I’d advise anyone buying e-books on Amazon to think it through carefully. My account was banned recently because, years ago, I ordered two paper books that Amazon said would be split into two shipments. Both books arrived without any issues, but later Amazon refunded me for one of them, claiming that one package never arrived. This happened 4–5 years ago.
Apparently, during a recent review, they decided this counted as fraud and banned my account. As a result, I can no longer log in and lost access to all my Kindle e-books. They also remotely wiped my Kindle, so my entire library is gone. I appealed the decision, but I’ve been waiting for over six months with no resolution.
A friend of mine received a double shipment for a $300 order. Being honest, he contacted customer service to arrange a return. Everything seemed fine until a few days later when he noticed they had also refunded his original payment. He reached out again to let them know, and they said they’d just recharge his card. Apparently, that transaction failed (no clear reason why), and without any warning, they banned his account, wiping out his entire Kindle library in the process. Amazon works wonderfully right up until it fails spectacularly.
I wonder just like retailers are required to account for local sales taxes (I know it is not that clear cut), there should be some enforcement mechanism to settle disputes locally. Setup an agency which "legally" provides support for google, Amazon, and all those unreachable entities. Provides local jobs as well as quick grievance redressal. Maybe something like consumer protection agency but not federal, maybe at least one per county maybe more depending on the population.
Edit - I don't mind paying for the service. Maybe charge everyone $99 to file a case to avoid everyone piling on, but it helps resolve most egregious ones, and fee could be refunded at the agency's discretion.
I can't speak for how effective the process is, but this is the idea behind the EU/UK GPSR's Authorised Representative framework - though not exactly local (that would be excessive, since GPSR also applies to much smaller sellers too)
[Edit, because one-word replies are uncivilized: one reason to be suspicious about binding arbitration is that the company against whom you'll be pleading is a repeat customer of that arbitration service. It's a non-transparent / non-public process, so it's hard to have confidence is fair, and over which we (ie, the public) have no influence if it were not.]
The solution to authoritarian problems is to organize.
In this case, we're overdue for a service that we all pay into, like a collective credit card, that only continues making payments to companies like Amazon if all of the members are happy. When you get banned without due process, payments stop until the matter is resolved.
Also, the collective can bargain-down rates. If it senses price increases beyond inflation, it just sends the adjusted amount, like 95%, until the matter is resolved.
We need this collective bargaining for housing (like tenant unions), the workplace, politics, pharmaceuticals, etc. The scale of this is so large that the collective could exist beyond any specific industry. So that it would operate as a meta economy beside the so-called free market economy (late-stage capitalism) that we operate under today due to the lack of antitrust enforcement.
Groups like the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) are working towards these sorts of goals on a number of fronts:
I never bought any ebooks off Amazon without removing the drm at the time. I did buy a lot of shows and movies, but if they take those away, I'll just pirate them, given I've already paid.
That's the point of DRM-free ebooks though, isn't it? You download them and keep them safe so if the provider decides to cut access to your account, you remain in possession of the goods.
So the correct advice would be to avoid anyone buying DRM-encumbered digital property - the same as RMS has been making for who knows how long!
It's safer to assume that Amazon is always acting in bad faith and search to purchase your DRM free e-books from other vendors. There's plenty of other options out there besides Amazon
Pretty sure all of Baen's books are DRM free, and they offer virtually every ebook format around. They even used to include CDs with their hardbacks that would would include a huge subset of their collection. But they aren't a retailer, they're a publisher, so you're only getting the titles they publish.
Banning long-time customers in otherwise good-standing for a mistake they made years ago, which would already be settled financially and such a minor cost is wild.
I can imagine something like this has happened to almost everyone.
So much for being the world’s most customer-centric company. That mission is dead.
99.99% of the time when you read something on the internet and your reaction is "that's wild" / "wow that's crazy" / "that's unbelievable", then what you are reading is in fact likely nowhere near the actual truth / real.
This may be your opinion, and mine as well, but it’s still in paragraph 1 of Amazon’s own about page. It seems they’ve forgotten their own guiding principles.
> Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. We strive to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, Earth’s best employer, and Earth’s safest place to work.
They failed to deliver a Pixel phone to me - they never even tried to deliver it and the status said "permanent delivery failure" so I assumed they'd automatically refund me.
Fast forward a few months, I never received a refund and they claim they have no record any more. I could chargeback my credit card but I imagine I'd also be permanently banned from Amazon - so instead I accept they've just stolen $1000 from me with no recourse...
(if anyone from Amazon is reading this, my email is in my bio!)
It seems wild to me to just accept a loss of $1000 for something that isn't your fault. I'd be persistent in each contact with Amazon and if you're really not getting anywhere I'd go to small claims court or do a chargeback.
Yeah, I get that Amazon is incredibly convenient, but $1000 is $1000 no matter which company takes it from you. If some local mom and pop shop effectively stole $1000 from me, you can bet your ass I'd never patronize them again.
They never said they continued to patronize Amazon. Given the thread kicked off with claims about loosing access to DRMed content due to an unrelated delivery/payment issue, the person involved may be concerned about loosing access to digital content. Some people spend a lot of money on books, movies, etc.. The $1000 may be a drop in the bucket.
Just ask for the refund. If they lock your account you can always make a new one (gonna be a scary day when that isn't possibl cuz they use biometrics or something.....).
But if they just close your account in response to asking for a rightful refund.... Literal thievery
Man, for $1000 I'd definitely be checking to make sure it got refunded, and manually requesting a refund after a week had passed.
Waiting a few months is not smart because not every delivery service is going to store the delivery status details. I've generally found that after 3 months, data starts disappearing from services and refund options can become technically impossible. Like, on eBay, even if a seller wants to refund you after more than 90 days, they can't. Part of this is for accounting too -- at some point you just have to be able to definitively close the books and say here are the sales we made, that number isn't going down in the future because of potential outstanding returns.
Much less money lost, but Amazon is notorious for not providing free game codes that are supposed to be included with GPU purchases. The customer rep at first apologized and offered a small refund (less than the cost of the game). A later rep started implying I was trying to defraud Amazon.
