This is not an anti-Kindle rant. I have purchased (rented?) several Kindle titles myself.

However, YSK that you are only licensing access to the book from Amazon, you don’t own it like a physical book.

There have been cases where Amazon deletes a title from all devices. (Ironically, one version of “1984” was one such title).

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

There have also been cases where a customer violated Amazon’s terms of service and lost access to all of their Kindle e-books. Amazon has all the power in this relationship. They can and do change the rules on us lowly peasants from time to time.

Here are the terms of use:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201014950

Note, there are indeed ways to download your books and import them into something like Calibre (and remove the DRM from the books). If you do some web searches (and/or search YouTube) you can probably figure it out.

  • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    I use Calibre to remove the DRM from all ebooks I buy. Not that I buy a lot of them, but hell if I’ll let Amazon be the keeper of the keys.

    • Boozilla@lemmy.worldOPM
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 month ago

      Yup, making a DRM-free backup somewhere is the only way to protect the content you paid for from the whims of the overlords.