I suspect most people that go this route (ie download and manage their own ebooks, then transfer them to their Kindle) use Calibre, which afaik, is unaffected by this change.
A year ago, I bought an ebook via Amazon. When I received it, I was so shocked by the bad quality (e.g., low-res graphics like 300px) that I returned it and bought the same book on the publisher's website. Even though it cost exactly the same, it was like a completely different book, with mixed vector and pixel graphics that made sense and even without any noticeable DRM.
That day, I decided to stop buying ebooks at Amazon. So, who cares if they shut down the download feature? You still have a week to download everything you need, and then you better buy at shops that value their customers' wishes.
Does a jail broken Kindle allow me to remove the DRM from Kindle ebooks downloaded to it?
(I genuinely don't know. Until now, I've always downloaded Kindle purchases via ”Download and transfer via USB”, then stripped the DRM and transferred to the device with Calibre.)
It would allow another source to downloading them from the Amazon website (as that is going away) on to a PC where stripping software can (in some cases) be applied.
It also might (but might not) be a way for decryption keys to be extracted from devices for that purpose, but it doesn't automatically provide such an exploit.
> It would allow another source to downloading them from the Amazon website (as that is going away) on to a PC where stripping software can (in some cases) be applied.
Right.
I wonder how hard it is, or would be, to simply emulate whatever alternative channel the Kindle devices use to download Kindle ebooks from Amazon's servers.
Until now, there hasn't been much motivation to do so, since the "download and transfer via USB" in option existed. But now there obviously will be.
Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th - 299 Points | 173 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43070155
Amazon ends kindle ebooks "Download and Transfer via USB" - 121 Points | 94 Comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43041726