Amazon made waves last week when die-hard Kindle fans discovered thatthe company was removing a toolthat let you download Kindle books you already own to your PC. The feature, called “Download & Transfer via USB” lets you choose theKindleyou plan on transferring a book to, downloads the ebook file to your PC, and then connect your Kindle to transfer it.
The feature primarily exists to let you add new books to Kindles that can no longer connect to Amazon’s defunct Whispernet network and don’t have the hardware to connect to Wi-Fi, but it’s also the first step anyone trying to remove the DRM from their Kindle books takes to convert them into a file format that can be read on other e-readers. Cracking down on a form of piracy rather than just ending support for older Kindles seems like the real reason Amazon is making this change.
A new Kindle might just be the reading slump cure I’ve been needing
Call it being overly optimistic about getting back into reading.
While also sunsetting an older class of Kindle
When Amazon first released the Kindle in 2007, Wi-Fi networks were not nearly as abundant, free, or fast as they are now. The company wanted to provide a way to make downloading new books as easy as possible, regardless of where you were, so it included cellular connectivity through a feature called “Whispernet.” Kindles with Whispernet could access the Kindle Store regardless of where they were – if you could get a 3G signal, you could download a book.
Amazon would eventually give Kindles the ability to connect to Wi-Fi networks,making 3G connectivity a premium feature. And with thefifth-generation Kindle Paperwhite, Amazon gave up on the feature completely, focusing exclusively on downloading books from a home network or your local coffee shop. The generation of Kindles that can’t connect to Wi-Fi or Whispernet needed a way to get new books, so Amazon offered Download and Transfer via USB as a solution. Around 2015, modern Kindles switched to a new proprietary file format for ebookscalled KFX, but ebooks you get from Download & Transfer via USB come in the older AZW3 file type. AZW3 files can not only be read by older Kindles, they’re also much easier to convert into a DRM-free ebook.
KFX files added support for things like better font rendering and more layout options on top of stronger DRM.
Piracy isn’t legal, but the desire to have a DRM-free ebook is not unreasonable. You paid for the book, even if you technically paid less than you would for a hardcover. It makes a certain amount of sense that you should be able to read it wherever you want. Amazon, which is in the business of selling books and things to read books on, clearly disagrees. Kindle users have until February 26 to use Download & Transfer via USB, according to a warning above the feature on Amazon’s website, giving you about a week to make your peace with the change.
It’s rare to truly own something digital
And it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change anytime soon
Books aren’t the only digital product where you’ll find this problem. It applies in the same way to games, movies, and TV shows, too. Everything is licensed unless you have a physical copy, and even then, if it’s a video game, you might not have a final or complete version. There are reasons outside of piracy to want to hold on to copies of your Kindle books, like preventing Amazon from removing a book from its service or changing its cover after the fact, but it seems pretty clear the company is focused on stopping what it views as piracy above all else.
If you’re looking to get more control over your Kindle, Pocket-lint has guides onhow to jailbreak it, and an article looking atthe cheapest ways to get ebooks. You might not own anything you read, but you can at least have more of a say in what you read and how you read it.
