuance.
"Amazon has revised the text when purchasing a Kindle e-book on its online store. You do not own the book you bought but are licensing it. It used to say “By clicking on above button, you agree to Amazon’s Kindle Store Terms of Use.”"
...
"This is not a policy shift from Amazon for the US; they are more upfront about it now. Amazon has always licensed the digital content to users, so anything purchased does not mean the user owns it, they just bought a license"
As the article points out, the change in verbiage was because of a new California requirement that this should be made explicit. It was always a license. They merely changed the verbiage on the button to conform to state rules.
Edit: I have to say, after a bunch of rather pointless arguments today and yesterday on HN, it disappoints me that the average commenter is quick to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions. Both times the facts were trivial to lookup.
I mean, you're citing goodereader.com as though that's somehow an authoritative source and not just a blog by a guy who likes ereaders, but has no special legal knowledge.
Much more useful would have been if you had linked to an archive of the original Kindle Store Terms of Use, which state:
> Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.[0] (emphasis mine)
Notice that "or as authorized by Amazon" is part of the clause with "solely on the device," not a separate clause that somehow might be interpreted to apply to the "right to keep a permanent copy" part.
Does it also say that it is considered licensed to you? Sure. But the "license" is the "right to keep a permanent copy."
It's one thing for Amazon to say, "Shit, we sold you a book we weren't authorized to sell. We have to undo the whole transaction." It's quite another to do what the GGGGGGGP comment (I didn't count the G's) is complaining about and delete your permanent copy of a book for which they did validly sell you a license to keep a permanent copy.
Amazon has meaningfully changed the license agreement now. In 2025, it says:
> Use of Kindle Content. Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider. Upon your download or access of Kindle Content and payment of any applicable fees (including applicable taxes), the Content Provider grants you subject to the terms of this Agreement, including without limitation those in “Changes to Service; Amendments” below, a non-exclusive right to view, use, and display such Kindle Content (for Subscription Content, only as long as you remain an active member of the underlying membership or subscription program), solely through Kindle Software or as otherwise permitted as part of the Service, solely on the number of Supported Devices specified in the Kindle Store, and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Content Provider may include additional terms for use within its Kindle Content. Those terms will also apply, but this Agreement will govern in the event of a conflict. Some Kindle Content, such as interactive or highly formatted content, may not be available to you on all Kindle Software.[1]
They've eliminated the right to keep a permanent copy that was originally part of the license sold. That change matters. Deleting content sold under that license is a violation of the terms of the agreement on their part.
> Yes, it has. They made it clear right when they launched the store.
No one except those who explicitly went looking for this knew it. It wasn't made clear in any way.
> This became big news a long time ago:
Speaking of orthogonal. I remember this well. It was a case where Amazon stole back books people had purchased. The core concern at the time wasn't that Amazon had revoked a license to read a book, but that they had deleted purchased books from users' collections.
But at the end of the day, for many years Amazon had an action button saying "Buy now with 1-Click" with no legal fiction disclaimer. The button was identical to what you'd see when buying a bag of cat food, DVD, or anything else you'd flat-out purchase from them.
I'm neither disputing the verbiage on the button, nor the ignorance of users. None of those affects the fact that you did not own the ebook - it was licensed to you.
What is silly is actually knowing the whole 1984 episode, and still believing you owned the books.
> "These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books," spokesman Drew Herdener told the Guardian. "When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers."
> Amazon refunded the cost of the books, but told affected customers they could no longer read the books and that the titles were "no longer available for purchase".
This has nothing to do with people's having bought a license to the books. It's about Amazon's never having had authorization from the publisher to sell the books. There is no reference at all to people's having licensed the books from Amazon. Amazon referred to people as having bought the books.
What do you do now? I’ve been buying physical books off of Abe Books—not a bad thing at all—but I’d like to use my jailbroken kindle again because the form factor is so convenient.
Buy DRM free when you can. Not only is this convenient for you but will hopefully help nudge the market. When you can't, buy the book from one of the easily cracked sources (Kobo, Google, Adobe DRM).
Or you can save yourself the bother of removing DRM by buying the book from wherever and then downloading a copy from Anna's.
I try to buy physical books, and make an effort to buy it elsewhere, with AMZN being the reluctant last resort if I truly can’t find it. I don’t have a specific go to place anymore.
Also, I reduced the buying pace - owning physical books takes up space, so the bar for getting something into the library is now much higher than before.
It’s a shift but I agree. I think we’re used to having instant access to what we want. Waiting 3 weeks on Libby is a change. I do think it’s been healthy and gives me something to look forward to!
It’s pretty unusual for Amazon to put any other entity’s interest ahead of it’s own, so they can be presumed to have some business reason for it, like the number of people who’ve decided not to buy from them any more.
YMMV depending on the kind of books you read, but I think the majority of the ones I've gotten from Amazon are labeled as DRM-free. A lot of fantasy/science fiction authors (as well as some publishers like Tor!) feel strongly about that kind of thing
But only if the author/publisher explicitly go in and permit it.
This isn't announcing that pdf's and epub's are now available for everything that was drm-free, this is announcing that they will _permit_ pdf's and epub's to be available.
I'm a self-published author. This is the default setting for new books uploaded without DRM. It's gated behind an "I understand" checkbox. I plan to allow my books to be downloaded as PDF and ePUB.
Technically, yes, but Amazon customers probably wouldn't benefit from that. I don't currently distribute or sell books directly because that creates a tax burden. So it's probably best to let the various stores handle it. I still want to sell books but I don't want my readers to be restricted by DRM for a book they paid for. The honor system is fine for me.
Edit: I now realize you might mean in the Amazon KDP UI. I don't see a way to upload your own.
As an independent author you can do what you wish. The only restriction is if you are in the Amazon KDP select program then you have promised Amazon exclusive use for a cut of the Kindle Select pie. I also distribute my books on all the other platforms, and for my free sci-fi book host it direct on my web site and on my Ko-Fi shop (the 'buy-me-a-coffee' site). Selling directly and collecting money requires a bit too much work but technically you could do it.
Having the action prominent and potentially with the default reversed would still leave it to the publisher's choice.
We can understand why they do it this way (they only need the option to exist, and can afford to apply dark patterns to it), but we don't need to excuse Amazon. Especially when they don't give a shit about what we think in the first place.
Oh I wouldn't expect Amazon to care what I think, especially with regards to digital books as at least I am not a customer.
I'm also not going to write off everything they do as evil only because of who they are though. Defaulting to disabled vs enabled would be reasonable too, though I don't know enough publishers or independent authors to know which option would be more often selected to pick a default.
This was unexpected. They lost me as a customer when they stopped allowing me to download books I bought and I'm in the Kobo (+ BookLore) side now and I am not coming back.
I wonder how many books are actually DRM-free and are going to be affected by this change. I suspect relatively few, but I would be happy to be wrong
For me it appears highly genre-correlated. High percentage of science fiction books come with a small statement "this book is drm free on request of publisher / author". Zero of my photography, music, computer science or graphic novels came with such a tag.
Yeah, Tor Books publishes without DRM, and they seem to be one of the bigger SFF publishers these days. John Scalzi, George R.R. Martin (though not the ASoIaF books), Robert Jordan, Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane Anders, and a bunch of other SFF authors I recognize. I'm sure there are others, but all the once I've noticed have been from Tor.
If you want to be part of Kindle Unlimited you have to give worldwide exclusivity to Kindle Unlimited, and can't have ever published your eBook on another platform.
Even if I wanted to join, Kindle Unlimited is not offered here. I can't even buy the eBook from Amazon.
My daughter wanted a book that was kindle exclusive in the US, and I found I could purchase an epub from another store by paying in euros and claiming to live in Europe. Needless to say I did this without a VPN and without leaving San Francisco. The book was still in English.
But I wonder if the reason for that little hoop was because of Kindle Unlimited.
It's not just that. E.g. Cooper and Hutchinson's edition of Plato's complete works, available on Kindle for $31.[1] Or on another tack, Yudkowski's recent If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.[2] Neither book is on Unlimited, and I couldn't find either one on Kobo. I struck out half a dozen times in a row and finally gave up.
While it's true I don't see that version of Plato's complete works (in fact, I don't see any Hackett Publishing books), the book on AI[1] is available.
But Kobo is bad too. Try refunding a book. Their website sent me in neverending circles and still I could not find a way to refund. Their stuff requires some specific reader or so. I don't quite remember the details, but I bought a book, thinking to avoid Amazon shit. Then I realized that their stuff sucks and I don't want to buy their blessed device or install special reader software. Also not DRM-free. So I wanted to refund, but couldn't. It is a very bad user experience. The only good experience you get from them is, if you go all in on their software/devices.
Since I couldn't refund, I had to pirate the book as epub/pdf from elsewhere. I decided to never again buy anything from Kobo.
It's not super easy to refund digital goods in general with few exceptions like Steam. I have done it with Kobo but IIRC you have to chat with a CS rep or least you did when I did it.
No where legit is DRM free for eBooks from the big publishers. You don't even have to use the Kobo app since they let you download the ACSM file and use it Adobe Digital Editions which could be used on a computer or ADE supported eReader like Pocketbook (or Kobo!). This has been the case since before they were even called Kobo! And if the publisher offers the book DRM free they just give you a DRM-free ePub instead of the ACSM file.
These days, with the Calibre DeACSM and DeDRM plug-ins you don't even need ADE. It's also trivially easy to remove the DRM from the Kobo desktop app or their readers. It's way easier than Amazon and a way better experience with multiple routes to a DRM free file.
This ACSM file fiddling was too much of a hassle. I used to DeDRM ebooks from Amazon (also using Calibre), but I didn't know about DeACSM. I just want an epub or pdf file. I don't want their reinventing the wheel to somehow gatekeep content bs file formats. This is a clear sign for me, that they do not have my best interest at heart.
Their website didn't guide me towards a callable phone number or give me an actual e-mail address I could write to. Instead I went back and forth between chatbot and docs and webpages, without success. It is obvious to me, that they want as little actual human in the loop as possible. Real shitty experience, while my money is already gone and I am trying to get it back. Easier to give up and just download an acceptable version elsewhere. Not going through all that hassle to use their platform, which doesn't value me as a customer anyway.
Using the Kobo desktop app is almost identical to Kindle with regards to DeDRM. You open app, you download book in app, you open Calibre, then here is where it changes, you click the Obok plugin on the Calibre toolbar, find book and import and get an ePub and you don't even have to convert it!
ACSM is Adobe's crap and the same thing you'd have use for Google Play Books and a few others. It's again another slight step change where you have to open the ACSM with ADE to get the book in the first place. WTF Adobe did it that way, IDK but they did.
Bad take. Kobo lets you know which books have DRM and which don't. And even with DRM, you can get them into Adobe Digital Editions and load them on to basically any e-reader. (Maybe not Kindle since it won't open DRM'd ePubs.)
I buy like 60% of my ebooks from Kobo and have never owned a Kobo-brand ereader.
In the end that's also shitty. I don't want to "get them into Adobe Digital Editions". I don't want to have to use Adobe shitware, and I don't want their special formats. Just give me the epub or pdf. Also their website treated me like shit and they have no good way to contact anyone visible on their website.
Kobo is not it. Maybe they once were, at some point before I tried using them. I am not gonna support them after my experience with them.
As I explained above, you can get the ePubs directly if you just used the free Kobo desktop app. I think you need to ask yourself why you were OK using the Amazon Kindle app for DeDRM but Kobo or Adobe's was a huge burden. Really Bizzare IMO.
Do you know the concept of time passing? Could it be possible, that my stance regarding ebooks changed over time, and that I have become more aware of the associated issues? Hmmmm.
What is bizarre here is you posting these comments, trying to invalidate my all around terrible experience with Kobo. Your account is green behind the ears and all your comments are on Kobo, Kobo, Kobo. Go figure.
I like eBooks, I've had eReaders from Sony, Kobo, Amazon and Boox, bought from Amazon, Kobo, Google Play, and several of the smaller players like Baen. Outside of the completely DRM-free places like Baen which are very limited in selection, Kobo is IMO the easiest to get a DRM-free file in the end. Your posts were IMO very off the mark that it got me to comment. I'd rather people try Kobo than keep feeding the Amazon machine.