Many people online share similar experiences. Wonder how much money this wide-scale fraud saves them.
Amazon doing dodgy things with PC parts is why I will no longer purchase them from there - I'll happily take the extra £10-20 hit to buy it from another "proper" retailer (ie, Scan or Overclockers here in the UK), knowing that issues can be resolved more easily
Something similar happened to me. The delivery company returned two packages, two separate orders, as damaged back to Amazon. They were marked as "delivered". They automatically refunded just one item in one of the returned orders.
I had to call them to get a refund for all the items on all the orders, and even then they had a lot of difficulty figuring out what was happening. Isn't Amazon supposed to be a world leader (maybe after Walmart) in this stuff?
wait is your email really [email protected]? I registered java.lang.string (at) gmail back when I was learning java 20+ years ago. Haven't really used it in over a decade though.
And risk being locked out of the world’s online marketplace and all of Amazon’s other businesses? Maybe a bit hyperbolic but that’s where we are headed for sure.
They screwed me in a different way. I simply didn't log into Amazon for a couple years as I've tried to minimize my use of Amazon. When I went to log in, they locked my account without any way to unlock it. Talking with support multiple times did nothing. Now all my digital purchases are gone.
Edit: If anyone knows a way to get them to unlock the account, I'd appreciate it. They won't issue a password reset or anything similar, which seems ridiculous considering they never claimed fraud. Simply that it had been too long since I logged in.
If you're in the US just look up the small claims process local near you, and do it.
The fee is small and you'll learn how it works, and that's worst case.
I saw the writing on the wall when they recently removed the facility to download your own books. I downloaded all of them, removed the DRM with Calibre, and now obtain e-books through other sources.
I'm also particularly skeptical of Amazon because our Kindle Direct Publishing account was banned also for no reason. They said something about me having had a previous account before, but I'm not sure that was true and I think it was a very extreme measure. We were actually selling books at the time until we got banned. They obviously also "forgot" to pay out the most recent month.
Unfortunately bad press is likely going to be the only thing to give you your account back.
You should write a blog post and let the internet and the media do its magic
The only reason for a recent review (like with all the recently banned Facebook accounts from 2009) is firing up AI tools that didn't exist 5 years ago.
I buy all my ebooks. I search DRM free, if there is DRM only I'll buy it the cheapest I can then download it from Annas Archive. I like to support authors but I need to own what I buy.
Amazon used to be really customer centric 5-10 years ago, I remember once I ordered a physical book which was late in delivery and I urgently needed that book, so they gave me a free kindle edition till the book got delivered.
Last week I had a vendor tell me that they did warranty service through Amazon, and I should contact Amazon for a replacement, even though I was outside of their return window. It turned out to be a lie. But Amazon refunded me the full amount anyway, without prompting. The handful of times I've contacted Amazon tech support this has been my experience. The previous one was when they replaced a $250 porch pirated delivery, no questions asked.
This behavior genuinely earns them more of my business.
The "danger" of their policies (and I've benefitted from them, too) is that they obviously can be gamed, and they obviously have to have defenses against that - which means if you cross some invisible line (and now likely AI-monitored) you're doomed; no recourse.
That’s possible, but I can’t know for sure because Amazon never provided any concrete details. I didn’t receive any warning emails, only a cryptic message after the ban:
> "Amazon.co.uk found that the rate at which refunds were occurring on your account was extraordinary and could not continue."
After looking through my order history, the only refund I could find on this account was the one related to the book I mentioned above. If there was any other activity or misuse, Amazon hasn’t disclosed it to me, which makes it impossible to verify or dispute their conclusion.
Hah, they actually did a slight rollback! When I first heard about them stopping the downloads, I immediately downloaded all the books I purchased from Amazon and went from buying ~1 book per week to 0. Seems a lot of us doing so had some sort of effect.
Unfortunately, it seems like this will be chosen by the publisher, so of course probably most of the books won't be downloadable at all, and Amazon can now point their finger at the publisher instead of taking the blame themselves. Publishers was probably always the reason behind the move, but at least now Amazon have someone else to blame, which I guess is great for them.
YMMV depending on the kind of books you read, but I think the majority of the ones I've gotten from Amazon are labeled as DRM-free. A lot of fantasy/science fiction authors (as well as some publishers like Tor!) feel strongly about that kind of thing
I have bought more than 600 books over a decade or so;
But after they decided the ebooks were actually just license to read, I did exactly the same as you, and now rather than happily buying from them, actively discourage everyone in my social circle from using kindle.
I am not going back, whoever they decide to blame.
No, it hasn't. Until very recently, their website said "Buy now with 1-Click", minus the new "By placing an order, you're purchasing a content license & agreeing to Kindle's Store Terms of Use." wording underneath it. The process was identical to buying a physical book: you give them money, and you end up with your own physical or electronic copy of it.
Any interpretation of that transaction as anything but a purchase of a copy is delusional. I couldn't care less what their ToS said about it, any more than I'd care what a sign on the wall of a bookstore said.
What do you do now? I’ve been buying physical books off of Abe Books—not a bad thing at all—but I’d like to use my jailbroken kindle again because the form factor is so convenient.
Buy DRM free when you can. Not only is this convenient for you but will hopefully help nudge the market. When you can't, buy the book from one of the easily cracked sources (Kobo, Google, Adobe DRM).
Or you can save yourself the bother of removing DRM by buying the book from wherever and then downloading a copy from Anna's.
I try to buy physical books, and make an effort to buy it elsewhere, with AMZN being the reluctant last resort if I truly can’t find it. I don’t have a specific go to place anymore.
Also, I reduced the buying pace - owning physical books takes up space, so the bar for getting something into the library is now much higher than before.
It’s pretty unusual for Amazon to put any other entity’s interest ahead of it’s own, so they can be presumed to have some business reason for it, like the number of people who’ve decided not to buy from them any more.
But only if the author/publisher explicitly go in and permit it.
This isn't announcing that pdf's and epub's are now available for everything that was drm-free, this is announcing that they will _permit_ pdf's and epub's to be available.
