I can't wait for Kovid Goyal to figure this out and get Calibre back to fucking with Amazon.
How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
261–270 of 538 posts
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#262Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#263Fascinating how much effort Amazon puts into screwing their customers. And impressive how people manage to circumvent that anyway. But I still think the better option is to never give any money to Amazon.
Just imagine if they had put the same effort into making a usable Android app, then the author wouldn't have bothered. In some sense it's negligence on Amazons part.
Years ago I dropped buying stuff on Amazon, because they can't match prices, shipping times and the site just invites scams, but I kept buying eBooks, because my old Kindle is sort of amazing. Then they started messing with the Kindle platform as well and now I just buy physical books from local retailers.
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
> so now I just pirate those books. I know someone who wrote a (technical) book and how hard it is to get sales in the age of easy internet piracy. I understand the desire to use the books as you please, but please remember that buying the book and downloading a pirated copy for your own use are not mutually exclusive choices. You can still purchase the book to support the author even if you're not using the exact sa…
Publishing is a dying industry. It use to be that publishers had limited press capacity, so if wanted to print and sell your book you needed a publisher to handle the production and distribution. Now it’s electronic. What value is a publisher bringing? There was a time I could go to Borders, Barnes and Noble, Crown Books, and a couple of independent bookstores. Now I can go to Barnes and Noble and the remaining indep…
Editors are expensive, DRM and copyright is a lot of work. AI is not a good editor yet text come out too bland.
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#265For reference, Libreture maintains a list of non-DRM bookshops [1]. [1] https://libreture.com/bookshops/
what we need is a unified search engine for non DRM bookshops so that I can just search for what I need and then be directed to whatever shop offers it at the best price or format.
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#266Lovely, great effort.
I wonder if Kindle Web reader supports word search, but that probably just searches server side and then returns indexed selections.
And how about copy-and-paste and accessibility, there must be some a11y support?
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#267I’ve been using https://readest.com and very much enjoying it. I just wish there were a “lifetime purchase” option.
What are you paying for? I see no mention of paid features anywhere (play store, GitHub readme, website, in-app settings). If the app isn't entirely free, this send pretty misleading...
There's a cloud-based sync service (500mb of books; 10k translation chars). I'm currently storing 24 books (as I haven't moved them all across from the Kindle app yet) and I'm using 12% of this storage.
I suppose if you want to implement your own cloud-based (Dropbox? Google Drive?) storage service and circumvent the author's monetisation model, you could.
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#268I’ve been using https://readest.com and very much enjoying it. I just wish there were a “lifetime purchase” option.
What are you paying for? I see no mention of paid features anywhere (play store, GitHub readme, website, in-app settings). If the app isn't entirely free, this send pretty misleading...
To be clear: I am currently _not_ paying for it; I can just foresee a day where I'd have to.
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
And while you’re at it, do you expect to sue Steam, and the App Stores, and most other digital marketplaces owned by billionaire corporations? You’re not going to win those lawsuits with such a flimsy argument. They could just as well argue that you are not buying the book, but a license to access it under certain conditions. A movie theatre is a comparable example: You say you bought a ticket, not that you rented ac…
A movie theatre is a bad comparison. Nowhere does it say “Buy the movie” and it’s clear to the purchaser that they’re purchasing a one time viewing. That’s not the case with an Amazon eBook where the marketing and reasonable expectation of the average consumer is they’re buying the eBook itself. Not that I necessarily agree with the other comment either.
Exactly. The button should just say "read on Kindle" or "watch on Prime" etc. Including the word "buy" is at best misleading and at worst deceptive.
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#270I stopped buying kindle books and back to buying physical books. Now I own them, I can gift them to friends or pass them on to my kids.
I live in unbelievably hot and humid Singapore and buying physical books is essentially "not possible". Unless I blast the AC in my house 24/7, all books will eventually succumb to mould.