I said, "I'll leave it to you to find out why". This is a public forum. Just maybe look up some Calibre plug-ins which might help you "manage" DRM books.
I've used it and I found it the worst form of DRM. It required creating an "account" with Adobe despite having no relationship with them (It was to access books at my local library where I already had an account) and the software didn't even work on linux. Even getting it to work at all took ages of tinkering and I'm an IT expert. My parents who just wanted to simply check out a book out of the digital library during the pandemic would never have managed to figure that out.
And yes I have liberated all my DRM books from Amazon. But Adobe Digital I will never touch again (Nor buy books with DRM on it in the first place).
Really that is WAY too complicated for my folks. And for me I don't want accounts with big tech companies to do something local so step 2 was already a blocking point.
And as for removing the DRM (I assume that's what you're hinting at), yeah but that can be done with kindle's and kobo's too and in less roundabout ways. The existence of a hack for Adobe DRM doesn't make that a 'good' DRM.
How many books are actually available DRM-free? This reads a bit like "Amazon will provide free land, construct a paddock and provide feed for life if you order a unicorn, except unicorns don't exist".
All of Cory Doctorow's books are DRM-free. Actually, he insisted on it as a contractual rider with his publisher, so he isn't available on any platform that doesn't have a DRM-free option. I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon re-allowing downloads for DRM-free is specifically because Doctorow's publisher is angry at them.
In practice, the biggest store that doesn't have a DRM-free option is Audible... which has a near-monopoly on audiobooks. So Cory Doctorow has to do crowdfunding campaigns for all his audiobooks. Of course, that doesn't stop his books from getting illegally reposted to Audible anyway, and Amazon doesn't care about enforcing rights they can't have. Which led to him actually publishing this gem on Audible: https://www.amazon.com/Why-None-Books-Available-Audible/dp/B...
Kobo does sell some other books DRM-free, so perhaps this is some sort of error. You can buy it directly from the publisher without Adobe DRM, there it has a watermark instead.
Books enter the public domain. Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.
The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad. You should explore all of the above a lot more, and much more besides.
I assumed that that was clear from the context, but let me rephrase it then:
"being made available DRM-free on Amazon" (and I'd narrow that down to "primarily/only on Amazon")
Of course public domain books are DRM free but I'm getting those from Gutenberg, not Amazon. Likewise, the copyleft books I'll most likely download from their own homepages, not Amazon.
I'm aware that DRM free media exists, including for currently copyrighted content that Amazon distributes ;)
Mildly sad is also that you seem to fault GP for not “exploring” more, instead of the insane practice of DRMing everything in the first place.
I never have purchased DRM protected media and never will - I’d rather pirate everything digital and but physical hard copies.
I don’t actually think it’s their fault, and if they feel I’m faulting them, that wasn’t the intention.
I think it’s sad that what we thought everyone saw as a nonsense is now so normalised that alternatives are just disappearing from view. Everyone should be encouraged to explore.
Piracy is your preferred option, but when that became more mainstream we actually ended up creating the market for more DRM, in the form of iTunes, Spotify and others. I’m not sure I want the future of digital media to be entirely subscription-based like that.
What might be a better solution is showing that media creators can achieve more of their own objectives through releasing media without DRM. This only works if their objectives are not entirely around making money from media sales, and more aligned to influence, or audience building.
I’m actually surprised at this point that musicians - given they don’t make money from streaming services and see them as tools to build audiences for live tours where they really make their money - don’t just jump over already.
> Piracy is your preferred option, but when that became more mainstream we actually ended up creating the market for more DRM, in the form of iTunes, Spotify and others. I’m not sure I want the future of digital media to be entirely subscription-based like that.
Nah DRM and subscription models would have arrived even if there were no piracy. Subscription models because they guarantee income and most people use less than it's worth. And DRM because companies are paranoid.
In fact even now DRM serves no actual purpose other than harassing legitimate buyers. Pirates have no issue getting content and in the case of books they never will because copying can even be done by OCR.
I was just talking about books, but sure for music there are tons of alternative options as well.
I detest streaming platforms and it’s pretty easy to buy music directly from the creators in almost all cases - except maybe the top “superstars” but I would argue that they are probably doing fine anyway…
Also physical records still exist for music as well.
Lots of artists can do just fine with living from media sales.
Look I’m not saying “pirate everything and never pay the artists” - I’m saying “never pay the predatory tech companies that have inserted themselves between us and artists”
...and then they get re-packaged with DRM on Amazon's store, mostly because people uploading public domain books on Amazon have no idea what they're doing.
> Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.
You can read DRM-free stuff on a Kindle already, so that's not particularly relevant here.
> The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad.
When every big publisher is doing it, it is the norm. That doesn't mean there doesn't exist any book publisher which doesn't do this, but the vast, vast majority of the books actually sold today contain DRM. We don't have to like that norm, but pretending it isn't one is just denying reality.
While lots public domain books are on Amazon's store, most of those books are not free, both in the sense of "free or charge" and "DRM free". A lot of literature classic are released by a major publishing house with foreword and annotations, which to be fair, are copyrighted works and provide value. And they cost a bit of money. The "real" public domain versions provide by Amazon are barebone. Those versions are often good enough for many people, but you don't need to get them from Amazon in the first place.
In other words, public domain or not does not have much to do with DRM-free or even Amazon.
You'd be surprised. Tor and Solaris both offer DRM free books on Amazon. Also anything self published tends to be DRM free.
I saw the writing on the wall and downloaded my books from Amazon a few months before their announcement. Out of around 1000 books I had 300ish that were DRM free.
Dumb question, but: is there a way to find/filter ones that are? (I can't seem to find anything in the (web) UI that makes it clear which books are downloadable.)
There wasn't when I went through my collection. Reading the announcement from Amazon it looks like the existing DRM free books will not be automatically flagged to be downloadable.
The publisher/author will have to go through a process to have their books be downloadable again.
I have some tor books, but I used to download them as .azw even though they had the "this book is drm free ..." blurb at the beginning. (was back before amazon stopped downloads)
Now they could actually be distributed as unencrypted .epub
I assume GP was referring to Tor Books, (which name confused me immensely at first since I've been using the Tor project for many years) but that would have been an absolutely hilarious joke and I think you interpreting it as a joke is totally reasonable given how prominent the onion router project is.
It's not exactly nothing, but it's a pretty small change . Some publishers sell DRM-free on other platforms, and to be honest I was under the impression Amazon used to allow this in the past as well.
Of course if they really believed in the concept they would publish their own works DRM-free, but that would conflict with the business model of the publishing arm.
Yep, never again. I tried to take a pragmatic position with the DRM, and it is just not possible. I buy the crap out of DRM free stuff, but if it's not DRM free, it's not for me
I wonder if this is in response to Bookshop.org's DRM free e-book shop. I buy a lot of e-books and have completely switched over because of that feature.
I’m waiting for Bookshop.org to offer an integration with any hardware reader for most of their books. When they do, I’ll switch to whatever that reader is.
It’s up to each author and publisher and the vast majority still use DRM. Science fiction and Fantasy authors (like the example you linked) seem to be most likely to not use DRM, but I don’t read too much of those genres.
I have Kobo, but their decision to enable secure boot in newer models, and consequently pushing out FOSS choices as operating systems makes me think I won't get another Kobo. Yes the Nickel menu works still with secure boot enabled devices. I like to think that devices I buy might have different use-case in future, and secure-boot enabled devices seriously harm that.
I guess we just have to wait a little while, until that method using Calibre also does no longer work, because either Kobo or Adobe or someone else wants to make sure it does not work.
Thing is Kindle hardware is significantly better and cheaper. If you don't mind tinkering get a kindle and jailbreak it to remove ads and add koreader.
I've had both. Kobo is fine hardware-wise. And light years better on software than Kindle. One huge example: I have 1000+ books in Calibre. Took the time to tag them all into their respective categories. Kobo recognizes those tags and my book collection is sorted. With Kindle, I'd have to sort by hand on device. It ignores Calibre tags.
For this feature alone, I'd never go back to Kindle. Sure, I might be able to replicate it with jailbreaking + KOReader. But the Kobo worked this way out of the box.
How so? Just looking online, the prices between a Kindle and Clara BW is minimal (the Clara BW is actually cheaper). I don’t see how the hardware is better when they use the same exact screen…
> Kindle hardware is significantly better and cheaper. If you don't mind tinkering get a kindle and jailbreak it to remove ads and add koreader.
Because Amazon were increasingly locking-down their systems - and also because they are all-round shits - I decided to abandon the ecosystem having been a customer since the days they only sold books.
I have owned two Paperwhites, two Oasis devices, and a Kindle Scribe. I sold all of them last year and bought a Kobo Libra Colour.
I get WAY more joy from reading on the Kobo. I love buying books from the Kobo store (yes I know they also have DRM) - and I'm buying and reading WAY more on the Kobo than I was at the end of my time with Amazon.
Every time I buy yet another book on the Kobo Store I feel the thrill of sticking it to the horrible, anti-user shits at Amazon.
I love my Libra 2 reader, but I only use it to read epub files from questionable websites. I would pay for books if they were available as DRM-free epubs.
I'll chime in - the Kindle Paperwhite I believe is the superior machine from a physical feeling and aesthetic perspective. The problem (for me) is who makes it. Amazon keeps locking it down so it's harder and harder to load your own DRM free books onto it, in addition to tracking everything you do on it (like sending all your reading statistics whenever you get online).
I have a Kobo Clara BW. It's still a great machine, but the Kindle is definitely superior for feel and visuals, but I use the Kobo 95% of the time. They are way more open with the software and I have mine in "sideload" mode (an official setting), which really just means that it doesn't make me log into anything and it doesn't even attempt to connect to the internet. Also, I can purchase a DRM free ebook on the train, plug a USB cable into my phone and my Kobo, and then load it on like that. Now I own my digital book, have supported the author with a larger margin, and get to read it on my more private machine.
Definitely not a no-brainer for everyone, but I'm happy with my Kobo.
Kobo is the sort of device which would make HN happy. The software is much more open and permissive than Kindle. Integrates with Calibre more tightly. Has a fairly rich ecosystem of tweaks and addons which don't require a jailbreak. Wish it didn't have secure boot but am otherwise pretty happy with it.
Kobo feels like something I actually own. More so than Kindle or even my iDevices. That's a little unusual these days from a mainstream product and that will make its users enthusiastic.
Check their post history, nobody's going to be doing that kind of long con here. (Different kinds of long cons, maybe, but not for shilling an e-reader)
How do you know anything? You can never know for sure if you can trust another person, and this is why people can get schizophrenia.
Asking people to verify that they are honest will never help you. Dishonest people will of course lie to you and say they are honest. While honest people will be insulted by your question and not want to engage with you.
What you can do is verify. Try a Kobo, try a Kindle. Make up your own mind.
Indeed, and it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to do an internet search to get more opinions. If you think everyone is astroTurfing and shilling, then you have to fall back to the good old-fashioned scientific method of trying things out yourself.
It would be great too to bring that information back to HN and share it with us.
I have both. The Kindle is a better device overall, but the I like Kobo's software better.
What I found disappointing was when I had to swap out the screen on the Kobo and found that it was glued and that the battery was soldered. I managed to do fix it, but I don't like things that are unnecessarily hard to fix.
So Gutenberg and the internet archive could monetise click through links or an affiliate program? No disrespect intended, if this meant we could fund them with Amazon pitching in some vig I'd think about it. Mind you, they'd probably make more with direct donation per person, but Amazon could drive many multiples more via the store.
As the author of five books (and my most recent one entirely self-published), I haven't yet worked out how I feel about this or how to respond. My current compromise is to charge more on the DRM-free LeanPub.
Genuine questions here, not rhetorical or trying to imply anything with them.
Why charge more on a DRM free site? Do you think people buying from there are doing so that they can share the book illegally?
If someone wants to share the book illegally, I would imagine they'll just download it from one of the pirate mirrors out there and not bother paying you at all. My guess is you're probably just reducing the number of people willing to pay the price. Classic supply and demand curve against price.
Where possible, I try not to focus on negative motives. Quite simply, if people see a benefit in DRM-free, why not expect them to pay for it? And there are other platforms beside the two I mentioned – it’s not a choice between DRM-free and (for better or for worse) Amazon.