I'm a self-published author. This is the default setting for new books uploaded without DRM. It's gated behind an "I understand" checkbox. I plan to allow my books to be downloaded as PDF and ePUB.
Technically, yes, but Amazon customers probably wouldn't benefit from that. I don't currently distribute or sell books directly because that creates a tax burden. So it's probably best to let the various stores handle it. I still want to sell books but I don't want my readers to be restricted by DRM for a book they paid for. The honor system is fine for me.
Having the action prominent and potentially with the default reversed would still leave it to the publisher's choice.
We can understand why they do it this way (they only need the option to exist, and can afford to apply dark patterns to it), but we don't need to excuse Amazon. Especially when they don't give a shit about what we think in the first place.
This was unexpected. They lost me as a customer when they stopped allowing me to download books I bought and I'm in the Kobo (+ BookLore) side now and I am not coming back.
I wonder how many books are actually DRM-free and are going to be affected by this change. I suspect relatively few, but I would be happy to be wrong
For me it appears highly genre-correlated. High percentage of science fiction books come with a small statement "this book is drm free on request of publisher / author". Zero of my photography, music, computer science or graphic novels came with such a tag.
Yeah, Tor Books publishes without DRM, and they seem to be one of the bigger SFF publishers these days. John Scalzi, George R.R. Martin (though not the ASoIaF books), Robert Jordan, Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane Anders, and a bunch of other SFF authors I recognize. I'm sure there are others, but all the once I've noticed have been from Tor.
But Kobo is bad too. Try refunding a book. Their website sent me in neverending circles and still I could not find a way to refund. Their stuff requires some specific reader or so. I don't quite remember the details, but I bought a book, thinking to avoid Amazon shit. Then I realized that their stuff sucks and I don't want to buy their blessed device or install special reader software. Also not DRM-free. So I wanted to refund, but couldn't. It is a very bad user experience. The only good experience you get from them is, if you go all in on their software/devices.
Since I couldn't refund, I had to pirate the book as epub/pdf from elsewhere. I decided to never again buy anything from Kobo.
It's not super easy to refund digital goods in general with few exceptions like Steam. I have done it with Kobo but IIRC you have to chat with a CS rep or least you did when I did it.
No where legit is DRM free for eBooks from the big publishers. You don't even have to use the Kobo app since they let you download the ACSM file and use it Adobe Digital Editions which could be used on a computer or ADE supported eReader like Pocketbook (or Kobo!). This has been the case since before they were even called Kobo! And if the publisher offers the book DRM free they just give you a DRM-free ePub instead of the ACSM file.
These days, with the Calibre DeACSM and DeDRM plug-ins you don't even need ADE. It's also trivially easy to remove the DRM from the Kobo desktop app or their readers. It's way easier than Amazon and a way better experience with multiple routes to a DRM free file.
This ACSM file fiddling was too much of a hassle. I used to DeDRM ebooks from Amazon (also using Calibre), but I didn't know about DeACSM. I just want an epub or pdf file. I don't want their reinventing the wheel to somehow gatekeep content bs file formats. This is a clear sign for me, that they do not have my best interest at heart.
Their website didn't guide me towards a callable phone number or give me an actual e-mail address I could write to. Instead I went back and forth between chatbot and docs and webpages, without success. It is obvious to me, that they want as little actual human in the loop as possible. Real shitty experience, while my money is already gone and I am trying to get it back. Easier to give up and just download an acceptable version elsewhere. Not going through all that hassle to use their platform, which doesn't value me as a customer anyway.
If you want to be part of Kindle Unlimited you have to give worldwide exclusivity to Kindle Unlimited, and can't have ever published your eBook on another platform.
Even if I wanted to join, Kindle Unlimited is not offered here. I can't even buy the eBook from Amazon.
I've "collected" 500+ Kindle titles over the years and stopped buying from them completely when they blocked downloads earlier this year. When they enable these downloads, I'm going to export the ones I didn't get last time and continue NOT buying from them.
How many books are actually available DRM-free? This reads a bit like "Amazon will provide free land, construct a paddock and provide feed for life if you order a unicorn, except unicorns don't exist".
Books enter the public domain. Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.
The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad. You should explore all of the above a lot more, and much more besides.
I assumed that that was clear from the context, but let me rephrase it then:
"being made available DRM-free on Amazon" (and I'd narrow that down to "primarily/only on Amazon")
Of course public domain books are DRM free but I'm getting those from Gutenberg, not Amazon. Likewise, the copyleft books I'll most likely download from their own homepages, not Amazon.
I'm aware that DRM free media exists, including for currently copyrighted content that Amazon distributes ;)
Mildly sad is also that you seem to fault GP for not “exploring” more, instead of the insane practice of DRMing everything in the first place.
I never have purchased DRM protected media and never will - I’d rather pirate everything digital and but physical hard copies.
I don’t actually think it’s their fault, and if they feel I’m faulting them, that wasn’t the intention.
I think it’s sad that what we thought everyone saw as a nonsense is now so normalised that alternatives are just disappearing from view. Everyone should be encouraged to explore.
Piracy is your preferred option, but when that became more mainstream we actually ended up creating the market for more DRM, in the form of iTunes, Spotify and others. I’m not sure I want the future of digital media to be entirely subscription-based like that.
What might be a better solution is showing that media creators can achieve more of their own objectives through releasing media without DRM. This only works if their objectives are not entirely around making money from media sales, and more aligned to influence, or audience building.
I’m actually surprised at this point that musicians - given they don’t make money from streaming services and see them as tools to build audiences for live tours where they really make their money - don’t just jump over already.
I was just talking about books, but sure for music there are tons of alternative options as well.
I detest streaming platforms and it’s pretty easy to buy music directly from the creators in almost all cases - except maybe the top “superstars” but I would argue that they are probably doing fine anyway…
Also physical records still exist for music as well.
Lots of artists can do just fine with living from media sales.
Look I’m not saying “pirate everything and never pay the artists” - I’m saying “never pay the predatory tech companies that have inserted themselves between us and artists”
...and then they get re-packaged with DRM on Amazon's store, mostly because people uploading public domain books on Amazon have no idea what they're doing.
> Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.
You can read DRM-free stuff on a Kindle already, so that's not particularly relevant here.
> The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad.
When every big publisher is doing it, it is the norm. That doesn't mean there doesn't exist any book publisher which doesn't do this, but the vast, vast majority of the books actually sold today contain DRM. We don't have to like that norm, but pretending it isn't one is just denying reality.
While lots public domain books are on Amazon's store, most of those books are not free, both in the sense of "free or charge" and "DRM free". A lot of literature classic are released by a major publishing house with foreword and annotations, which to be fair, are copyrighted works and provide value. And they cost a bit of money. The "real" public domain versions provide by Amazon are barebone. Those versions are often good enough for many people, but you don't need to get them from Amazon in the first place.
In other words, public domain or not does not have much to do with DRM-free or even Amazon.
You'd be surprised. Tor and Solaris both offer DRM free books on Amazon. Also anything self published tends to be DRM free.
I saw the writing on the wall and downloaded my books from Amazon a few months before their announcement. Out of around 1000 books I had 300ish that were DRM free.
Dumb question, but: is there a way to find/filter ones that are? (I can't seem to find anything in the (web) UI that makes it clear which books are downloadable.)
There wasn't when I went through my collection. Reading the announcement from Amazon it looks like the existing DRM free books will not be automatically flagged to be downloadable.
The publisher/author will have to go through a process to have their books be downloadable again.
I assume GP was referring to Tor Books, (which name confused me immensely at first since I've been using the Tor project for many years) but that would have been an absolutely hilarious joke and I think you interpreting it as a joke is totally reasonable given how prominent the onion router project is.
It's not exactly nothing, but it's a pretty small change . Some publishers sell DRM-free on other platforms, and to be honest I was under the impression Amazon used to allow this in the past as well.
Of course if they really believed in the concept they would publish their own works DRM-free, but that would conflict with the business model of the publishing arm.
All of Cory Doctorow's books are DRM-free. Actually, he insisted on it as a contractual rider with his publisher, so he isn't available on any platform that doesn't have a DRM-free option. I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon re-allowing downloads for DRM-free is specifically because Doctorow's publisher is angry at them.
In practice, the biggest store that doesn't have a DRM-free option is Audible... which has a near-monopoly on audiobooks. So Cory Doctorow has to do crowdfunding campaigns for all his audiobooks. Of course, that doesn't stop his books from getting illegally reposted to Audible anyway, and Amazon doesn't care about enforcing rights they can't have. Which led to him actually publishing this gem on Audible: https://www.amazon.com/Why-None-Books-Available-Audible/dp/B...
Kobo does sell some other books DRM-free, so perhaps this is some sort of error. You can buy it directly from the publisher without Adobe DRM, there it has a watermark instead.
Yep, never again. I tried to take a pragmatic position with the DRM, and it is just not possible. I buy the crap out of DRM free stuff, but if it's not DRM free, it's not for me
I have Kobo, but their decision to enable secure boot in newer models, and consequently pushing out FOSS choices as operating systems makes me think I won't get another Kobo. Yes the Nickel menu works still with secure boot enabled devices. I like to think that devices I buy might have different use-case in future, and secure-boot enabled devices seriously harm that.
Thing is Kindle hardware is significantly better and cheaper. If you don't mind tinkering get a kindle and jailbreak it to remove ads and add koreader.
I've had both. Kobo is fine hardware-wise. And light years better on software than Kindle. One huge example: I have 1000+ books in Calibre. Took the time to tag them all into their respective categories. Kobo recognizes those tags and my book collection is sorted. With Kindle, I'd have to sort by hand on device. It ignores Calibre tags.
For this feature alone, I'd never go back to Kindle. Sure, I might be able to replicate it with jailbreaking + KOReader. But the Kobo worked this way out of the box.
How so? Just looking online, the prices between a Kindle and Clara BW is minimal (the Clara BW is actually cheaper). I don’t see how the hardware is better when they use the same exact screen…
> Kindle hardware is significantly better and cheaper. If you don't mind tinkering get a kindle and jailbreak it to remove ads and add koreader.
Because Amazon were increasingly locking-down their systems - and also because they are all-round shits - I decided to abandon the ecosystem having been a customer since the days they only sold books.
I have owned two Paperwhites, two Oasis devices, and a Kindle Scribe. I sold all of them last year and bought a Kobo Libra Colour.
I get WAY more joy from reading on the Kobo. I love buying books from the Kobo store (yes I know they also have DRM) - and I'm buying and reading WAY more on the Kobo than I was at the end of my time with Amazon.
Every time I buy yet another book on the Kobo Store I feel the thrill of sticking it to the horrible, anti-user shits at Amazon.
I love my Libra 2 reader, but I only use it to read epub files from questionable websites. I would pay for books if they were available as DRM-free epubs.
I'll chime in - the Kindle Paperwhite I believe is the superior machine from a physical feeling and aesthetic perspective. The problem (for me) is who makes it. Amazon keeps locking it down so it's harder and harder to load your own DRM free books onto it, in addition to tracking everything you do on it (like sending all your reading statistics whenever you get online).
I have a Kobo Clara BW. It's still a great machine, but the Kindle is definitely superior for feel and visuals, but I use the Kobo 95% of the time. They are way more open with the software and I have mine in "sideload" mode (an official setting), which really just means that it doesn't make me log into anything and it doesn't even attempt to connect to the internet. Also, I can purchase a DRM free ebook on the train, plug a USB cable into my phone and my Kobo, and then load it on like that. Now I own my digital book, have supported the author with a larger margin, and get to read it on my more private machine.
Definitely not a no-brainer for everyone, but I'm happy with my Kobo.
Kobo is the sort of device which would make HN happy. The software is much more open and permissive than Kindle. Integrates with Calibre more tightly. Has a fairly rich ecosystem of tweaks and addons which don't require a jailbreak. Wish it didn't have secure boot but am otherwise pretty happy with it.
Kobo feels like something I actually own. More so than Kindle or even my iDevices. That's a little unusual these days from a mainstream product and that will make its users enthusiastic.
