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Comment by romwell | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but with Kindle at least you can strip the DRM of your eBooks.

There's a Calibre plugin[1] that does it.

If you really care about ebooks that you purchase, I highly recommend installing this plugin. It automatically strips DRM off books you download and open with Calibre.

And keep a back-up of the (DRM-free) books somewhere that's not Amazon / a cloud. Because a cloud is simply a computer that you do not own.

[1]http://www.geoffstratton.com/remove-drm-amazon-kindle-books

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The last time I tried actually doing this, it was a huge pain in the ass: https://www.sonyaellenmann.com/2018/09/back-up-kindle-files-...

I have a Kindle; it took me about five minutes to follow the instructions once, and it was automatic after that.

Note how this is in most jurisdictions illegal. You are now pirating, except you paid for it.

If by "most jurisdictions" you mean pretty much just US, then sure.

Is it really illegal? At least in the US cracking DRM for personal backup is not infringing AFAIK.

https://gizmodo.com/its-perfectly-legal-to-tell-people-how-t...

This is what makes ROMs for games for game consoles fully legal assuming you ripped them from physical copies. Not sure how anyone would prove you didnt generate the copy yourself.

Um, citation needed for that claim.

Well, but that's like saying that you can download cracks for video games, so it's all fine. There are ways to make steam games work without steam, yet I wouldn't consider that to be a solution.

I sorta used to do this so I wouldnt need to pop in a CD just to play some games cause the CDs were getting really scratched up as things were.

Or take this actual example: you buy a CD with a game, install it, and it doesn't run :( You go to the forums and there is a crack which also apparently fixes some crashes? You download and apply it, and lo, the game runs :)

In fact, I believe in some jurisdictions it's actually legal: since you bought it, you're allowed file and sandpaper it to make it actually work.

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