In case your question was not rhetorical: to folks like me, I view DRM as abuse, because it inevitably leads to me paying for something that I won't end up being able to access down the line. It is in direct conflict with building a library. Having the author opt-in to applying DRM to their books (as you have on Amazon and Google Play, for example) and then expected me to pay them extra so I can actually own the thing I paid for makes me take three steps back from the "Buy" button. I tend to just walk out rather than be treated that way. As a result, I've stopped buying Amazon Kindle books entirely (now that I can't strip the DRM). If I'm paying the money, I'm going to demand control, and if I can't get that control, there will be no transaction.
FWIW, LeanPub for your book suggests $25, and the DRM-laden version is $13.50. That's quite the premium!
This is silly. You aren't competing with amazon you're competing with Anna. If someone is interested in DRM free they aren't stupid. Take the sale but don't take the piss.
Amazon wins by miles, almost to the point of incomparability. For all my issues with Amazon, that’s fine by me: compared to all other platforms, that’s where the reviews and other forms of social proof are.
Another possible compromise might be to use watermarking-based DRM. Amazon doesn't seem to support it, but other e-bookstores do. In any case, thank you for offering the LeanPub option!
Amazon deserves a lot of criticism in the general sense, but this can only be seen as a positive move. Most importantly, if they set an industry standard, others might follow.
Fundamentally, I prefer a physical book to a digital one. But, the primary reason I'd never even entertain a digital book is the lack of ownership. Ownership is incredibly important, and we need to celebrate victories when they happen.
I agree this is a positive step, but this is like notch 1 on a scale of 0 to 100, 0 being maximum abuse of your customer. I think it's downright evil not to allow this for DRM free books, which they have been doing for many years now. It is positive that they reduced the level of evil by a little bit, and I'll give them credit for that, but this movement is so minor in the scope of things that it does not sway me whatsoever to go back to buying from their Kindle store
Oh, as a lawyer, I must insist that you should never do piracy and its wrong, which is why I try to inform people as much about this thing so that they can avoid it.
I like to be able to price shop, but I do want to support the authors. So I use Kobo & Kindle, then buy it wherever it's cheapest usually.
Then I use epubor ultimate to convert to epub and read it on my generic e-ink reader. Some folks object to the licensing or whatever with epubor (unattributed GPL?) but it works, it's easy, and when Amazon tightens up the DRM they always find a way around it eventually.
I've "collected" 500+ Kindle titles over the years and stopped buying from them completely when they blocked downloads earlier this year. When they enable these downloads, I'm going to export the ones I didn't get last time and continue NOT buying from them.
The current experience of using a Kobo Libre Color, Koreader, any webdav mounted in koreader and pirating everything on annas archive et. al. cannot be beat by any commercial offering. Unsuprisingly my copy of 1984 has never been deleted from my NAS
That's my take. I break the DRM off books I've bought. I own those copies. I'll format shift them for my own convenience. Bought on Kindle but want to read on my Kobo? It's impossible to make me feel guilt about that.
But I don't read books I haven't legally acquired, whether through a paid bookstore, or temporarily borrowed via Libby, or Standard Ebooks or whatever. I won't yell at other people for doing that, but I don't do it myself. In a nutshell, I follow the same rules as with physical books I own (or temporarily possess).
> pirating everything on annas archive et. al. cannot be beat by any commercial offering
While I understand people pirating movies - there are hundreds of movies I'd happily pay to watch, but which are literally unavailable to me because of some arbitrary 'regional' restriction imposed by the distributors. But I can't think of a single book that isn't available in most parts of the world - certainly they're available wherever a Kobo is for sale.
So how are new books going to be published in the future, if people like you don't pay writers for their work? Would you like your work to be pirated, so you wouldn't be able to even buy another Kobo?
I feel like if the platform is unwilling to give you access to books you posted for, you should be able to download them from arrr without authors or publishers being affected financially - buy first pirate later.
People have been writing for much longer than writing has been a profession. And their work has been published by the means of the day, which pre-Gutenberg in the West meant hand-copying.
It's not immoral in any way to make a living off of your own creations, but - artists gonna art.
Imagine being so good at writing, that people out there are trying to get a copy of it that they can upload to The Pirate Bay. Hell yeh, I'd love that... seems like reaching the big leagues.
Datahoarders with hard drives full of pirated books are not nearly as much of a threat to writers as, say, AI slop making it difficult to market new books. If you pirate a book and read it, the author can still sell you the sequel. Not so much if you don't even know who the author is.
I have a kindle. And it's really good, I've never read as much. Ive never bought a single thing from its store, only sideloaded though. And seeing the recent events im more worried about Amazon pulling the plug on side loading stuff. Turns out it's not that complicated to jailbreak your kindle though, so that's what I'm doing this weekend.
Recently i bought a book from Kindle because i couldn't find it in any other platform and I'm so happy it only cost me 1$ because i haven't been able to download the ePub version, none of the methods on the internet have worked for me or they need to use a physical kindle device. God it's so frustrating i just want to read a 1$ book on my Kobo
This is all very interesting news. From a sales standpoint, they're nearly admitting they cannot manage DRM properly and at Amazon scale. From a copyright standpoint, antipiracy will be extremely hard to enforce. The only middle ground is targeting honest buyers, and we all know how well that works. We should not expect this to be a permanent change. Perhaps it will be more of a very short, DRM-free golden age until another Amazon executive comes down and ends this experiment.
Well, it's a step in the right direction. I will never pay for an ebook that I cannot permanently possess. And DRM is pointless. At some point the words become visible and therefore are copyable.
I could see them buying the rights to popular free or DRM-free books and bringing them into their store, along with all the consequences that would entail.
Not to mention the spying they'll do - Whatcha reading?
Recently signed up for Littler Books for the sole reason they offered everything in epub, pdf and Word doc. Sad this is not the standard for paid content.
I think we should not allow Amazon to control our digital life.
Same with Google etc... just look how bad youtube has gotten. I
try to find a video xyz, using the search term xyz, and after
like 5 results, random videos show up. That is not a "search",
that is propaganda and an attempt to retain people on the
platform - but I am already on the platform playing BACKGROUND
MUSIC of some DJs. Why is Google wasting my time when I want to
FIND something? And what is even worse - that leaked onto the
search engine too. The search engine has been ruined by Google
deliberately so in the last some years.
Amazon adopted epub several years ago. Publishers provide files to them as plain epub files. What they sell is an epub file in a proprietary wrapper. The wrapper exists, in part, to provide the DRM. If they remove the DRM, they can remove the wrapper and give you a plan epub file.
They're still going to take note of what you're reading and possibly brand you as a non-ultra-capitalist disruptor. Amazon can get fucked.
I still buy physical media from them once a year (November) when availabilty and rest of the world can't compete price-wise. Yes I recognise the hypocrisy of said actions and minimise it as much as possible. Non-US based. Many physical media producers (e.g. Disney) no longer produce stuff for our 'region'.
Nobody with sane mind cares. You may buy Kindle, but then you jailbreak it right away. You can "buy" Kindle e-books, but then you exfiltrate these right away. When you stand your ground, what can Amazon allow you or not allow?
Sure, if you don't mind playing a stupid cat and mouse game with one of the largest corporations on the planet, go for it. I did it for a bit and got real tired of the drag.
Now if a book is available from a DRM free source, I buy it. Otherwise something else
Hardware I pay for should be mine. If I do not jailbreak it, it is still theirs, despite me paying for it. They cheat, not me. Same goes for e-books, they can cut me off, they can (and do) change contents on the fly. I keep exfiltrated books for myself, and that is right.
I’d advise anyone buying e-books on Amazon to think it through carefully. My account was banned recently because, years ago, I ordered two paper books that Amazon said would be split into two shipments. Both books arrived without any issues, but later Amazon refunded me for one of them, claiming that one package never arrived. This happened 4–5 years ago.
Apparently, during a recent review, they decided this counted as fraud and banned my account. As a result, I can no longer log in and lost access to all my Kindle e-books. They also remotely wiped my Kindle, so my entire library is gone. I appealed the decision, but I’ve been waiting for over six months with no resolution.
A friend of mine received a double shipment for a $300 order. Being honest, he contacted customer service to arrange a return. Everything seemed fine until a few days later when he noticed they had also refunded his original payment. He reached out again to let them know, and they said they’d just recharge his card. Apparently, that transaction failed (no clear reason why), and without any warning, they banned his account, wiping out his entire Kindle library in the process. Amazon works wonderfully right up until it fails spectacularly.
I wonder just like retailers are required to account for local sales taxes (I know it is not that clear cut), there should be some enforcement mechanism to settle disputes locally. Setup an agency which "legally" provides support for google, Amazon, and all those unreachable entities. Provides local jobs as well as quick grievance redressal. Maybe something like consumer protection agency but not federal, maybe at least one per county maybe more depending on the population.
Edit - I don't mind paying for the service. Maybe charge everyone $99 to file a case to avoid everyone piling on, but it helps resolve most egregious ones, and fee could be refunded at the agency's discretion.
I can't speak for how effective the process is, but this is the idea behind the EU/UK GPSR's Authorised Representative framework - though not exactly local (that would be excessive, since GPSR also applies to much smaller sellers too)
I hope it works better than the EU DSA dispute resolution, which I've heard multiple accounts of youtube just ignoring.
Haha, let me guess, if they're based in Ireland then this enforcement is up to Ireland as well, so it's as toothless as the other digital laws?
Some kind of court, for small claims?
Just need to outlaw binding arbitration
Amazon will reimburse arbitration fees if you win making it a cheaper option for consumers than small claims court.
Two problems with that argument: 1) Amazon would also have to reimburse small claims court fees if you win, and 2) arbitration is worse for the consumer in pretty much every other way.
"If".
[Edit, because one-word replies are uncivilized: one reason to be suspicious about binding arbitration is that the company against whom you'll be pleading is a repeat customer of that arbitration service. It's a non-transparent / non-public process, so it's hard to have confidence is fair, and over which we (ie, the public) have no influence if it were not.]
>is a repeat customer of that arbitration service
Who is locked in by the contract. The arbitration company gets their fees no matter the outcome.
>so it's hard to have confidence is fair
You can appeal to a court if it's unfair.
"We examine whether firms have an informational advantage in selecting arbitrators in consumer arbitration [...] We first document that some arbitrators are systematically industry friendly while others are consumer friendly. Firms appear to utilize this information in the arbitrator selection process. Despite a randomly generated list of potential arbitrators, industry-friendly arbitrators are forty percent more likely to be selected than their consumer friendly counterparts. Better informed firms and consumers choose more favorable arbitrators. [...] Competition between arbitrators exacerbates the informational advantage of firms in equilibrium resulting in all arbitrators slanting towards being industry friendly. Evidence suggests that limiting the respondent’s and claimant’s inputs over the arbitrator selection process could significantly improve outcomes for consumers."
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers...
Businesses also incorporate in jurisdictions that are business friendly too.
It's 75 bucks in the EU without waiting for the reimbursement.
Does that include flying out to wherever?
That won't get you your account back.
We could call it "small claims court".
> there should be some enforcement mechanism to settle disputes locally.
They are called courts and they exist.
Of course, companies like to require you to agree to binding arbitration, instead.
Or maybe pass some laws with more penalties for defrauding your own customers.
The solution to authoritarian problems is to organize.
In this case, we're overdue for a service that we all pay into, like a collective credit card, that only continues making payments to companies like Amazon if all of the members are happy. When you get banned without due process, payments stop until the matter is resolved.
Also, the collective can bargain-down rates. If it senses price increases beyond inflation, it just sends the adjusted amount, like 95%, until the matter is resolved.
We need this collective bargaining for housing (like tenant unions), the workplace, politics, pharmaceuticals, etc. The scale of this is so large that the collective could exist beyond any specific industry. So that it would operate as a meta economy beside the so-called free market economy (late-stage capitalism) that we operate under today due to the lack of antitrust enforcement.
Groups like the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) are working towards these sorts of goals on a number of fronts:
https://weall.org/
How would that work for countries where Amazon doesn't have a legal presence? A foreign court would be able to do anything.
Something similar happened to me with Blizzard. I'd buy subscription time and, a few days later, they'd cancel my subscription and refund the charge. After a few rounds of this, they suspended my account.