I have both. The Kindle is a better device overall, but the I like Kobo's software better.
What I found disappointing was when I had to swap out the screen on the Kobo and found that it was glued and that the battery was soldered. I managed to do fix it, but I don't like things that are unnecessarily hard to fix.
How do you know anything? You can never know for sure if you can trust another person, and this is why people can get schizophrenia.
Asking people to verify that they are honest will never help you. Dishonest people will of course lie to you and say they are honest. While honest people will be insulted by your question and not want to engage with you.
What you can do is verify. Try a Kobo, try a Kindle. Make up your own mind.
Indeed, and it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to do an internet search to get more opinions. If you think everyone is astroTurfing and shilling, then you have to fall back to the good old-fashioned scientific method of trying things out yourself.
It would be great too to bring that information back to HN and share it with us.
I wonder if this is in response to Bookshop.org's DRM free e-book shop. I buy a lot of e-books and have completely switched over because of that feature.
I’m waiting for Bookshop.org to offer an integration with any hardware reader for most of their books. When they do, I’ll switch to whatever that reader is.
Amazon deserves a lot of criticism in the general sense, but this can only be seen as a positive move. Most importantly, if they set an industry standard, others might follow.
Fundamentally, I prefer a physical book to a digital one. But, the primary reason I'd never even entertain a digital book is the lack of ownership. Ownership is incredibly important, and we need to celebrate victories when they happen.
I agree this is a positive step, but this is like notch 1 on a scale of 0 to 100, 0 being maximum abuse of your customer. I think it's downright evil not to allow this for DRM free books, which they have been doing for many years now. It is positive that they reduced the level of evil by a little bit, and I'll give them credit for that, but this movement is so minor in the scope of things that it does not sway me whatsoever to go back to buying from their Kindle store
Oh, as a lawyer, I must insist that you should never do piracy and its wrong, which is why I try to inform people as much about this thing so that they can avoid it.
I could see them buying the rights to popular free or DRM-free books and bringing them into their store, along with all the consequences that would entail.
Not to mention the spying they'll do - Whatcha reading?
Well, it's a step in the right direction. I will never pay for an ebook that I cannot permanently possess. And DRM is pointless. At some point the words become visible and therefore are copyable.
So Gutenberg and the internet archive could monetise click through links or an affiliate program? No disrespect intended, if this meant we could fund them with Amazon pitching in some vig I'd think about it. Mind you, they'd probably make more with direct donation per person, but Amazon could drive many multiples more via the store.
As the author of five books (and my most recent one entirely self-published), I haven't yet worked out how I feel about this or how to respond. My current compromise is to charge more on the DRM-free LeanPub.
Genuine questions here, not rhetorical or trying to imply anything with them.
Why charge more on a DRM free site? Do you think people buying from there are doing so that they can share the book illegally?
If someone wants to share the book illegally, I would imagine they'll just download it from one of the pirate mirrors out there and not bother paying you at all. My guess is you're probably just reducing the number of people willing to pay the price. Classic supply and demand curve against price.
Where possible, I try not to focus on negative motives. Quite simply, if people see a benefit in DRM-free, why not expect them to pay for it? And there are other platforms beside the two I mentioned – it’s not a choice between DRM-free and (for better or for worse) Amazon.
In case your question was not rhetorical: to folks like me, I view DRM as abuse, because it inevitably leads to me paying for something that I won't end up being able to access down the line. It is in direct conflict with building a library. Having the author opt-in to applying DRM to their books (as you have on Amazon and Google Play, for example) and then expected me to pay them extra so I can actually own the thing I paid for makes me take three steps back from the "Buy" button. I tend to just walk out rather than be treated that way. As a result, I've stopped buying Amazon Kindle books entirely (now that I can't strip the DRM). If I'm paying the money, I'm going to demand control, and if I can't get that control, there will be no transaction.
FWIW, LeanPub for your book suggests $25, and the DRM-laden version is $13.50. That's quite the premium!
Another possible compromise might be to use watermarking-based DRM. Amazon doesn't seem to support it, but other e-bookstores do. In any case, thank you for offering the LeanPub option!
Amazon wins by miles, almost to the point of incomparability. For all my issues with Amazon, that’s fine by me: compared to all other platforms, that’s where the reviews and other forms of social proof are.
I like to be able to price shop, but I do want to support the authors. So I use Kobo & Kindle, then buy it wherever it's cheapest usually.
Then I use epubor ultimate to convert to epub and read it on my generic e-ink reader. Some folks object to the licensing or whatever with epubor (unattributed GPL?) but it works, it's easy, and when Amazon tightens up the DRM they always find a way around it eventually.
This is all very interesting news. From a sales standpoint, they're nearly admitting they cannot manage DRM properly and at Amazon scale. From a copyright standpoint, antipiracy will be extremely hard to enforce. The only middle ground is targeting honest buyers, and we all know how well that works. We should not expect this to be a permanent change. Perhaps it will be more of a very short, DRM-free golden age until another Amazon executive comes down and ends this experiment.
Recently signed up for Littler Books for the sole reason they offered everything in epub, pdf and Word doc. Sad this is not the standard for paid content.
I think we should not allow Amazon to control our digital life.
Same with Google etc... just look how bad youtube has gotten. I
try to find a video xyz, using the search term xyz, and after
like 5 results, random videos show up. That is not a "search",
that is propaganda and an attempt to retain people on the
platform - but I am already on the platform playing BACKGROUND
MUSIC of some DJs. Why is Google wasting my time when I want to
FIND something? And what is even worse - that leaked onto the
search engine too. The search engine has been ruined by Google
deliberately so in the last some years.
The current experience of using a Kobo Libre Color, Koreader, any webdav mounted in koreader and pirating everything on annas archive et. al. cannot be beat by any commercial offering. Unsuprisingly my copy of 1984 has never been deleted from my NAS
> pirating everything on annas archive et. al. cannot be beat by any commercial offering
While I understand people pirating movies - there are hundreds of movies I'd happily pay to watch, but which are literally unavailable to me because of some arbitrary 'regional' restriction imposed by the distributors. But I can't think of a single book that isn't available in most parts of the world - certainly they're available wherever a Kobo is for sale.
