Don't "buy" e-books from Oxford University Press

Post by sdh9 » Sat, May 24, 2025, 3:24 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #11

sdh9 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still "easy" to strip DRM from Amazon books but you need an actual Kindle to do so. If it's something that you would like to do, it might be worth investing in a cheap used Kindle even if you never plan to use it to read.

I thought they removed that, even with a hardware Kindle? I managed to download all my ebooks via a python script before that, as I've purchased 100s of books via Kindle throughout the years, but seems they've disabled the approach I took at least: > As of 26th February 2025, Amazon has removed the ability to download backups of your Kindle books. Unfortunately, this means that this tool is no longer functional - htt…

Post by bandali » Sat, May 24, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

thephyber wrote: post #6

The screenshot mentions a 14 day return policy. If that doesn’t work, your credit card company is likely willing to help you force a refund (unless you agreed to a contract during checkout). The dead tree version is about a dollar more than the silly lease-under-onerous-terms-pretending-to-be-purchase version. Do the world a favor and opt for the physical book so you don’t contribute to the anti-consumer digital dist…

Post by DanAtC » Sat, May 24, 2025, 4:36 PM UTC

bandali wrote: post #14

thephyber wrote: post #6

The screenshot mentions a 14 day return policy. If that doesn’t work, your credit card company is likely willing to help you force a refund (unless you agreed to a contract during checkout). The dead tree version is about a dollar more than the silly lease-under-onerous-terms-pretending-to-be-purchase version. Do the world a favor and opt for the physical book so you don’t contribute to the anti-consumer digital dist…

Regarding the 14 day return policy: > You must not have viewed or printed, in total, more than five percent (5%) of the e-book. -- from https://global.oup.com/academic/help/ebooks/?cc=ca&lang=en&#... > According to that I'm not covered because I tried to print more than that percentage of the book to PDF (and was presented with the kind of unusable garbage output shown in my post).

Post by crtasm » Sat, May 24, 2025, 9:18 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #3

Say I want to buy "The Catholic Reformation: A Very Short Introduction", published by Oxford University Press. What are my options if I want a DRM-free copy, legally? Amazon no longer lets me download the books themselves so I can strip the DRM locally, so that's no longer an option. Apparently Oxford University Press also don't offer DRM-free reading. So what really can I do here if I want to buy it in digital form?…

Post by Daviey » Sat, May 24, 2025, 10:54 PM UTC

xboxnolifes wrote: post #19

Daviey wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems the worst of options, because the I'd have a useless shelf of dead wood that only serves as a backdrop to make me look smart on zoom calls.

Ok, then buy the DRM version and then pirate it.