In that case, I appealed and was told, for the first time, that the reason for the refunds was that the card I'd been paying with didn't match the stored payment information saved to my account.
Both cards were equally valid and there was no indication anywhere that having saved payment information disqualified you from paying by any other method. As best I can tell, Blizzard just updated their policies one day for no particular reason, then made not complying with the new, secret policies a bannable offense.
i suspect the reason for such a policy is to ban fraud/stolen credit cards (probably used by professional bot farmers selling in-game gold for real life money).
The collateral damage on regular, innocent players is just an acceptable outcome.
I never bought any ebooks off Amazon without removing the drm at the time. I did buy a lot of shows and movies, but if they take those away, I'll just pirate them, given I've already paid.
Buying drm'ed shit, and removing later only indicates that DRM is acceptable.
Pirate it to start, and dont pay. You're an 'illegal' either way, with a tort copyright violation OR a criminal DMCA violation.
Unfortunately not everything is available on the high seas. For instance, it's impossible to find older seasons of MasterChef Australia (in HD). Heck even trying to view it legally, outside of AU, is a mission - Amazon is the only entity that has the older seasons. I ended up subscribing to a Prime account just for this.
Every season of MasterChef Australia is available on the right tracker.
Haven't found any, certainly not any with active seeders. If you know of a tracker (that doesn't require super special invites), I'm all ears.
S01-03 only exist in SD, from S04 onwards Full HD files are available on all trackers that I happen to have too.
What is the vpn of choice these days for bittorrent?
there's only one that's not extremely shady and has working port forwarding. If you don't need the latter, just stick to Mullvad.
What is the one with working port forwarding?
Proton, at least for me
PIA also supports port forwarding from non-US regions. And the Linux solution is better and provides a stable port, unlike Proton's 'run this command every 60 seconds and hope'.
I only use OpenVPN (another reason to move away from Mullvad), not their own clients. I moved away from PIA in the past, I don't remember why, it was a long time ago.
I was happy with Mullvad for a long time, especially being able to buy their scratch cards, but now I had to move to Proton due to the deprecation of port forwarding and openvpn at mullvad.
But PIA is american anyway so that won't work for me, I'm not signing up with new american services anymore since Trump came to power again.
At the time a lot of the things I was reading were only available on there or on paper.
That's the point of DRM-free ebooks though, isn't it? You download them and keep them safe so if the provider decides to cut access to your account, you remain in possession of the goods.
So the correct advice would be to avoid anyone buying DRM-encumbered digital property - the same as RMS has been making for who knows how long!
It's safer to assume that Amazon is always acting in bad faith and search to purchase your DRM free e-books from other vendors. There's plenty of other options out there besides Amazon
> There's plenty of other options out there besides Amazon
Often not in my experience. Abe and B&N.
If by Abe, you mean Abe Books, they're a subsidiary of Amazon.
I believe Baen sells some DRM free sci fi books, but it's a smaller catalog.
Pretty sure all of Baen's books are DRM free, and they offer virtually every ebook format around. They even used to include CDs with their hardbacks that would would include a huge subset of their collection. But they aren't a retailer, they're a publisher, so you're only getting the titles they publish.
Bookshop, Kobo, Google Play Books
https://bookshop.org/info/ebooks
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bookshoporg-launche...
Banning long-time customers in otherwise good-standing for a mistake they made years ago, which would already be settled financially and such a minor cost is wild.
I can imagine something like this has happened to almost everyone.
So much for being the world’s most customer-centric company. That mission is dead.
Customer centric ended a few years ago
This may be your opinion, and mine as well, but it’s still in paragraph 1 of Amazon’s own about page. It seems they’ve forgotten their own guiding principles.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us
> Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. We strive to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, Earth’s best employer, and Earth’s safest place to work.
Hey Amazon, I have a great offer for to buy the Golden Gate bridge.
99.99% of the time when you read something on the internet and your reaction is "that's wild" / "wow that's crazy" / "that's unbelievable", then what you are reading is in fact likely nowhere near the actual truth / real.
My experience with online services and software in general is it makes mistakes A LOT. Like A LOT A LOT. And I have absolutely no problem believing there little to no humans in the loop here.
If you read up on Amazon's prior scandal(s) regarding their broken leave system, you'll believe almost any mistake is possible: https://web.archive.org/web/20211025011703/https://www.nytim...
One of the primary functions of DRM is to remove a paying customer's access to the works they paid for. There's nothing "wild" or "crazy" or "unbelievable" about it.
98.378274% of the time when you read something on the internet quoting accurate probabilities they're making it up to push their biases onto you.
"99.99% of the time" is a figure of speech. Don't overanalyze it.
>the world’s most customer-centric company.
Those are big words Amazon certainly doesn't earn.
They failed to deliver a Pixel phone to me - they never even tried to deliver it and the status said "permanent delivery failure" so I assumed they'd automatically refund me.
Fast forward a few months, I never received a refund and they claim they have no record any more. I could chargeback my credit card but I imagine I'd also be permanently banned from Amazon - so instead I accept they've just stolen $1000 from me with no recourse...
(if anyone from Amazon is reading this, my email is in my bio!)
It seems wild to me to just accept a loss of $1000 for something that isn't your fault. I'd be persistent in each contact with Amazon and if you're really not getting anywhere I'd go to small claims court or do a chargeback.
Like, I know there are some really rich people around, obviously you see them driving around in fancy cars and living in big houses, but you kinda forget that some people can just lose $1000 and ignore it like it's nothing. Crazy.
For $1k stolen from me I think I’d go with not shopping at Amazon again, tbh.
Yeah, I get that Amazon is incredibly convenient, but $1000 is $1000 no matter which company takes it from you. If some local mom and pop shop effectively stole $1000 from me, you can bet your ass I'd never patronize them again.
They never said they continued to patronize Amazon. Given the thread kicked off with claims about loosing access to DRMed content due to an unrelated delivery/payment issue, the person involved may be concerned about loosing access to digital content. Some people spend a lot of money on books, movies, etc.. The $1000 may be a drop in the bucket.
> I could chargeback my credit card but I imagine I'd also be permanently banned from Amazon - so instead I accept they've just stolen $1000 from me with no recourse...
To some this could imply they wanted to continue doing business with Amazon, so accepted the theft. Not losing access is, in a way, continuing to do business. Not sure if that's what they meant, but I can see it being interpreted as such.
Maybe not continue to do business with them but rather not lose access to their past purchases tied to their Amazon account.
Amazon has no moat today. What is even unique on amazon store these days? Fake chinese crap is what. Which you can also find on ebay, same item same product photos and probably still shipped to you in 2-4 days like what prime has been reduced to. If you can wait you can opt for the 3 weeks from china option at literally a quarter the cost.
Just ask for the refund. If they lock your account you can always make a new one (gonna be a scary day when that isn't possibl cuz they use biometrics or something.....).
But if they just close your account in response to asking for a rightful refund.... Literal thievery
Something similar happened to me. The delivery company returned two packages, two separate orders, as damaged back to Amazon. They were marked as "delivered". They automatically refunded just one item in one of the returned orders.
I had to call them to get a refund for all the items on all the orders, and even then they had a lot of difficulty figuring out what was happening. Isn't Amazon supposed to be a world leader (maybe after Walmart) in this stuff?
Not too long ago I received an empty package from Amazon but luckily it was a low price item and they reshipped it without fuss.
Not sure what you'd do in such a scenario if they tried to fight it
the bigger the company is the less they can invest in customer support. Because what the client will do anyway, leave them to some alternative? sue them? very unlikely
No way I'd give away 1000 € in exchange to be allowed to buy from some store. Actually, I don't even have an Amazon account, but if I did, I'd prefer to be banned than to burn 1000 € like that.
Much less money lost, but Amazon is notorious for not providing free game codes that are supposed to be included with GPU purchases. The customer rep at first apologized and offered a small refund (less than the cost of the game). A later rep started implying I was trying to defraud Amazon.
Many people online share similar experiences. Wonder how much money this wide-scale fraud saves them.
Amazon doing dodgy things with PC parts is why I will no longer purchase them from there - I'll happily take the extra £10-20 hit to buy it from another "proper" retailer (ie, Scan or Overclockers here in the UK), knowing that issues can be resolved more easily
Man, for $1000 I'd definitely be checking to make sure it got refunded, and manually requesting a refund after a week had passed.
Waiting a few months is not smart because not every delivery service is going to store the delivery status details. I've generally found that after 3 months, data starts disappearing from services and refund options can become technically impossible. Like, on eBay, even if a seller wants to refund you after more than 90 days, they can't. Part of this is for accounting too -- at some point you just have to be able to definitively close the books and say here are the sales we made, that number isn't going down in the future because of potential outstanding returns.
Amazon no longer having a record of it is absurd given the volume of data they store about all transactions.
For a phone in particular I'd be demanding serial number/IMEI information for the police report and ensuring that the stolen phone was properly reported as stolen. Since they record all of that when they ship it should be readily available.
No, this is silly. Don't do this. You absolutely keep pushing for a refund and go via you CC provider if they don't respond.
And risk being locked out of the world’s online marketplace and all of Amazon’s other businesses? Maybe a bit hyperbolic but that’s where we are headed for sure.
It's perfectly feasible to never use Amazon. I don't know your situation, but i think people should go out more and prefer quality over quantity. Most of the stuff that Amazon sell is crap anyway.
> but i think people should go out more and prefer quality over quantity
Whether you find higher quality in your local area depends on your local area and what you're buying. More generally applicable, you can find higher quality with independent online stores.
The world's marketplace is alibaba.com, or aliexpress.com for individual orders.
You can find 99% of the junk on amazon on aliexpress for a lower price, though without prime shipping.
True, especially the goods shipped "with prime". It's always a 5-10 bucks premium over the AliExpress price of the same item. It depends on how much in a hurry I am.
You can do without Amazon. Should you really want to get something you can ask a friend to get it for you but I really think you won't need that.
Have you never been banned in a video game and wanted to get back in? You create a new account and call it a day.
It's not like you should feel bad about playing dirty with a company that considers it fine to just steal $1k.
For $1000 I'd definitely risk it and kick up a fuss about it if they locked me out.
> so instead I accept they've just stolen $1000 from me with no recourse... So you basically approve of this behavior. I personally learned some time ago to stay away from these companies.
File in small claims court, they can't ban you for that and they have to send someone out
They can ban you for any reason they want
That should be the last straw. In the least, why haven't you closed your account?
wait is your email really username@username.net? I registered java.lang.string (at) gmail back when I was learning java 20+ years ago. Haven't really used it in over a decade though.
Just reach out to andy or bezos and the executive team will reach out and fix it.
I only got unbanned when I got hired at Amazon and emailed the head of the fraud team lol. I had the same issues you had with being stonewalled and ghosted while banned. Anyways, just downloaded them off of Anna's Archive or join private trackers. There's also still methods to de-drm the Kindle books, but many people will do it for u via requests on private trackers.
Poor customer support is a serious problem for Amazon, Google and Meta. Hope to see alternatives unseat these giants from their monopoly status.
I saw the writing on the wall when they recently removed the facility to download your own books. I downloaded all of them, removed the DRM with Calibre, and now obtain e-books through other sources.
They screwed me in a different way. I simply didn't log into Amazon for a couple years as I've tried to minimize my use of Amazon. When I went to log in, they locked my account without any way to unlock it. Talking with support multiple times did nothing. Now all my digital purchases are gone.
Edit: If anyone knows a way to get them to unlock the account, I'd appreciate it. They won't issue a password reset or anything similar, which seems ridiculous considering they never claimed fraud. Simply that it had been too long since I logged in.
"Now all my digital purchases are gone."
If you used to be one of those good consumers who would never even think of breaking DRM, I hope you reconsider it now.
If you're in the US just look up the small claims process local near you, and do it. The fee is small and you'll learn how it works, and that's worst case.
What is that you say? Stallman was right again?
https://stallman.org/amazon.html
I'm also particularly skeptical of Amazon because our Kindle Direct Publishing account was banned also for no reason. They said something about me having had a previous account before, but I'm not sure that was true and I think it was a very extreme measure. We were actually selling books at the time until we got banned. They obviously also "forgot" to pay out the most recent month.
I buy all my ebooks. I search DRM free, if there is DRM only I'll buy it the cheapest I can then download it from Annas Archive. I like to support authors but I need to own what I buy.