So how are new books going to be published in the future, if people like you don't pay writers for their work? Would you like your work to be pirated, so you wouldn't be able to even buy another Kobo?
I feel like if the platform is unwilling to give you access to books you posted for, you should be able to download them from arrr without authors or publishers being affected financially - buy first pirate later.
Imagine being so good at writing, that people out there are trying to get a copy of it that they can upload to The Pirate Bay. Hell yeh, I'd love that... seems like reaching the big leagues.
People have been writing for much longer than writing has been a profession. And their work has been published by the means of the day, which pre-Gutenberg in the West meant hand-copying.
It's not immoral in any way to make a living off of your own creations, but - artists gonna art.
Datahoarders with hard drives full of pirated books are not nearly as much of a threat to writers as, say, AI slop making it difficult to market new books. If you pirate a book and read it, the author can still sell you the sequel. Not so much if you don't even know who the author is.
They're still going to take note of what you're reading and possibly brand you as a non-ultra-capitalist disruptor. Amazon can get fucked.
I still buy physical media from them once a year (November) when availabilty and rest of the world can't compete price-wise. Yes I recognise the hypocrisy of said actions and minimise it as much as possible. Non-US based. Many physical media producers (e.g. Disney) no longer produce stuff for our 'region'.
Nobody with sane mind cares. You may buy Kindle, but then you jailbreak it right away. You can "buy" Kindle e-books, but then you exfiltrate these right away. When you stand your ground, what can Amazon allow you or not allow?
Sure, if you don't mind playing a stupid cat and mouse game with one of the largest corporations on the planet, go for it. I did it for a bit and got real tired of the drag.
Now if a book is available from a DRM free source, I buy it. Otherwise something else
Apparently, during a recent review, they decided this counted as fraud and banned my account. As a result, I can no longer log in and lost access to all my Kindle e-books. They also remotely wiped my Kindle, so my entire library is gone. I appealed the decision, but I’ve been waiting for over six months with no resolution.
Edit - I don't mind paying for the service. Maybe charge everyone $99 to file a case to avoid everyone piling on, but it helps resolve most egregious ones, and fee could be refunded at the agency's discretion.
[Edit, because one-word replies are uncivilized: one reason to be suspicious about binding arbitration is that the company against whom you'll be pleading is a repeat customer of that arbitration service. It's a non-transparent / non-public process, so it's hard to have confidence is fair, and over which we (ie, the public) have no influence if it were not.]
They are called courts and they exist.
Of course, companies like to require you to agree to binding arbitration, instead.
In this case, we're overdue for a service that we all pay into, like a collective credit card, that only continues making payments to companies like Amazon if all of the members are happy. When you get banned without due process, payments stop until the matter is resolved.
Also, the collective can bargain-down rates. If it senses price increases beyond inflation, it just sends the adjusted amount, like 95%, until the matter is resolved.
We need this collective bargaining for housing (like tenant unions), the workplace, politics, pharmaceuticals, etc. The scale of this is so large that the collective could exist beyond any specific industry. So that it would operate as a meta economy beside the so-called free market economy (late-stage capitalism) that we operate under today due to the lack of antitrust enforcement.
Groups like the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) are working towards these sorts of goals on a number of fronts:
https://weall.org/
Pirate it to start, and dont pay. You're an 'illegal' either way, with a tort copyright violation OR a criminal DMCA violation.
So the correct advice would be to avoid anyone buying DRM-encumbered digital property - the same as RMS has been making for who knows how long!
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bookshoporg-launche...
Often not in my experience. Abe and B&N.
I believe Baen sells some DRM free sci fi books, but it's a smaller catalog.
I can imagine something like this has happened to almost everyone.
So much for being the world’s most customer-centric company. That mission is dead.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us
> Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. We strive to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, Earth’s best employer, and Earth’s safest place to work.
Those are big words Amazon certainly doesn't earn.
Fast forward a few months, I never received a refund and they claim they have no record any more. I could chargeback my credit card but I imagine I'd also be permanently banned from Amazon - so instead I accept they've just stolen $1000 from me with no recourse...
(if anyone from Amazon is reading this, my email is in my bio!)
But if they just close your account in response to asking for a rightful refund.... Literal thievery
Waiting a few months is not smart because not every delivery service is going to store the delivery status details. I've generally found that after 3 months, data starts disappearing from services and refund options can become technically impossible. Like, on eBay, even if a seller wants to refund you after more than 90 days, they can't. Part of this is for accounting too -- at some point you just have to be able to definitively close the books and say here are the sales we made, that number isn't going down in the future because of potential outstanding returns.
Many people online share similar experiences. Wonder how much money this wide-scale fraud saves them.
I had to call them to get a refund for all the items on all the orders, and even then they had a lot of difficulty figuring out what was happening. Isn't Amazon supposed to be a world leader (maybe after Walmart) in this stuff?
Not sure what you'd do in such a scenario if they tried to fight it
Edit: If anyone knows a way to get them to unlock the account, I'd appreciate it. They won't issue a password reset or anything similar, which seems ridiculous considering they never claimed fraud. Simply that it had been too long since I logged in.
https://stallman.org/amazon.html
I doubt I would re-read many of them, but my partner is still going through some of them (with the family library thing).
I’d be pissed if it got wiped.
I wish the CFAA were used to go after people like whoever at Amazon was responsible for that, instead of people like Aaron Swartz.
Can't you file a suit in a small claims court?
This behavior genuinely earns them more of my business.
Though I highly doubt this alone was the reason for an account ban. Is it possible your credentials were stolen/misused without your knowledge?
> "Amazon.co.uk found that the rate at which refunds were occurring on your account was extraordinary and could not continue."
After looking through my order history, the only refund I could find on this account was the one related to the book I mentioned above. If there was any other activity or misuse, Amazon hasn’t disclosed it to me, which makes it impossible to verify or dispute their conclusion.
Sue them.
What are you using for e-book reading now?
