I've only bought a few ebooks but even then, I've immediately went and pirated them too to feel like I <i>have</i> something, even though it's only a few hundred kilobytes. I know it's a digital book and I know someone worked really hard on it but when I buy an book from Amazon or some other site which works this way, I feel like I'm buying... nothing. I sometimes buy physical books with the intention of keeping them for when I'm in the mood to read them, sometimes this might be months or even years. But with a digital book delivered with a licence I've always got a niggle in the back of my mind thinking about a digital collection dissappearing or the service becoming obsolete. In regards to non-drm ebooks, the lack of tangibility peeves me slightly but isn't so much an issue as I actually have something I can keep. But licenced ebooks are fugazi, ethereal nothingness existing on the whims of a mega corporation.
This is the result of a recent law in California:<p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digital-purchase-disclosure-law-ab-2426" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digit...</a>
I’ve had a Kindle since the very first model. I’ve bought 380 books for it, so probably like $3000.<p>This recent shift by Amazon ends that. I’m buying a Kobo reader and I’ll be buying all my ebooks from bookshop.org as soon as they launch their (promised) Kobo integration.<p>I understand this may have been how things worked all along, but Amazon making visible changes to reduce my feeling of ownership of my ebooks is a sign of bad things to come and I won’t support it.<p>I already downloaded and de-DRMed my whole Kindle library this week. Took an hour, well worth it.
><i>Amazon Now Openly Discloses You’re Buying a License to View Kindle eBooks</i><p>"disclosure" of information sounds like a good thing, but in terms of contracts, "a disclosure" is actually "a restriction/limitation" that you are agreeing to. This is Amazon "disclosing" that it is you who is not actually buying a copy of something.<p>Yes, it's better for you that limitations are disclosed, but the salient point is the limitation, not the disclosure.
Maybe not a super popular opinion on HN, but this effectively changes nothing for me. I love reading on my kindle, by far the most convenient way to buy and read books for me (esp when traveling often).<p>It’s good that they are now being upfront about it, but it won’t impact my buying behaviour and it won’t for the majority of readers.
This would be more convincing if e-books cost a small fraction of the price of a paperback. I think it would be entirely reasonable for the licensed-only e-book of a $10 paperback to cost just a dollar or two, max.<p>The whole thing is ridiculous anyway; I remember Amazon and others pushing the idea of e-books as a way to get cheaper books (since they don't have to physically print a book and mail it to you), but of course that turned out to be a lie. Occasionally I even see a book's Kindle version that costs <i>more</i> than a physical copy!<p>Whatever, every time I buy a Kindle book I download it to my laptop, strip off the DRM, and keep that copy safe as a backup. (If that starts becoming impossible due to Amazon removing the "download and transfer via USB" option, then I'm going to have to buy my e-books elsewhere going forward. Or just get them from my local public library; at least a library's terms of use are sane.
I don’t think I would ever buy an e-book. It makes no sense to me. If I want a copy for my personal collection I’ll keep it in hardcover. Otherwise I’ll just use Libby and check it out when it becomes available.<p>There are cases where I will toss an independent author a few dollars in exchange to read their book, but there’s no way I would ever pay Amazon or another publisher.
Support your local bookstore, before they are all gone.<p>Physical copies of books might be tough if space is at a premium, but I love having a bookshelf. I can quickly look back to specific books or chapters or notes or whatever. Plus it gives my guests something to talk about - they can instantly see what I've read and how they can relate to me or my interests.
You’ve still got a couple days to download (DRM’d) copies of the books before they remove that option!<p>I just finished importing mine in Calibre and converting them all to epub
Feels relevant to post this here. Guy called it in 2008. <a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/keep-control-of-your-computing.en.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/keep-control-of-your-computin...</a>
I have bought books from Amazon and Manning.com, mostly technical books. I have to say, I am so happy with the business model of Manning.com:<p>- they offer good quality books<p>- they also offer a subscription where you can view all books and download one book per month<p>- when you buy a digital book, they give you the book in several formats (kindle and pdf)<p>- you can read the ebook in multiple devices<p>O'Reilly should follow the same business model.