I'm more into the satisfaction of breaking DRM, but this is good too. Kudos for supporting authors!
Unfortunately bad press is likely going to be the only thing to give you your account back. You should write a blog post and let the internet and the media do its magic
Pretty much what I was going to say. I think Twitter (or whatever social media people use these days) would be a more appropriate place to put the company "on blast".
That's not a sensible solution for us all.
> They also remotely wiped my Kindle
I wish the CFAA were used to go after people like whoever at Amazon was responsible for that, instead of people like Aaron Swartz.
I work at Amazon and can escalate this if you're interested. Let me know the order ID and I'll see what I can do.
Damn that is scary. I’ve been reading on Kindle since 2017, I have about 200 books on there.
I doubt I would re-read many of them, but my partner is still going through some of them (with the family library thing).
I’d be pissed if it got wiped.
I'd download epubs of everything from Anna's Archive and/or soulseek (Nicotine+ is nice) and kindly tell them to fuck off with their account.
I can't believe Soulseek is still a thing. Kinda warms my icy heart.
I regularly use soulseek to download archival copies of music that I pay for. The artist makes their money, and I don’t have to worry about my account access.
Soulseek is brilliant.
> As a result, I can no longer log in and lost access to all my Kindle e-books.
Can't you file a suit in a small claims court?
The only reason for a recent review (like with all the recently banned Facebook accounts from 2009) is firing up AI tools that didn't exist 5 years ago.
Or general auditing purposes.
Yeah, welcome to tech. Don't get me wrong, I sympathize completely with you. It's an outrage. But it's incredible that Every. Single. One. of these companies has terrible automation with no ability to file a ticket for a human to look at it
Facebook is marginally worse than the others because Facebook left you with no way to actually contact the friends you accrued https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433
Seems this is a possibility with any service. Even stuff like music streaming. I tried to listen to loveless on spotify the other day and apparently it has been removed from the service. It is time to start making rips of physical media I own or rent from the library again. Back to the high seas again too. We traded control for convenience and that comes back to bite us.
> I appealed the decision, but I’ve been waiting for over six months with no resolution.
Sue them.
I have 5 kindles at home and they're all collecting dusts along with some Alexa and Echo devices, the only thing I need Amazon for is its ecommerce shopping site. The phone just replaces all those gadgets and it probably has nothing to do with Amazon. Still it's a nice move to support ePub and PDFs on kindles.
Amazon used to be really customer centric 5-10 years ago, I remember once I ordered a physical book which was late in delivery and I urgently needed that book, so they gave me a free kindle edition till the book got delivered.
Last week I had a vendor tell me that they did warranty service through Amazon, and I should contact Amazon for a replacement, even though I was outside of their return window. It turned out to be a lie. But Amazon refunded me the full amount anyway, without prompting. The handful of times I've contacted Amazon tech support this has been my experience. The previous one was when they replaced a $250 porch pirated delivery, no questions asked.
This behavior genuinely earns them more of my business.
The "danger" of their policies (and I've benefitted from them, too) is that they obviously can be gamed, and they obviously have to have defenses against that - which means if you cross some invisible line (and now likely AI-monitored) you're doomed; no recourse.
Well also the danger is to who ends up eating the cost. In some cases its other businesses not Amazon.
I always find it surprising that apparently it is easy to BAN someone's account but nobody has the power to UNBAN.
But I suppose when you get to the size of Amazon a million bans becomes a statistic...
That really stinks. As much as I love my kindle, I recently started buying paper books again, in part because of stories like this.
As have I.
At least Amazon is clear we don’t own the book.
About Kindle, if you're in Europe, you could try Nextory or BookBeat. They don't have as much content, but are good services nevertheless.
>They also remotely wiped my Kindle
Not sure if this legal or not, the cost of fraud in physical book purchasing (even if it's genuine) will probably never exceed the entire Kindle book library collection.
If this is true, I need to be extra careful buying stuff, virtual or physical from Amazon.
Fyi for anyone reading, it is very easy to break DRM on old kindle purchases. I think they rolled out new DRM for things published this year and it may be harder but still possible. I would encourage anyone here who has a kindle library to back up their purchases.
Yeah I recently downloaded all my purchased content (while that was still possible, it isn't anymore) and liberated it all.
I'm not going to buy any more DRM content.
That is truly insane - sorry that you’re unable to access the books that you rightly purchased.
Though I highly doubt this alone was the reason for an account ban. Is it possible your credentials were stolen/misused without your knowledge?
That’s possible, but I can’t know for sure because Amazon never provided any concrete details. I didn’t receive any warning emails, only a cryptic message after the ban:
> "Amazon.co.uk found that the rate at which refunds were occurring on your account was extraordinary and could not continue."
After looking through my order history, the only refund I could find on this account was the one related to the book I mentioned above. If there was any other activity or misuse, Amazon hasn’t disclosed it to me, which makes it impossible to verify or dispute their conclusion.
Surely, you take them to small claims court over it, they won't bother so send anyone because their lawyers cost more per hour than your entire account was worth, you win by default?
I would claim (to an FTC lawyer) that they might be doing it (double-sending) on purpose to get me to buy my library again (after they cancel it).
Might be worth trying.
Do you live in a place with consumer protections? Sue them - small claims court.
This has terrified me. In the past I’ve received items, then got apologies from Amazon for them not being delivered.
I could have easily gotten a refund, but there was no way for me to say “I received the product!”
So bizarre.
I’m used to dedicating time to dealing with being screwed by random companies. But this doesn’t fit that description- so I don’t go too far out of my way.
File suit.
remote wiping purchased stuff is diabolical, especially over something so far in the past you can't do a charge back.
What are you using for e-book reading now?
Hah, they actually did a slight rollback! When I first heard about them stopping the downloads, I immediately downloaded all the books I purchased from Amazon and went from buying ~1 book per week to 0. Seems a lot of us doing so had some sort of effect.
Unfortunately, it seems like this will be chosen by the publisher, so of course probably most of the books won't be downloadable at all, and Amazon can now point their finger at the publisher instead of taking the blame themselves. Publishers was probably always the reason behind the move, but at least now Amazon have someone else to blame, which I guess is great for them.
I have bought more than 600 books over a decade or so;
But after they decided the ebooks were actually just license to read, I did exactly the same as you, and now rather than happily buying from them, actively discourage everyone in my social circle from using kindle.
I am not going back, whoever they decide to blame.
> But after they decided the ebooks were actually just license to read
They decided that when they launched the Kindle. It's always been that way.
No, it hasn't. Until very recently, their website said "Buy now with 1-Click", minus the new "By placing an order, you're purchasing a content license & agreeing to Kindle's Store Terms of Use." wording underneath it. The process was identical to buying a physical book: you give them money, and you end up with your own physical or electronic copy of it.
Any interpretation of that transaction as anything but a purchase of a copy is delusional. I couldn't care less what their ToS said about it, any more than I'd care what a sign on the wall of a bookstore said.
> No, it hasn't.
Yes, it has. They made it clear right when they launched the store.
> I couldn't care less what their ToS said about it
You're welcome to not care about whatever you feel - your concerns and reality are orthogonal.
This became big news a long time ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-ki...
The linked article is about Amazon's having realized they had no right to sell the books they thought they had sold and reversing the transaction, not revoking a license to something they thought they had licensed to you.
You seem to be missing the importance of that nuance.
Sigh.
OK:
https://goodereader.com/blog/kindle/amazon-changes-licensing...
"Amazon has revised the text when purchasing a Kindle e-book on its online store. You do not own the book you bought but are licensing it. It used to say “By clicking on above button, you agree to Amazon’s Kindle Store Terms of Use.”"
...
"This is not a policy shift from Amazon for the US; they are more upfront about it now. Amazon has always licensed the digital content to users, so anything purchased does not mean the user owns it, they just bought a license"
As the article points out, the change in verbiage was because of a new California requirement that this should be made explicit. It was always a license. They merely changed the verbiage on the button to conform to state rules.
Edit: I have to say, after a bunch of rather pointless arguments today and yesterday on HN, it disappoints me that the average commenter is quick to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions. Both times the facts were trivial to lookup.
Not the HN of yore.
I mean, you're citing goodereader.com as though that's somehow an authoritative source and not just a blog by a guy who likes ereaders, but has no special legal knowledge.
Much more useful would have been if you had linked to an archive of the original Kindle Store Terms of Use, which state:
> Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.[0] (emphasis mine)
Notice that "or as authorized by Amazon" is part of the clause with "solely on the device," not a separate clause that somehow might be interpreted to apply to the "right to keep a permanent copy" part.
Does it also say that it is considered licensed to you? Sure. But the "license" is the "right to keep a permanent copy."
It's one thing for Amazon to say, "Shit, we sold you a book we weren't authorized to sell. We have to undo the whole transaction." It's quite another to do what the GGGGGGGP comment (I didn't count the G's) is complaining about and delete your permanent copy of a book for which they did validly sell you a license to keep a permanent copy.
Amazon has meaningfully changed the license agreement now. In 2025, it says:
> Use of Kindle Content. Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider. Upon your download or access of Kindle Content and payment of any applicable fees (including applicable taxes), the Content Provider grants you subject to the terms of this Agreement, including without limitation those in “Changes to Service; Amendments” below, a non-exclusive right to view, use, and display such Kindle Content (for Subscription Content, only as long as you remain an active member of the underlying membership or subscription program), solely through Kindle Software or as otherwise permitted as part of the Service, solely on the number of Supported Devices specified in the Kindle Store, and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Content Provider may include additional terms for use within its Kindle Content. Those terms will also apply, but this Agreement will govern in the event of a conflict. Some Kindle Content, such as interactive or highly formatted content, may not be available to you on all Kindle Software.[1]
They've eliminated the right to keep a permanent copy that was originally part of the license sold. That change matters. Deleting content sold under that license is a violation of the terms of the agreement on their part.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110109000847/http://www.amazon... [1]https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
> Yes, it has. They made it clear right when they launched the store.
No one except those who explicitly went looking for this knew it. It wasn't made clear in any way.
> This became big news a long time ago:
Speaking of orthogonal. I remember this well. It was a case where Amazon stole back books people had purchased. The core concern at the time wasn't that Amazon had revoked a license to read a book, but that they had deleted purchased books from users' collections.
But at the end of the day, for many years Amazon had an action button saying "Buy now with 1-Click" with no legal fiction disclaimer. The button was identical to what you'd see when buying a bag of cat food, DVD, or anything else you'd flat-out purchase from them.
I'm neither disputing the verbiage on the button, nor the ignorance of users. None of those affects the fact that you did not own the ebook - it was licensed to you.
What is silly is actually knowing the whole 1984 episode, and still believing you owned the books.
> "These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books," spokesman Drew Herdener told the Guardian. "When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers."
> Amazon refunded the cost of the books, but told affected customers they could no longer read the books and that the titles were "no longer available for purchase".
This has nothing to do with people's having bought a license to the books. It's about Amazon's never having had authorization from the publisher to sell the books. There is no reference at all to people's having licensed the books from Amazon. Amazon referred to people as having bought the books.
What do you do now? I’ve been buying physical books off of Abe Books—not a bad thing at all—but I’d like to use my jailbroken kindle again because the form factor is so convenient.
FYI: Abe is Amazon: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbeBooks>, citing <https://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/01/amazon-to-acquire-abeb...>.
Buy DRM free when you can. Not only is this convenient for you but will hopefully help nudge the market. When you can't, buy the book from one of the easily cracked sources (Kobo, Google, Adobe DRM).
Or you can save yourself the bother of removing DRM by buying the book from wherever and then downloading a copy from Anna's.
Not the guy but you can just buy your ebooks from someplace else and use calibre to convert/send them to your kindle.
Im kinda cheeky and use Amazons Send-to-Kindle service to send ebooks in epub format to my kindle via wifi
I do this as well and leave the site name in the filename where it was downloaded from if it was part of the filename originally.
I try to buy physical books, and make an effort to buy it elsewhere, with AMZN being the reluctant last resort if I truly can’t find it. I don’t have a specific go to place anymore.
Also, I reduced the buying pace - owning physical books takes up space, so the bar for getting something into the library is now much higher than before.
If you already bought them, just download them off anna's archive.
