The Wi-Fi broke on my Kindle Paperwhite years ago, and I have only one micro-B cable left that will connect to it.
Amazon is to stop supporting older Kindle models leaving longtime ebook fans unable to access new content from the Kindle store.
Devices released during or before 2012 will no longer receive updates from 20 May, affecting owners of older Kindles, including the earliest models such as the Touch and some Fire tablets. It is thought that 2m e-readers could be affected.
Users will still be able to read ebooks they have downloaded, and their accounts and their Kindle library will remain accessible on mobile and desktop apps. Active users have been offered discounts to help “transition to newer devices”. Amazon said performing a factory reset on affected Kindles would make them unusable.
Disappointed users have vented their frustration online, including in comments on The Verge, accusing Amazon of “causing waste at a large scale” and saying their devices would be reduced to a paperweight despite still working.
One wonders whether these old devices just don’t have enough telemetry built in for Amazon’s liking.
I think it’s likely more about DRM.
Old Kindles are incompatible with Amazon’s .kfx format ebooks and newer, stronger DRM. With an old Kindle, it was trivially easy to rip Kindle books to retail-quality epubs.
With these devices ceasing to work with Kindle books starting next month, that loophole closes.
Also, old Kindles will continue to work with already-downloaded Kindle books and DRM-free books, but new files can only be added by USB cable, not using Amazon’s services.
The newer DRM also has working exploits, but it’s not nearly as easy, and they’ve indirectly hinted that one of the remaining methods may be closing soon. But, fundamentally, static media DRM (books, music, movies) is inherently beatable; the full content gets displayed to the user, so it can be intercepted and ripped. Worst case, someone will make a screen-capture app that uses perfect OCR to recreate the book. That’s already a solved problem, basically, it’s just horribly inefficient.
So Amazon will continue to play whack-a-mole, turning millions of devices into e-waste, without even causing a blip for book pirates and those needing format shifting for accessibility.
Heh, yes. The encryption key for their old DRM was derivated from the Kindle’s serial number. Wanted to crack your library? Go to the webpage, download them all there (yes, that’s now blocked, too) open them all in calibre and use a plugin to deactivate the DRM (trivially to find back then). Enter your serial number and you’ve freed your whole library.
Ebooks are to me like music and movies/TV shows. I pirate first, and if I like it, I go back and pay. But the critical thing to remember is that discovery is the gateway. They want to act like it’s the '90s, and you have to pay $20 for a CD to find out if anything but the one track played on the radio was any good.
Must suck that people know how to try something on for size before making a purchase. That used to be common at things called “shopping malls.”
Just as a folo, consider the difference between fast food and a full-service restaurant. People will head to Taco Bell for a known quantity and pay before the food is served. In a restaurant setting, being expected to pay before your meal arrives will make customers leave.
Amazon (and other companies) want you to think of entertainment like going to a movie, where you could waste $30 on a shitty production. I don’t care to do that at home.