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Comment by tspiteri | Hacker News Reader

As I see it, Amazon does have an interest in users not jailbreaking or bricking devices. They sell the devices at around cost to sell content. If a user jailbreaks a device, Amazon loses the tight control on where the content comes from, and if a user bricks a device, Amazon sells no content for that device at all.

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In what way have they tight control over the content? You can load whatever you want over usb or wlan on the device.

Have you ever used a Kindle? You can put any book on it that is either PDF, mobi and a few other formats.

Yes, I do use a Kindle. All content I read on it was from Amazon. I know I can get content from somewhere else, but it will never be as convenient as getting it from Amazon.

It's almost as convenient. You just have to download the file, and email it at your @(free.)kindle.com address. No cables, no big and heavy Java app to do file conversion, nothing.

You or others may be interested in the "Magic Catalog" for Project Gutenberg. It's basically an ebook that you put onto your kindle that is a catalog of all the books on Project Gutenberg. You select any that you want and it automagically grabs them for you.

After the initial effort investment (not that hard, since you can download it with the kindle's browser), I would say it's actually easier.

Thank you. That is indeed a nice way to get Project Gutenberg books.

Erm. I have a Kindle DX, and if I download a PDF or Mobi, I can copy and paste it into the Kindle when it's connected.

It's only a few more seconds than an Amazon buy.

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