Use your local library?
I’m amazed to see so many comments focused on everything but libraries.
It’s a shift but I agree. I think we’re used to having instant access to what we want. Waiting 3 weeks on Libby is a change. I do think it’s been healthy and gives me something to look forward to!
Libraries are not great on in demand books, tech books, or erotica.
It’s pretty unusual for Amazon to put any other entity’s interest ahead of it’s own, so they can be presumed to have some business reason for it, like the number of people who’ve decided not to buy from them any more.
YMMV depending on the kind of books you read, but I think the majority of the ones I've gotten from Amazon are labeled as DRM-free. A lot of fantasy/science fiction authors (as well as some publishers like Tor!) feel strongly about that kind of thing
But only if the author/publisher explicitly go in and permit it.
This isn't announcing that pdf's and epub's are now available for everything that was drm-free, this is announcing that they will _permit_ pdf's and epub's to be available.
I'm a self-published author. This is the default setting for new books uploaded without DRM. It's gated behind an "I understand" checkbox. I plan to allow my books to be downloaded as PDF and ePUB.
It makes sense not to do this retroactively.
Can you create the epub and pdf files yourself and have them distributed unaltered?
Technically, yes, but Amazon customers probably wouldn't benefit from that. I don't currently distribute or sell books directly because that creates a tax burden. So it's probably best to let the various stores handle it. I still want to sell books but I don't want my readers to be restricted by DRM for a book they paid for. The honor system is fine for me.
Edit: I now realize you might mean in the Amazon KDP UI. I don't see a way to upload your own.
Yes I wasn't clear - I meant via Amazon's store. Thanks.
As an independent author you can do what you wish. The only restriction is if you are in the Amazon KDP select program then you have promised Amazon exclusive use for a cut of the Kindle Select pie. I also distribute my books on all the other platforms, and for my free sci-fi book host it direct on my web site and on my Ko-Fi shop (the 'buy-me-a-coffee' site). Selling directly and collecting money requires a bit too much work but technically you could do it.
That seems reasonable enough to me though. It should be the publisher's choice what formats of the book they are willing to sell.
Having the action prominent and potentially with the default reversed would still leave it to the publisher's choice.
We can understand why they do it this way (they only need the option to exist, and can afford to apply dark patterns to it), but we don't need to excuse Amazon. Especially when they don't give a shit about what we think in the first place.
Oh I wouldn't expect Amazon to care what I think, especially with regards to digital books as at least I am not a customer.
I'm also not going to write off everything they do as evil only because of who they are though. Defaulting to disabled vs enabled would be reasonable too, though I don't know enough publishers or independent authors to know which option would be more often selected to pick a default.
Yes it reads that way, and I guess that also means all previous purchases will be behind DRM.
1. Sell digital things, that costs as same as physical copy
2. Make it so that customer doesn't even own them
3. Profit (No question marks in between)
What a mess. I've mostly stopped Kindle/ebooks but I still have audible which seems like suffering from the same problem.
> But only if the author/publisher explicitly go in and permit it.
actually, many kindle books I have from years ago mention they have no drm at the request of the publisher.
...yet were distributed in DRM .azw format
[dead]
This was unexpected. They lost me as a customer when they stopped allowing me to download books I bought and I'm in the Kobo (+ BookLore) side now and I am not coming back.
I wonder how many books are actually DRM-free and are going to be affected by this change. I suspect relatively few, but I would be happy to be wrong
For me it appears highly genre-correlated. High percentage of science fiction books come with a small statement "this book is drm free on request of publisher / author". Zero of my photography, music, computer science or graphic novels came with such a tag.
Yeah, Tor Books publishes without DRM, and they seem to be one of the bigger SFF publishers these days. John Scalzi, George R.R. Martin (though not the ASoIaF books), Robert Jordan, Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane Anders, and a bunch of other SFF authors I recognize. I'm sure there are others, but all the once I've noticed have been from Tor.
Indeed, and I love Tor for this. Brandon Sanderson has also come out against DRM. I already loved the man's books, now I love the man too
same here.
I've also purchased some books that are available as serials on the web for free.
I would imagine those publishers would be aligned with making them .epub
I bought a Kobo for the same reason but when it came to buying books, none of the books I wanted to buy were on Kobo's store.
If you want to be part of Kindle Unlimited you have to give worldwide exclusivity to Kindle Unlimited, and can't have ever published your eBook on another platform.
Even if I wanted to join, Kindle Unlimited is not offered here. I can't even buy the eBook from Amazon.
My daughter wanted a book that was kindle exclusive in the US, and I found I could purchase an epub from another store by paying in euros and claiming to live in Europe. Needless to say I did this without a VPN and without leaving San Francisco. The book was still in English.
But I wonder if the reason for that little hoop was because of Kindle Unlimited.
It's not just that. E.g. Cooper and Hutchinson's edition of Plato's complete works, available on Kindle for $31.[1] Or on another tack, Yudkowski's recent If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.[2] Neither book is on Unlimited, and I couldn't find either one on Kobo. I struck out half a dozen times in a row and finally gave up.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OZ4NMHU
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Anyone-Builds-Everyone-Dies-Superhuma...
While it's true I don't see that version of Plato's complete works (in fact, I don't see any Hackett Publishing books), the book on AI[1] is available.
[1]: https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/if-anyone-builds-it-everyon...
Oh weird, I'd just searched for it. I tried again with the US site and it came right up. Maybe their search isn't as good with typos or something.
But Kobo is bad too. Try refunding a book. Their website sent me in neverending circles and still I could not find a way to refund. Their stuff requires some specific reader or so. I don't quite remember the details, but I bought a book, thinking to avoid Amazon shit. Then I realized that their stuff sucks and I don't want to buy their blessed device or install special reader software. Also not DRM-free. So I wanted to refund, but couldn't. It is a very bad user experience. The only good experience you get from them is, if you go all in on their software/devices.
Since I couldn't refund, I had to pirate the book as epub/pdf from elsewhere. I decided to never again buy anything from Kobo.
It's not super easy to refund digital goods in general with few exceptions like Steam. I have done it with Kobo but IIRC you have to chat with a CS rep or least you did when I did it.
No where legit is DRM free for eBooks from the big publishers. You don't even have to use the Kobo app since they let you download the ACSM file and use it Adobe Digital Editions which could be used on a computer or ADE supported eReader like Pocketbook (or Kobo!). This has been the case since before they were even called Kobo! And if the publisher offers the book DRM free they just give you a DRM-free ePub instead of the ACSM file.
These days, with the Calibre DeACSM and DeDRM plug-ins you don't even need ADE. It's also trivially easy to remove the DRM from the Kobo desktop app or their readers. It's way easier than Amazon and a way better experience with multiple routes to a DRM free file.
This ACSM file fiddling was too much of a hassle. I used to DeDRM ebooks from Amazon (also using Calibre), but I didn't know about DeACSM. I just want an epub or pdf file. I don't want their reinventing the wheel to somehow gatekeep content bs file formats. This is a clear sign for me, that they do not have my best interest at heart.
Their website didn't guide me towards a callable phone number or give me an actual e-mail address I could write to. Instead I went back and forth between chatbot and docs and webpages, without success. It is obvious to me, that they want as little actual human in the loop as possible. Real shitty experience, while my money is already gone and I am trying to get it back. Easier to give up and just download an acceptable version elsewhere. Not going through all that hassle to use their platform, which doesn't value me as a customer anyway.
Using the Kobo desktop app is almost identical to Kindle with regards to DeDRM. You open app, you download book in app, you open Calibre, then here is where it changes, you click the Obok plugin on the Calibre toolbar, find book and import and get an ePub and you don't even have to convert it!
ACSM is Adobe's crap and the same thing you'd have use for Google Play Books and a few others. It's again another slight step change where you have to open the ACSM with ADE to get the book in the first place. WTF Adobe did it that way, IDK but they did.
Bad take. Kobo lets you know which books have DRM and which don't. And even with DRM, you can get them into Adobe Digital Editions and load them on to basically any e-reader. (Maybe not Kindle since it won't open DRM'd ePubs.)
I buy like 60% of my ebooks from Kobo and have never owned a Kobo-brand ereader.
In the end that's also shitty. I don't want to "get them into Adobe Digital Editions". I don't want to have to use Adobe shitware, and I don't want their special formats. Just give me the epub or pdf. Also their website treated me like shit and they have no good way to contact anyone visible on their website.
Kobo is not it. Maybe they once were, at some point before I tried using them. I am not gonna support them after my experience with them.
As I explained above, you can get the ePubs directly if you just used the free Kobo desktop app. I think you need to ask yourself why you were OK using the Amazon Kindle app for DeDRM but Kobo or Adobe's was a huge burden. Really Bizzare IMO.
Do you know the concept of time passing? Could it be possible, that my stance regarding ebooks changed over time, and that I have become more aware of the associated issues? Hmmmm.
What is bizarre here is you posting these comments, trying to invalidate my all around terrible experience with Kobo. Your account is green behind the ears and all your comments are on Kobo, Kobo, Kobo. Go figure.
I like eBooks, I've had eReaders from Sony, Kobo, Amazon and Boox, bought from Amazon, Kobo, Google Play, and several of the smaller players like Baen. Outside of the completely DRM-free places like Baen which are very limited in selection, Kobo is IMO the easiest to get a DRM-free file in the end. Your posts were IMO very off the mark that it got me to comment. I'd rather people try Kobo than keep feeding the Amazon machine.
If you don't like DRM, you definitely want to use Adobe Digital Editions. I'll leave it to you to find out why.
Why? It's still DRM. Pretty awful one IMO. Our local library used it.
Personally I just buy my books DRM free now. If that's not possible, then I get them from my friend Anna who has a nice library.
I said, "I'll leave it to you to find out why". This is a public forum. Just maybe look up some Calibre plug-ins which might help you "manage" DRM books.
I've used it and I found it the worst form of DRM. It required creating an "account" with Adobe despite having no relationship with them (It was to access books at my local library where I already had an account) and the software didn't even work on linux. Even getting it to work at all took ages of tinkering and I'm an IT expert. My parents who just wanted to simply check out a book out of the digital library during the pandemic would never have managed to figure that out.
And yes I have liberated all my DRM books from Amazon. But Adobe Digital I will never touch again (Nor buy books with DRM on it in the first place).
It's actually simple:
1. Install ADE on Windows (or a Windows VM (recommended))
2. Log in with Adobe account
3. Download ASCM files from Kobo or Google Play Books and open with ADE
4. the optional step I've been trying to hint at for like 3 posts now
5. Put it on your reader!
Really that is WAY too complicated for my folks. And for me I don't want accounts with big tech companies to do something local so step 2 was already a blocking point.
And as for removing the DRM (I assume that's what you're hinting at), yeah but that can be done with kindle's and kobo's too and in less roundabout ways. The existence of a hack for Adobe DRM doesn't make that a 'good' DRM.
OK, how do "your folks" break Kindle's DRM?
How many books are actually available DRM-free? This reads a bit like "Amazon will provide free land, construct a paddock and provide feed for life if you order a unicorn, except unicorns don't exist".
All of Cory Doctorow's books are DRM-free. Actually, he insisted on it as a contractual rider with his publisher, so he isn't available on any platform that doesn't have a DRM-free option. I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon re-allowing downloads for DRM-free is specifically because Doctorow's publisher is angry at them.
In practice, the biggest store that doesn't have a DRM-free option is Audible... which has a near-monopoly on audiobooks. So Cory Doctorow has to do crowdfunding campaigns for all his audiobooks. Of course, that doesn't stop his books from getting illegally reposted to Audible anyway, and Amazon doesn't care about enforcing rights they can't have. Which led to him actually publishing this gem on Audible: https://www.amazon.com/Why-None-Books-Available-Audible/dp/B...
Ironically on Kobo you can buy Enshittification with DRM:
"Download options: EPUB 3 (Adobe DRM)": https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/enshittification-4
Kobo does sell some other books DRM-free, so perhaps this is some sort of error. You can buy it directly from the publisher without Adobe DRM, there it has a watermark instead.
Depends on the region and publisher. On the Canada site, where it's published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, it is DRM-free. https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/enshittification-2
So maybe it's screwup on the UK site.
Books enter the public domain. Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.
The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad. You should explore all of the above a lot more, and much more besides.