But I suppose when you get to the size of Amazon a million bans becomes a statistic...
Unfortunately, it seems like this will be chosen by the publisher, so of course probably most of the books won't be downloadable at all, and Amazon can now point their finger at the publisher instead of taking the blame themselves. Publishers was probably always the reason behind the move, but at least now Amazon have someone else to blame, which I guess is great for them.
But after they decided the ebooks were actually just license to read, I did exactly the same as you, and now rather than happily buying from them, actively discourage everyone in my social circle from using kindle.
I am not going back, whoever they decide to blame.
They decided that when they launched the Kindle. It's always been that way.
Any interpretation of that transaction as anything but a purchase of a copy is delusional. I couldn't care less what their ToS said about it, any more than I'd care what a sign on the wall of a bookstore said.
Or you can save yourself the bother of removing DRM by buying the book from wherever and then downloading a copy from Anna's.
Also, I reduced the buying pace - owning physical books takes up space, so the bar for getting something into the library is now much higher than before.
Im kinda cheeky and use Amazons Send-to-Kindle service to send ebooks in epub format to my kindle via wifi
This isn't announcing that pdf's and epub's are now available for everything that was drm-free, this is announcing that they will _permit_ pdf's and epub's to be available.
It makes sense not to do this retroactively.
We can understand why they do it this way (they only need the option to exist, and can afford to apply dark patterns to it), but we don't need to excuse Amazon. Especially when they don't give a shit about what we think in the first place.
1. Sell digital things, that costs as same as physical copy
2. Make it so that customer doesn't even own them
3. Profit (No question marks in between)
What a mess. I've mostly stopped Kindle/ebooks but I still have audible which seems like suffering from the same problem.
actually, many kindle books I have from years ago mention they have no drm at the request of the publisher.
...yet were distributed in DRM .azw format
I wonder how many books are actually DRM-free and are going to be affected by this change. I suspect relatively few, but I would be happy to be wrong
Since I couldn't refund, I had to pirate the book as epub/pdf from elsewhere. I decided to never again buy anything from Kobo.
No where legit is DRM free for eBooks from the big publishers. You don't even have to use the Kobo app since they let you download the ACSM file and use it Adobe Digital Editions which could be used on a computer or ADE supported eReader like Pocketbook (or Kobo!). This has been the case since before they were even called Kobo! And if the publisher offers the book DRM free they just give you a DRM-free ePub instead of the ACSM file.
These days, with the Calibre DeACSM and DeDRM plug-ins you don't even need ADE. It's also trivially easy to remove the DRM from the Kobo desktop app or their readers. It's way easier than Amazon and a way better experience with multiple routes to a DRM free file.
Their website didn't guide me towards a callable phone number or give me an actual e-mail address I could write to. Instead I went back and forth between chatbot and docs and webpages, without success. It is obvious to me, that they want as little actual human in the loop as possible. Real shitty experience, while my money is already gone and I am trying to get it back. Easier to give up and just download an acceptable version elsewhere. Not going through all that hassle to use their platform, which doesn't value me as a customer anyway.
Even if I wanted to join, Kindle Unlimited is not offered here. I can't even buy the eBook from Amazon.
Fool me once..
The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad. You should explore all of the above a lot more, and much more besides.
"being made available DRM-free on Amazon" (and I'd narrow that down to "primarily/only on Amazon")
Of course public domain books are DRM free but I'm getting those from Gutenberg, not Amazon. Likewise, the copyleft books I'll most likely download from their own homepages, not Amazon.
I'm aware that DRM free media exists, including for currently copyrighted content that Amazon distributes ;)
I think it’s sad that what we thought everyone saw as a nonsense is now so normalised that alternatives are just disappearing from view. Everyone should be encouraged to explore.
Piracy is your preferred option, but when that became more mainstream we actually ended up creating the market for more DRM, in the form of iTunes, Spotify and others. I’m not sure I want the future of digital media to be entirely subscription-based like that.
What might be a better solution is showing that media creators can achieve more of their own objectives through releasing media without DRM. This only works if their objectives are not entirely around making money from media sales, and more aligned to influence, or audience building.
I’m actually surprised at this point that musicians - given they don’t make money from streaming services and see them as tools to build audiences for live tours where they really make their money - don’t just jump over already.
Look I’m not saying “pirate everything and never pay the artists” - I’m saying “never pay the predatory tech companies that have inserted themselves between us and artists”
...and then they get re-packaged with DRM on Amazon's store, mostly because people uploading public domain books on Amazon have no idea what they're doing.
> Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.
You can read DRM-free stuff on a Kindle already, so that's not particularly relevant here.
> The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad.
When every big publisher is doing it, it is the norm. That doesn't mean there doesn't exist any book publisher which doesn't do this, but the vast, vast majority of the books actually sold today contain DRM. We don't have to like that norm, but pretending it isn't one is just denying reality.
While lots public domain books are on Amazon's store, most of those books are not free, both in the sense of "free or charge" and "DRM free". A lot of literature classic are released by a major publishing house with foreword and annotations, which to be fair, are copyrighted works and provide value. And they cost a bit of money. The "real" public domain versions provide by Amazon are barebone. Those versions are often good enough for many people, but you don't need to get them from Amazon in the first place.
In other words, public domain or not does not have much to do with DRM-free or even Amazon.
I saw the writing on the wall and downloaded my books from Amazon a few months before their announcement. Out of around 1000 books I had 300ish that were DRM free.
The publisher/author will have to go through a process to have their books be downloadable again.
It looks like distribution in the UK, Australia and New Zealand (only?) is from the imprint Gollancz, who has decided to go with DRM versions.
Of course if they really believed in the concept they would publish their own works DRM-free, but that would conflict with the business model of the publishing arm.
In practice, the biggest store that doesn't have a DRM-free option is Audible... which has a near-monopoly on audiobooks. So Cory Doctorow has to do crowdfunding campaigns for all his audiobooks. Of course, that doesn't stop his books from getting illegally reposted to Audible anyway, and Amazon doesn't care about enforcing rights they can't have. Which led to him actually publishing this gem on Audible: https://www.amazon.com/Why-None-Books-Available-Audible/dp/B...
