Amazon's killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books

I&#x27;ve got a 3rd generation Kindle. It&#x27;s over a decade old, but it works flawlessly <i>except</i> that it can&#x27;t authenticate with Amazon anymore, due to changes in their whatsits. So, it&#x27;s not possible for me to legally buy books from them, which (according to me) gives me license to just pirate everything I want. Nobody will believe this, but I do buy physical copies of about 90% of the books I steal, if only used copies. But Amazon doesn&#x27;t get a dime from me anymore.<p>I bring this up to mention how incredibly easy it is to sideload books into a Kindle (an old one at least; can&#x27;t speak to the new ones).

I am weary of corporations still trying to own everything they already sold me. Additionally sick of them trying to control speech and thought based on whatever ludicrous corporate nanny culture is in vogue.<p>The people censoring books with “inappropriate language” have no understanding of precedent, history, or art. 1&#x2F;100th as talented as the authors whose work they “update”. Their life’s greatest accomplishment is making something actually impressive slightly worse.<p>Coincidentally I was already looking at a Kobo Libra Color or a Supernote Nomad, this just sealed that decision.

This renders my kindle gen 2 useless, as its only connectivity is&#x2F;was via cellular network which doesn’t work anymore (2g or something). I’ve been having to download and then transfer via usb for years.

You don’t even own ebooks on Amazon. You own a license that is set to expire and can be revoked at anytime.

I&#x27;m a heavy use of this feature so I&#x27;m pissed. Can anyone recommend alternatives? I need to be able to load any books I buy into Calibre so I can convert to whatever format I need.

[dupe]<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43046995">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43046995</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43039924">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43039924</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43041726">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43041726</a>

Just switch to Kobo. Download the books from their site in ACSM, then remove the Adobe DRM. It the same process if using Calibre.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;kobo&#x2F;comments&#x2F;169djct&#x2F;kobo_bookstore_drm&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;kobo&#x2F;comments&#x2F;169djct&#x2F;kobo_bookstor...</a>

I have a couple hundred books. Has anyone managed to use puppeteer or selenium or something to automate it? This will take hours.

This is... terrible news. This is primarily how I get books from the library. I found that if you keep the Kindle on Airplane mode and download + transfer them, they never expire.<p>Nothing malicious. I just can&#x27;t read books arbitrarily in a 21 day period.

I got a Kindle when I lived in Italy and it was so amazing being able to instantly get books in English with no shipping or import fees or any of that.<p>Now I regret how much control Amazon has over a substantial number of books I paid for, though.

What are some stores that sell DRM free books? If it&#x27;s easy enough to rip that&#x27;s fine too.

I wonder what percentage of kindle users even knew about this or used it.

once there&#x27;s a monopoly, this is what happens

Kobo makes great e-readers.

I&#x27;m interpreting this as the final straw for cancelling Prime.<p>Very small vote with my wallet, but something.

The simple solution is to stop buying eBooks from Amazon. Pirate all of your epubs and PDFs so you will always have an offline backup.<p>If you enjoyed the book buy a hard copy for a friend, relative, book club, etc from a local book store. Amazon doesn&#x27;t need your money anymore.

&gt; Amazon has occasionally [1] removed books from its online store and remotely deleted them from Kindles or [2] edited titles and re-uploaded new copies to its e-readers.<p>1. Not remotely ok but we understand that contracts expire somehow and &quot;purchase&quot; is not a legal term any more.<p>2. Wait, what? When would this be useful to the corporation? Is Jeff gearing up for more censorship like he does at WaPo?