Looks like Stallman was right, again. <a href="https://www.stallman.org/amazon.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.stallman.org/amazon.html</a>
Many years ago I started splitting my purchases between Amazon, Google Books, and Apple Books. It is a small nuisance but it felt better than using a single vender.<p>Now I mostly buy from Kobo and labor.fm and many of the books they sell are DRM free. Often the prices are better also.
Amazon should be forced to refund every last Kindle book sold previously, and these “disclosures” (which basically seem like consumer fraud) should be required to be displayed in huge fonts during the purchase process, not fine print.
I can't believe anyone feels the need to buy digital copies of books anymore, especially from companies who have very obviously pirated every copyrighted work in existence as part of their AI offerings.
I can't say I predicted this, but this sort of thing is why I bought a kobo instead of a kindle. Of course, for all I know Rakuten is worse than Amazon on this issue, but so far so good...
Well they can go fuck themselves with their books, Kindles and licenses.<p>Personally I've never had even slightest inclination to "buy" books this way.
Is this at all informative? I think the fact that we're buying a license goes without saying, it's the terms of said license that matter, so I don't think this adds any useful information.<p>The page really needs to specify all limitations that differ from a physical copy, which would be non-revocable, transferable, worldwide, unlimited in time, geographic location, and method of consumption, etc.
What doesn’t make sense to me, is there is a more of a need than ever to own copies of the books we read. People will be creating their own RAG of the books they are reading to make use of the knowledge and expand upon the teachings. This way of thinking of licensing is antiquated. I’m sure Amazon will make some “Kindle LLM” but hopefully by then the industry is radically disrupted.
As long as the button says "Buy" that's the standard you shoulb be held to. We can't have companies selling you one thing and then hide in the fine print that you're getting something completely different.
I buy kindle / apple books completely for the convenience factor: formatting, delivery, cloud service and occasional updates. Though, I do wish there were some kind of change log for what they updated.
The comments here are an interesting juxtaposition with some other posts on HN today with people arguing about supply and demand and markets. There's plenty of people here saying they're willing to pay for a DRM-free book, and some indications that authors are willing to sell them, but the market won't let that happen because it doesn't leave any room for oligarchs to leech money at every step.
I've only ever bought DRM-less epub (mostly books from John Scalzi and a couple of other authors). I won't pirate, because I refuse any DRM-laden shite as a question of principle.
That's why I always recommend people buy Kobos. far superior product, far superior reading experience, and you get the extra bonus points of not throwing more money at fucking bezos
My dream regulation would be that they can't use the word "buy". Call it license, rent, subscription, etc. but your not buying anything.
I would like to declare that after sooo many years not touching a torrent, I not only started pirating, but I suggest everyone to do so for all abusive companies and services nowadays.<p>The current state of reality is taking a dark turn, and I will be dammed to just ignore it. So many companies are too powerful, and we suckers have been too nice accepting abuse and obeying laws unilatery.<p>Think of companies like Meta and OpenAI pirating EVERYTHING they can lay their hand on online just to regurgitate to use behind paywalls. Also don't forget OpenAI recently crying foul because DeepSeek did the same to them.
Every now and then when I’m lugging around a book or lamenting that my bookshelves are full, I wonder if ebooks and a Kindle would be simpler, better. Then Amazon does something like this and I’m reminded the headaches are worth it.
I have over 1600 Kindle books. I am not now nor have I ever been afraid of losing any books. I've always known I'm buying the ability to READ them, NOT OWN them. Why people are behaving so paranoid and entitled over this fact, is not beyond me, because I know how humans are, but it is embarrassing. It's ignorant at best, narcissistic at worst. You didn't write the books. You're DON'T OWN THEM. Never did.