"Download options: EPUB 3 (Adobe DRM)": https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/enshittification-4
Kobo does sell some other books DRM-free, so perhaps this is some sort of error. You can buy it directly from the publisher without Adobe DRM, there it has a watermark instead.
Example: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gardens-of-the-moon
They've been doing this for YEARS before Amazon.
It's fine if it fits your need, but will be far from a good alternative in most regions.
For this feature alone, I'd never go back to Kindle. Sure, I might be able to replicate it with jailbreaking + KOReader. But the Kobo worked this way out of the box.
Because Amazon were increasingly locking-down their systems - and also because they are all-round shits - I decided to abandon the ecosystem having been a customer since the days they only sold books.
I have owned two Paperwhites, two Oasis devices, and a Kindle Scribe. I sold all of them last year and bought a Kobo Libra Colour.
I get WAY more joy from reading on the Kobo. I love buying books from the Kobo store (yes I know they also have DRM) - and I'm buying and reading WAY more on the Kobo than I was at the end of my time with Amazon.
Every time I buy yet another book on the Kobo Store I feel the thrill of sticking it to the horrible, anti-user shits at Amazon.
I have a Kobo Clara BW. It's still a great machine, but the Kindle is definitely superior for feel and visuals, but I use the Kobo 95% of the time. They are way more open with the software and I have mine in "sideload" mode (an official setting), which really just means that it doesn't make me log into anything and it doesn't even attempt to connect to the internet. Also, I can purchase a DRM free ebook on the train, plug a USB cable into my phone and my Kobo, and then load it on like that. Now I own my digital book, have supported the author with a larger margin, and get to read it on my more private machine.
Definitely not a no-brainer for everyone, but I'm happy with my Kobo.
Kobo feels like something I actually own. More so than Kindle or even my iDevices. That's a little unusual these days from a mainstream product and that will make its users enthusiastic.
What I found disappointing was when I had to swap out the screen on the Kobo and found that it was glued and that the battery was soldered. I managed to do fix it, but I don't like things that are unnecessarily hard to fix.
Asking people to verify that they are honest will never help you. Dishonest people will of course lie to you and say they are honest. While honest people will be insulted by your question and not want to engage with you.
What you can do is verify. Try a Kobo, try a Kindle. Make up your own mind.
It would be great too to bring that information back to HN and share it with us.
I picked a random book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/hemlock-silver-t-kingfisher/022...
It's DRM Free, and available as an ePub. Other than Kindle, what device does not accept ePub?
https://support.libro.fm/support/solutions/articles/48000695...
I don't let those laws (corporate opinions) degrade my quality of life.
The internet "allows" ePub and PDF downloads for ALL books. Adjust yourselves accordingly.
Fundamentally, I prefer a physical book to a digital one. But, the primary reason I'd never even entertain a digital book is the lack of ownership. Ownership is incredibly important, and we need to celebrate victories when they happen.
Genuine question.
What's to "celebrate?" This is like "celebrating" a ketchup company removing the rat hairs.
:)
Not to mention the spying they'll do - Whatcha reading?
Why charge more on a DRM free site? Do you think people buying from there are doing so that they can share the book illegally?
If someone wants to share the book illegally, I would imagine they'll just download it from one of the pirate mirrors out there and not bother paying you at all. My guess is you're probably just reducing the number of people willing to pay the price. Classic supply and demand curve against price.
FWIW, LeanPub for your book suggests $25, and the DRM-laden version is $13.50. That's quite the premium!
Then I use epubor ultimate to convert to epub and read it on my generic e-ink reader. Some folks object to the licensing or whatever with epubor (unattributed GPL?) but it works, it's easy, and when Amazon tightens up the DRM they always find a way around it eventually.
You'll see something like the following on the bottom of book details:
> At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3CB76TV
These days I don’t buy from them but the same with Kobo which is a better company to begin with.
I still use a Kindle eReader (an Oasis) but I now buy books from Kobo because those are easy to strip DRM from.
I do backups but better be safe than sorry.
Same with Google etc... just look how bad youtube has gotten. I try to find a video xyz, using the search term xyz, and after like 5 results, random videos show up. That is not a "search", that is propaganda and an attempt to retain people on the platform - but I am already on the platform playing BACKGROUND MUSIC of some DJs. Why is Google wasting my time when I want to FIND something? And what is even worse - that leaked onto the search engine too. The search engine has been ruined by Google deliberately so in the last some years.
So the real question is - how is amazon going to enshitify drm-free books? Are they trying to wipe out gutenburg, standard-ebooks, etc?
Are they trying to be the youtube of drm-free? The place where everyone goes, and that becomes crap due updating Ts&Cs - inserting ads or charges?
DRM-free is a precondition for me buying digital books personally. Practically no major digital bookstore offers it.
While I understand people pirating movies - there are hundreds of movies I'd happily pay to watch, but which are literally unavailable to me because of some arbitrary 'regional' restriction imposed by the distributors. But I can't think of a single book that isn't available in most parts of the world - certainly they're available wherever a Kobo is for sale.
So how are new books going to be published in the future, if people like you don't pay writers for their work? Would you like your work to be pirated, so you wouldn't be able to even buy another Kobo?
Imagine being so good at writing, that people out there are trying to get a copy of it that they can upload to The Pirate Bay. Hell yeh, I'd love that... seems like reaching the big leagues.
It's not immoral in any way to make a living off of your own creations, but - artists gonna art.
I still buy physical media from them once a year (November) when availabilty and rest of the world can't compete price-wise. Yes I recognise the hypocrisy of said actions and minimise it as much as possible. Non-US based. Many physical media producers (e.g. Disney) no longer produce stuff for our 'region'.
Now if a book is available from a DRM free source, I buy it. Otherwise something else
Only tech-savvy people who are morally OK with pirating and jailbreaking are "sane"?
Like you mean, when people from what you call "flyover states" demonized cities so much, that they are ok sending armies into them?
Lets be real, the overwhelming majority if derision and toxicity flows the other way.