Anyone who takes them up on their offer to buy a new Kindle should check themselves in for a mental health screening.
They just told all of their customers that you cannot trust a device you buy from them will continue to work in the future. So buy one from a different manufacturer and hope they aren’t as evil
I get that it may be expensive to perpetually support old devices but there is surely a middle ground between supporting them and bricking them.
Even if you have a large library on kindle I hope you have the ‘calibre’ to move devices.
I used to have a kindle and it would periodically lock up and I’d have to do a hard reset and then re-download all my books. It was extremely frustrating. I finally got tired of it and ditched ti for a Kobo Clara. Whats nice about the Kobo is that it doesn’t have all the janky DRM bullshit, and it just works. You can load up books or pdfs from any source. So much happier now!
Back in about 2010-ish? One of the first “amazon deletes your book remotely” events happened. They removed a Kindle version of 1984 from people’s readers.
I don’t know how much irony fits into an irony singularity, but Amazon is trying to make the most irony ever.
I mean to be fair I’ve had three Kindles now and am someone who uses old Fairphones and repairs them, and none of my Kindles gotten close to surviving long enough to potentially run into this problem of them no longer supporting it.
Which… is the actual reason one should not get a Kindle, tbh. They’re fragile as fuck.
Users are fucking dumb. They’ll buy new ones and throw the usual “what else could I do?” bullshit, further encouraging companies to do this shit and ruin tech for everybody.
I suspect the real reason is those older Kindles allowed to remove the DRM from any media loaded onto them via Amazon. Because the decryption key is the serial number written on the back of the device.
If those devices are not supported anymore, they don’t need to issue these easily breakable DRM protected ebooks anymore.
My apology if someone else wrote this before, or it’s been mentioned somewhere already. Didn’t read everything so far.
Interesting, I didn’t know that!
I understand not being able to support newer eBook formats or certain content on older devices; standards change, as do the capabilities of devices (resolution, storage, etc.) and that makes sense. But unless I’m missing something major, there shouldn’t be any issue with them allowing users to keep accessing their account and purchase already-compatible eBooks for these older devices. Basically bricking it if you de-register or factory reset is absurd.
Amazon eBook formats have DRM that encrypts it to you and your Kindle’s unique device ID and they can just stop reissuing, or revoke the decryption keys. They make it extraordinarily difficult to export/download them in a DRM-free format that would otherwise be unaffected.
They can deny access, sure, but they should allow access to something you’ve already paid for (both the Kindle and the ebook).
Or at the very least pay it back.
I suspect they’re ending support for some older format these devices need on their server-system, since it’s been a few years.
But sadly no technical details given.
Jailbroke my old Kindle, and disabled updates. It’s way better now. With the custom reader, I can just connect it straight to Calibre and copy books over via WiFi with no bother. Disabled ads and have custom screensavers too.
If anyone has an old Kindle, and is upset about this, I’d suggest to have a look to see if yours can be jailbroken.
How old does the kindle need to be?
According to this page, you can jailbreak Kindles going all the way back to the first generation. The older you go the less features may be available to you, however definitely have a look at your model number there.\
There seems to be a firmware version that is incompatible, however that page should provide some more information about it.
Thanks!
As Reg readers know, nothing in tech lasts forever
lol. I’m using a 2016 Samsung Galaxy Tab as my e-reader. I fully expect the pirated epub files I use on it to be readable until I am dead. It is never connected to the Internet, never updated, never anything except a USB connection to move over more books.
For context if it matters: I have purchased every book on it in physical form. I download epubs of these books so I can carry my library with me anywhere I go and I feel no guilt about this whatsoever - largely because of BULLSHIT like this article.
Can’t have been that devoted if they were still on those old devices instead of buying the newest one every 1~2 years, can they now?! <-- Amazon C-suites
If I break somebody’s property, I’m on the hook.
How come if Amazon breaks my property, they’re not on the hook? They should be sending new devices out to all the people they fucked over.