I assumed that that was clear from the context, but let me rephrase it then:
"being made available DRM-free on Amazon" (and I'd narrow that down to "primarily/only on Amazon")
Of course public domain books are DRM free but I'm getting those from Gutenberg, not Amazon. Likewise, the copyleft books I'll most likely download from their own homepages, not Amazon.
I'm aware that DRM free media exists, including for currently copyrighted content that Amazon distributes ;)
Mildly sad is also that you seem to fault GP for not “exploring” more, instead of the insane practice of DRMing everything in the first place. I never have purchased DRM protected media and never will - I’d rather pirate everything digital and but physical hard copies.
I don’t actually think it’s their fault, and if they feel I’m faulting them, that wasn’t the intention.
I think it’s sad that what we thought everyone saw as a nonsense is now so normalised that alternatives are just disappearing from view. Everyone should be encouraged to explore.
Piracy is your preferred option, but when that became more mainstream we actually ended up creating the market for more DRM, in the form of iTunes, Spotify and others. I’m not sure I want the future of digital media to be entirely subscription-based like that.
What might be a better solution is showing that media creators can achieve more of their own objectives through releasing media without DRM. This only works if their objectives are not entirely around making money from media sales, and more aligned to influence, or audience building.
I’m actually surprised at this point that musicians - given they don’t make money from streaming services and see them as tools to build audiences for live tours where they really make their money - don’t just jump over already.
> Piracy is your preferred option, but when that became more mainstream we actually ended up creating the market for more DRM, in the form of iTunes, Spotify and others. I’m not sure I want the future of digital media to be entirely subscription-based like that.
Nah DRM and subscription models would have arrived even if there were no piracy. Subscription models because they guarantee income and most people use less than it's worth. And DRM because companies are paranoid.
In fact even now DRM serves no actual purpose other than harassing legitimate buyers. Pirates have no issue getting content and in the case of books they never will because copying can even be done by OCR.
I was just talking about books, but sure for music there are tons of alternative options as well. I detest streaming platforms and it’s pretty easy to buy music directly from the creators in almost all cases - except maybe the top “superstars” but I would argue that they are probably doing fine anyway… Also physical records still exist for music as well. Lots of artists can do just fine with living from media sales.
Look I’m not saying “pirate everything and never pay the artists” - I’m saying “never pay the predatory tech companies that have inserted themselves between us and artists”
You've never purchased a DVD or Blu-ray?
> Books enter the public domain.
...and then they get re-packaged with DRM on Amazon's store, mostly because people uploading public domain books on Amazon have no idea what they're doing.
> Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.
You can read DRM-free stuff on a Kindle already, so that's not particularly relevant here.
> The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad.
When every big publisher is doing it, it is the norm. That doesn't mean there doesn't exist any book publisher which doesn't do this, but the vast, vast majority of the books actually sold today contain DRM. We don't have to like that norm, but pretending it isn't one is just denying reality.
This.
While lots public domain books are on Amazon's store, most of those books are not free, both in the sense of "free or charge" and "DRM free". A lot of literature classic are released by a major publishing house with foreword and annotations, which to be fair, are copyrighted works and provide value. And they cost a bit of money. The "real" public domain versions provide by Amazon are barebone. Those versions are often good enough for many people, but you don't need to get them from Amazon in the first place.
In other words, public domain or not does not have much to do with DRM-free or even Amazon.
You'd be surprised. Tor and Solaris both offer DRM free books on Amazon. Also anything self published tends to be DRM free.
I saw the writing on the wall and downloaded my books from Amazon a few months before their announcement. Out of around 1000 books I had 300ish that were DRM free.
Dumb question, but: is there a way to find/filter ones that are? (I can't seem to find anything in the (web) UI that makes it clear which books are downloadable.)
There wasn't when I went through my collection. Reading the announcement from Amazon it looks like the existing DRM free books will not be automatically flagged to be downloadable.
The publisher/author will have to go through a process to have their books be downloadable again.
I have some tor books, but I used to download them as .azw even though they had the "this book is drm free ..." blurb at the beginning. (was back before amazon stopped downloads)
Now they could actually be distributed as unencrypted .epub
All books published by Tor are DRM-free.
And Baen. Baen has a storefront of their own online at https://www.baen.com/.
...in the US. I tried to buy an ebook of the Stormlight Archive from Australia and was sad to discover that DRM-free versions were not available.
And most of Europe, and the rest of the world, where the eBook is offered directly from Tor.
It looks like distribution in the UK, Australia and New Zealand (only?) is from the imprint Gollancz, who has decided to go with DRM versions.
I think you missed the joke. Tor is an anonymous relay service, often used for pirating copies.
Tor Books is a publisher. They run https://www.tor.com/.
I assume GP was referring to Tor Books, (which name confused me immensely at first since I've been using the Tor project for many years) but that would have been an absolutely hilarious joke and I think you interpreting it as a joke is totally reasonable given how prominent the onion router project is.
Pirated books.
It's not exactly nothing, but it's a pretty small change . Some publishers sell DRM-free on other platforms, and to be honest I was under the impression Amazon used to allow this in the past as well.
Of course if they really believed in the concept they would publish their own works DRM-free, but that would conflict with the business model of the publishing arm.
Too little too late, already ditched the whole ecosystem after so many years and devices.
Same here.
Switched to a Boox, installed koreader, set up sync thing. It's insane how much better a reading experience this is
The only previous option was not paying for books. This change at least creates the potential for a path to pay for books, if publishers accept it.
No, these publishers were already available DRM-free from other stores.
Same. I'm done.
Yep, never again. I tried to take a pragmatic position with the DRM, and it is just not possible. I buy the crap out of DRM free stuff, but if it's not DRM free, it's not for me
I wonder if this is in response to Bookshop.org's DRM free e-book shop. I buy a lot of e-books and have completely switched over because of that feature.
I’m waiting for Bookshop.org to offer an integration with any hardware reader for most of their books. When they do, I’ll switch to whatever that reader is.
Eh? Not sure what you mean.
I picked a random book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/hemlock-silver-t-kingfisher/022...
It's DRM Free, and available as an ePub. Other than Kindle, what device does not accept ePub?
It’s up to each author and publisher and the vast majority still use DRM. Science fiction and Fantasy authors (like the example you linked) seem to be most likely to not use DRM, but I don’t read too much of those genres.
Cool, but quite a small subset are DRM-free. OTOH. its seems like all the audiobooks on libro.fm are DRM-free?
https://support.libro.fm/support/solutions/articles/48000695...
Bookshop.org has a DRM free section? Where do I find such a thing?
It's at least available as a search filter. On the book listing it seems to show "Type: Ebook (DRM-free)". Maybe there's a better way.
Just get a kobo instead. The price difference between with ads and a new kobo is minimal. Not worth the Amazon headache with a locked down device.
I have Kobo, but their decision to enable secure boot in newer models, and consequently pushing out FOSS choices as operating systems makes me think I won't get another Kobo. Yes the Nickel menu works still with secure boot enabled devices. I like to think that devices I buy might have different use-case in future, and secure-boot enabled devices seriously harm that.
Will this affect my ability to install KOReader?
The eBooks in Kobo's store are also locked down with DRM.
Only some are. At the bottom of each book's store page, you can see if a book is DRM-free. And if it is DRM-free, you can download an ePub.
Example: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gardens-of-the-moon
They've been doing this for YEARS before Amazon.
Yes, but Calibre can get the files onto any other device with a drag and drop operation, which is not the case with the newest version of Amazon DRM.
I guess we just have to wait a little while, until that method using Calibre also does no longer work, because either Kobo or Adobe or someone else wants to make sure it does not work.
Tor and Baen are two publishers that have been offering DRM free books on Kobo for a while.
Sure, but you can load any file onto the device.
Kobo is extremely region limited.
It's fine if it fits your need, but will be far from a good alternative in most regions.
Thing is Kindle hardware is significantly better and cheaper. If you don't mind tinkering get a kindle and jailbreak it to remove ads and add koreader.
I've had both. Kobo is fine hardware-wise. And light years better on software than Kindle. One huge example: I have 1000+ books in Calibre. Took the time to tag them all into their respective categories. Kobo recognizes those tags and my book collection is sorted. With Kindle, I'd have to sort by hand on device. It ignores Calibre tags.
For this feature alone, I'd never go back to Kindle. Sure, I might be able to replicate it with jailbreaking + KOReader. But the Kobo worked this way out of the box.
How so? Just looking online, the prices between a Kindle and Clara BW is minimal (the Clara BW is actually cheaper). I don’t see how the hardware is better when they use the same exact screen…
> Kindle hardware is significantly better and cheaper. If you don't mind tinkering get a kindle and jailbreak it to remove ads and add koreader.
Because Amazon were increasingly locking-down their systems - and also because they are all-round shits - I decided to abandon the ecosystem having been a customer since the days they only sold books.
I have owned two Paperwhites, two Oasis devices, and a Kindle Scribe. I sold all of them last year and bought a Kobo Libra Colour.
I get WAY more joy from reading on the Kobo. I love buying books from the Kobo store (yes I know they also have DRM) - and I'm buying and reading WAY more on the Kobo than I was at the end of my time with Amazon.
Every time I buy yet another book on the Kobo Store I feel the thrill of sticking it to the horrible, anti-user shits at Amazon.
Try actually using a Kobo reader sometime.
I love my Libra 2 reader, but I only use it to read epub files from questionable websites. I would pay for books if they were available as DRM-free epubs.
There are two single line comments recommending kobo over kindle in this thread. How do I know this is a genuine recommendation and not astroturfing?
I'll chime in - the Kindle Paperwhite I believe is the superior machine from a physical feeling and aesthetic perspective. The problem (for me) is who makes it. Amazon keeps locking it down so it's harder and harder to load your own DRM free books onto it, in addition to tracking everything you do on it (like sending all your reading statistics whenever you get online).
I have a Kobo Clara BW. It's still a great machine, but the Kindle is definitely superior for feel and visuals, but I use the Kobo 95% of the time. They are way more open with the software and I have mine in "sideload" mode (an official setting), which really just means that it doesn't make me log into anything and it doesn't even attempt to connect to the internet. Also, I can purchase a DRM free ebook on the train, plug a USB cable into my phone and my Kobo, and then load it on like that. Now I own my digital book, have supported the author with a larger margin, and get to read it on my more private machine.
Definitely not a no-brainer for everyone, but I'm happy with my Kobo.
Kobo is the sort of device which would make HN happy. The software is much more open and permissive than Kindle. Integrates with Calibre more tightly. Has a fairly rich ecosystem of tweaks and addons which don't require a jailbreak. Wish it didn't have secure boot but am otherwise pretty happy with it.
Kobo feels like something I actually own. More so than Kindle or even my iDevices. That's a little unusual these days from a mainstream product and that will make its users enthusiastic.
Here's a better rec: Buy any device with a carta 1300 screen and only buy from shops that are supported by the DeDRM plugin in Calibre.
Check their post history, nobody's going to be doing that kind of long con here. (Different kinds of long cons, maybe, but not for shilling an e-reader)
How do you know anything? You can never know for sure if you can trust another person, and this is why people can get schizophrenia.
Asking people to verify that they are honest will never help you. Dishonest people will of course lie to you and say they are honest. While honest people will be insulted by your question and not want to engage with you.
What you can do is verify. Try a Kobo, try a Kindle. Make up your own mind.
Indeed, and it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to do an internet search to get more opinions. If you think everyone is astroTurfing and shilling, then you have to fall back to the good old-fashioned scientific method of trying things out yourself.
It would be great too to bring that information back to HN and share it with us.
I have both. The Kindle is a better device overall, but the I like Kobo's software better.
What I found disappointing was when I had to swap out the screen on the Kobo and found that it was glued and that the battery was soldered. I managed to do fix it, but I don't like things that are unnecessarily hard to fix.
So Gutenberg and the internet archive could monetise click through links or an affiliate program? No disrespect intended, if this meant we could fund them with Amazon pitching in some vig I'd think about it. Mind you, they'd probably make more with direct donation per person, but Amazon could drive many multiples more via the store.
As the author of five books (and my most recent one entirely self-published), I haven't yet worked out how I feel about this or how to respond. My current compromise is to charge more on the DRM-free LeanPub.
