I came to the same realization about my audiobooks through audible, so I've archived my audible account and now they can't take my books :D
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
606 points (98.4% liked)
You Should Know
33408 readers
1665 users here now
YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.
All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.
Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:
**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities:
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
Credits
Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Damn right I don't.
Yarrrrrrr
Don't do that. Authors make next to nothing from their books. You don't have to support Amazon, but at least buy a paper copy or audiobook to support the author.
Unless it's J. K. Rowling. Fuck Rowling.
load more comments
(12 replies)
My Kindle never saw any WiFi connected to it. Everything goes through Calibre. I only read dead authors, so I don't feel bad about pirating my books.
Sometimes I go buy used books at my local bookshops just because you should support your local bookshop.
YSK, finding and installing mobi files are easy. Also, keeping your Kindle in airplane mode prevents ads. Fuck Amazon. Calibre is a great open source piece of software.
I'm glad you mentioned airplane mode. I noticed something interesting about my Kindle after I set up a Pi Hole on my home network. The kindle would constantly try to connect to the Amazon mothership. Because the Pi Hole was blocking it, it would try it over and over again and this quickly depleted the batteries (maybe trying to boost it's WiFi signal? I'm not sure). Putting it into Airplane mode helps preserve battery life noticeably, back to what it was before I installed the Pi Hole.
load more comments
(1 replies)
same goes for steam, epic launcher, etc. with the exception of gog (though generally if steam removes a game, they at least let you keep your copy if you already own it)
GoG, and physical games are only licenses as well. If you have any physical games from the era of instruction manuals you can find it laid out clearly inside, generally towards the end.
But GoG's offline installers and physical games can't be taken from you by the publisher etc (servers for online games and updates aside).
Neither can installed copies of games if you write protect the files, back them up where the launcher can't get to them, etc. Licensing, DRM, and legality really aren't the defining factors here. There are shades of better or worse, but at the end of the day it's about simply being able to back up the media in a form that can't be touched by the corporations.
Unless you download the pdf/epub off a very legal website. And only buy the books of small authors you want to support.
There have also been cases where a customer violated Amazon's terms of service and lost access to all of their Kindle e-books
Imagine where corpo can take your property because you did something they did not like....
Now open your eyes, peasants.
Imagine where corpo can take your property
Brave to assume that just because you paid money for something you own it.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Everyone should generally assume that unless you have something tangibly in your hand, you either do not own it or you may very easily and/or suddenly lose access to it. You could test this by trying to access the content without having to sign in to something.
All these streaming and subscription services should be considered ease of access conveniences. In other industries, you pay a premium for something to be prepared for you to consume. In the subscription industry, you're paying less because you're not paying for the content but for a license to temporarily consume the content (and probably because your info is being sold to advertisers).
Fun Fact: If you were to rip a Bluray to your computer, you're legally not permitted to watch that movie if you're no longer in possession of the disc. This is because you're not purchasing the content of the disc but the license to view the content. Decrypting DRM is illegal not based on whether you own the content but because the DRM encryption itself is separately copyright protected.
Fun Fact: If you were to rip a Bluray to your computer, you're legally not permitted to watch that movie if you're no longer in possession of the disc.
Not sure why you think this.
You can legally rip a Bluray for backup purposes. If you sell or give away the Bluray, you have to delete the backed up copy. If it’s lost, stolen, or unintentionally damaged, you do not.
However, you cannot bypass the DRM to watch it or when you’re creating the backup. This is true regardless of whether you still possess the physical disc.
Decrypting DRM is illegal not based on whether you own the content but because the DRM encryption itself is separately copyright protected.
Bypassing DRM is illegal because the DMCA explicitly prohibits the circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works, and there isn’t an exemption for personal use, personal backups, or fair use in general.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Finally got around to backing up my over 200 audiobooks in a DRM-free format after this post reminded me it was on my to-do list. Libation is pretty damn good.
I have a few kindles, have upgraded over the years and have been able to use them all in the same manner:
With a new device I connect it to the internet and update the firmware to the latest version (the factory installed version has had a lot of missing functionality in my experience). Then I block it from my network, delete the AP entry and put it permanently into airplane mode.
When purchasing an ebook from Amazon you can download it for usb transfer and I organize it on my laptop with Calibre.
Calibre can also strip drm, but if you’re transferring it to the device you downloaded it for it isn’t necessary.
Amazon may at some point in the future change all of this, but the content I have already downloaded can not be revoked and is usable outside the Amazon ecosystem if the drm is removed.
load more comments
(3 replies)
If someone want an alternative there is ebooks.com. The two titles I got from there were way cheeper than on the store linked to my device. No nonsense app or anything, just download the file from the store and do what you want with it.
You misspelled Library Genesis.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I looked in to the whole DRM removal thing. From what I could tell, everything was majorly out of date, required a really old version of Calibre, and didn't work with newer books.
Edit: So, this is out of date info. There's a fork and it works with a fairly recent version of the PC app. Basically no fuss.
The DeDrm plugin and the most recent Calibre worked for me just yesterday on a brand new book. Something that's easy to miss is that you need to put in the serial number of your kindle device and make sure you download the e-book for that same device. Otherwise the plugin won't be able to decrypt it.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Not an American, but I did buy digital books on Amazon and Kindle.
Have you seen the new ruling about games from California? Doest that apply to ebooks (since its digital goods?) Or not?
So Kobo is the way to go then?
I'm really asking, my daughter is becoming a big book worm and we have missed out on some great sales because she only reads physical books ATM. I want her to give it a try with an e-ready and did not like Amazon for it.
Kobo has direct access to your public library too through Overdrive. Makes borrowing ebooks super easy!
load more comments
(3 replies)