Genuine questions here, not rhetorical or trying to imply anything with them.
Why charge more on a DRM free site? Do you think people buying from there are doing so that they can share the book illegally?
If someone wants to share the book illegally, I would imagine they'll just download it from one of the pirate mirrors out there and not bother paying you at all. My guess is you're probably just reducing the number of people willing to pay the price. Classic supply and demand curve against price.
Where possible, I try not to focus on negative motives. Quite simply, if people see a benefit in DRM-free, why not expect them to pay for it? And there are other platforms beside the two I mentioned – it’s not a choice between DRM-free and (for better or for worse) Amazon.
In case your question was not rhetorical: to folks like me, I view DRM as abuse, because it inevitably leads to me paying for something that I won't end up being able to access down the line. It is in direct conflict with building a library. Having the author opt-in to applying DRM to their books (as you have on Amazon and Google Play, for example) and then expected me to pay them extra so I can actually own the thing I paid for makes me take three steps back from the "Buy" button. I tend to just walk out rather than be treated that way. As a result, I've stopped buying Amazon Kindle books entirely (now that I can't strip the DRM). If I'm paying the money, I'm going to demand control, and if I can't get that control, there will be no transaction.
FWIW, LeanPub for your book suggests $25, and the DRM-laden version is $13.50. That's quite the premium!
I reduced Amazon pricing yesterday for Christmas
Makes sense!
This is silly. You aren't competing with amazon you're competing with Anna. If someone is interested in DRM free they aren't stupid. Take the sale but don't take the piss.
Out of curiosity, what’s the ratio between sales on Amazon and the DRM-free option?
Amazon wins by miles, almost to the point of incomparability. For all my issues with Amazon, that’s fine by me: compared to all other platforms, that’s where the reviews and other forms of social proof are.
How do you evaluate if the DRM is working as intended?
Sales on Amazon are working as intended. DRM there is not a variable I can control.
Another possible compromise might be to use watermarking-based DRM. Amazon doesn't seem to support it, but other e-bookstores do. In any case, thank you for offering the LeanPub option!
Haha, what a headline.
The internet "allows" ePub and PDF downloads for ALL books. Adjust yourselves accordingly.
Amazon deserves a lot of criticism in the general sense, but this can only be seen as a positive move. Most importantly, if they set an industry standard, others might follow.
Fundamentally, I prefer a physical book to a digital one. But, the primary reason I'd never even entertain a digital book is the lack of ownership. Ownership is incredibly important, and we need to celebrate victories when they happen.
I agree this is a positive step, but this is like notch 1 on a scale of 0 to 100, 0 being maximum abuse of your customer. I think it's downright evil not to allow this for DRM free books, which they have been doing for many years now. It is positive that they reduced the level of evil by a little bit, and I'll give them credit for that, but this movement is so minor in the scope of things that it does not sway me whatsoever to go back to buying from their Kindle store
It's a positive move, but too little, too late. These same publishers have already been available DRM-free from other stores for a long time.
Why?
Genuine question.
What's to "celebrate?" This is like "celebrating" a ketchup company removing the rat hairs.
Not every person likes sailing under the Jolly Roger, matey.
Oh, as a lawyer, I must insist that you should never do piracy and its wrong, which is why I try to inform people as much about this thing so that they can avoid it.
:)
Too much convenience, selection, and the prices are all too low!
Do yourself a favor and go get a Kobo reader, install KO Reader on it and never look back.
I like to be able to price shop, but I do want to support the authors. So I use Kobo & Kindle, then buy it wherever it's cheapest usually.
Then I use epubor ultimate to convert to epub and read it on my generic e-ink reader. Some folks object to the licensing or whatever with epubor (unattributed GPL?) but it works, it's easy, and when Amazon tightens up the DRM they always find a way around it eventually.
Dang, it's unfortunate they don't support Linux
I'll never use Amazon for anything that isn't physically delivered to my door. They can keep their Fire tablets, TVs, and other spyware.
I've "collected" 500+ Kindle titles over the years and stopped buying from them completely when they blocked downloads earlier this year. When they enable these downloads, I'm going to export the ones I didn't get last time and continue NOT buying from them.
Fool me once..
For all three DRM-free titles?
Not even, it's opt-in.
There are thousands.
The current experience of using a Kobo Libre Color, Koreader, any webdav mounted in koreader and pirating everything on annas archive et. al. cannot be beat by any commercial offering. Unsuprisingly my copy of 1984 has never been deleted from my NAS
I love breaking DRM, but you should at least buy the books. Authors, editors, illustrators, and translators all deserve to be paid for their work.
That's my take. I break the DRM off books I've bought. I own those copies. I'll format shift them for my own convenience. Bought on Kindle but want to read on my Kobo? It's impossible to make me feel guilt about that.
But I don't read books I haven't legally acquired, whether through a paid bookstore, or temporarily borrowed via Libby, or Standard Ebooks or whatever. I won't yell at other people for doing that, but I don't do it myself. In a nutshell, I follow the same rules as with physical books I own (or temporarily possess).
> pirating everything on annas archive et. al. cannot be beat by any commercial offering
While I understand people pirating movies - there are hundreds of movies I'd happily pay to watch, but which are literally unavailable to me because of some arbitrary 'regional' restriction imposed by the distributors. But I can't think of a single book that isn't available in most parts of the world - certainly they're available wherever a Kobo is for sale.
So how are new books going to be published in the future, if people like you don't pay writers for their work? Would you like your work to be pirated, so you wouldn't be able to even buy another Kobo?
I feel like if the platform is unwilling to give you access to books you posted for, you should be able to download them from arrr without authors or publishers being affected financially - buy first pirate later.
People have been writing for much longer than writing has been a profession. And their work has been published by the means of the day, which pre-Gutenberg in the West meant hand-copying.
It's not immoral in any way to make a living off of your own creations, but - artists gonna art.
>Would you like your work to be pirated,
Imagine being so good at writing, that people out there are trying to get a copy of it that they can upload to The Pirate Bay. Hell yeh, I'd love that... seems like reaching the big leagues.
Datahoarders with hard drives full of pirated books are not nearly as much of a threat to writers as, say, AI slop making it difficult to market new books. If you pirate a book and read it, the author can still sell you the sequel. Not so much if you don't even know who the author is.
You are essentially a distributed Fahrenheit 451 node.
I have a kindle. And it's really good, I've never read as much. Ive never bought a single thing from its store, only sideloaded though. And seeing the recent events im more worried about Amazon pulling the plug on side loading stuff. Turns out it's not that complicated to jailbreak your kindle though, so that's what I'm doing this weekend.
Recently i bought a book from Kindle because i couldn't find it in any other platform and I'm so happy it only cost me 1$ because i haven't been able to download the ePub version, none of the methods on the internet have worked for me or they need to use a physical kindle device. God it's so frustrating i just want to read a 1$ book on my Kobo
What book?
This is all very interesting news. From a sales standpoint, they're nearly admitting they cannot manage DRM properly and at Amazon scale. From a copyright standpoint, antipiracy will be extremely hard to enforce. The only middle ground is targeting honest buyers, and we all know how well that works. We should not expect this to be a permanent change. Perhaps it will be more of a very short, DRM-free golden age until another Amazon executive comes down and ends this experiment.
This is not about making all books DRM-free. It's about allowing downloads for the ones that are already DRM-free, if the publishers opt-in
Thanks, I missed the key detail!
Too little too late. I’ve already ditched Amazon for ebooks in favor of Kobo’s ecosystem. It’s not flawless but it’s not soul sucking either.
Can anyone find even one DRM-free ebook on Amazon Kindle?
I've noticed a lot in the SFF genre, including my current fiction read: Joe Abercrombie's latest release The Devils[1].
You'll see something like the following on the bottom of book details:
> At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3CB76TV
All Tor books (the publisher, not the privacy tool) are DRM free.
There are thousands.
All ePub and PDF downloads are here: https://open-slum.org/
I hope they will allow me to download e-books that I uploaded through their upload site.
I do backups but better be safe than sorry.
How do I know if any of the books I already have are DRM free? And how to get the epub or PDF?
I believe every book I buy I’m allowed to backup in any format I want. Come and get me
Well, it's a step in the right direction. I will never pay for an ebook that I cannot permanently possess. And DRM is pointless. At some point the words become visible and therefore are copyable.
I could see them buying the rights to popular free or DRM-free books and bringing them into their store, along with all the consequences that would entail.
Not to mention the spying they'll do - Whatcha reading?
Thank you great exalted one! We don't deserve your endless generosity.
First think I do and have ever done after having had to buy a book from Amazon: Pull it into Calibre and remove DRM.
These days I don’t buy from them but the same with Kobo which is a better company to begin with.
The latest version of Amazon's DRM can't be reliably removed by the DeDRM package.
I still use a Kindle eReader (an Oasis) but I now buy books from Kobo because those are easy to strip DRM from.
This is a step in the right direction. Now publishers need to take it up.
DRM-free is a precondition for me buying digital books personally. Practically no major digital bookstore offers it.
Recently signed up for Littler Books for the sole reason they offered everything in epub, pdf and Word doc. Sad this is not the standard for paid content.
At least better than completely disallowing it I guess.
So weird. They lock it down so you can’t put stuff on their device, but now you can buy drm free on some other device?
I think we should not allow Amazon to control our digital life.
Same with Google etc... just look how bad youtube has gotten. I try to find a video xyz, using the search term xyz, and after like 5 results, random videos show up. That is not a "search", that is propaganda and an attempt to retain people on the platform - but I am already on the platform playing BACKGROUND MUSIC of some DJs. Why is Google wasting my time when I want to FIND something? And what is even worse - that leaked onto the search engine too. The search engine has been ruined by Google deliberately so in the last some years.
I thought they already allowed this. Is this a reversal on a recent restriction?
Amazon is hostile to your property rights. Don't buy from them.
Is there a way to check the DRM status before purchase?
Well... Lots of companies are snitching their customers now
What's amazon's angle on this? Because it's not believable that they wouldn't have an angle.
So the real question is - how is amazon going to enshitify drm-free books? Are they trying to wipe out gutenburg, standard-ebooks, etc?
Are they trying to be the youtube of drm-free? The place where everyone goes, and that becomes crap due updating Ts&Cs - inserting ads or charges?
I have zero qualms removing DRM or downloading pirated version of media I have previously purchased.
I don't let those laws (corporate opinions) degrade my quality of life.
Wow it took this long to adopt epub?
Amazon adopted epub several years ago. Publishers provide files to them as plain epub files. What they sell is an epub file in a proprietary wrapper. The wrapper exists, in part, to provide the DRM. If they remove the DRM, they can remove the wrapper and give you a plan epub file.
So much for your master’s mercy
time to pick up my e-book reader again..
Oh and will it silently edit those as well? Fuck Amazon
They're still going to take note of what you're reading and possibly brand you as a non-ultra-capitalist disruptor. Amazon can get fucked.
I still buy physical media from them once a year (November) when availabilty and rest of the world can't compete price-wise. Yes I recognise the hypocrisy of said actions and minimise it as much as possible. Non-US based. Many physical media producers (e.g. Disney) no longer produce stuff for our 'region'.
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Nobody with sane mind cares. You may buy Kindle, but then you jailbreak it right away. You can "buy" Kindle e-books, but then you exfiltrate these right away. When you stand your ground, what can Amazon allow you or not allow?
Sure, if you don't mind playing a stupid cat and mouse game with one of the largest corporations on the planet, go for it. I did it for a bit and got real tired of the drag.
Now if a book is available from a DRM free source, I buy it. Otherwise something else
Spoken like a techie, with the attitude NYers have to the "flyover states".
Only tech-savvy people who are morally OK with pirating and jailbreaking are "sane"?
Hardware I pay for should be mine. If I do not jailbreak it, it is still theirs, despite me paying for it. They cheat, not me. Same goes for e-books, they can cut me off, they can (and do) change contents on the fly. I keep exfiltrated books for myself, and that is right.
> Spoken like a techie, with the attitude NYers have to the "flyover states".
Like you mean, when people from what you call "flyover states" demonized cities so much, that they are ok sending armies into them?
Lets be real, the overwhelming majority if derision and toxicity flows the other way.
You're financially incentivising them. You could do the same process with Kobo, without rewarding Amazon at all.