Combined with the announcement that they're killing the old Kindles as well...this is 100% about preventing people from liberating DRM from their books. Full stop. They are closing each and every remaining hole.
I now buy from authors directly or I go to my friend Anna. Too bad because the prices were reasonable.
I could probably go on a similar rant with Audible too, but that is different story. In short, Amazon has way too much influence over the entire publishing industry.
The more locked down kindle mobile apps and kindle e-readers make it more difficult, but stripping the drm will always be possible.
Also, AI chatbots outright refuse to give any answer that is remote related to piracy (or any adjacent topics). Since they take over the role of search engines, that's also a big factor IMO.
So I'd assume libgen and Anna's Archive will continue on, operating just as normal.
I wonder how much this is about making it difficult for people to migrate to another platform. I recently switched to Kobo and the reader is far superior to Kindle. I had a hell of a time moving my library though.
It feels like the last major media industry that is holding out against a "future" that has been here for a long time already.
I think it's a generational thing, for a lot of publishers the internet is this newfangled thing
A vanishingly small % of would-be ebook buyers even know pirated ones exist, and an even smaller one knows how to get those onto their Kindle.
My wife buys dozens of ebooks per year on Amazon, her friends too. I'm guessing if I poll that group, none of them would even know where to start, nor care to.
I used to pay for Netflix but now that there's so many different streaming services I have returned to the high seas because we just don't watch enough shows (maybe 3-5 shows a year?), yet they are spread across different services that all cost $20/month now, so the costs don't make sense for us.
For books, honestly, I refuse to accept that an EPUB costs $25 when the hardcover version costs $30. I also have heard first-hand how little of that $25 goes to the author (for the average author, not for a famous one)..
I do try to buy digital books directly from authors when I can, which is increasingly an option from upcoming writers, but otherwise, yarrrr...
As for e-books, long story short, my low-tech chop-and-punch method tended to be cheaper and/or more convenient than the available legal e-book options at the time.
I considered scanning, and even had access to a sheet-fed duplex scanner, but given that the only mobile device I had at the time, a 17" PowerBook G4, was both awkward as an e-book reader and heavier than the unbound printed pages I was carrying around, it wasn't worth the hassle.
Of course what happened is that lots of people just started to import English paperbacks bypassing all the local laws. The price difference was just insane.
Dutch people in general do not have an overinflated view of their own language like in France.
Edit: downvoters, would you like to answer my question? I would genuinely like to know. I thought based on the confidence of the comment above there must be a super accurate OCR I've never heard of, but after seeing the sibling comment I'm going to guess there isn't.
And OCR is generally just not accurate enough and still makes very visible mistakes throughout the text.
Have you read many OCR'd ebooks? I have, and every single one was massively inferior. Most I would consider barely readable.
Wait, what? What's the scope, and when does it happen?
"Dear Customer,
Thank you for being a longtime Kindle customer. We're glad our devices have served you well for as long as they have. Starting May 20, 2026 — 14 to 18 years after their initial launches — we are discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier. Here's what this means for you:
You can continue to read books already downloaded on these devices, but you will not be able to purchase, borrow, or download additional books on them after that date. If you deregister or factory reset these devices, you will not be able to re-register or use these devices in any way.
Affected devices include Kindle 1st and 2nd Generation, Kindle DX and DX Graphite, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5, and Kindle Paperwhite 1st Generation.
To minimize any disruption, we're offering a promotional code for 20% off select new Kindle devices B4PT5XAJ74 as well as a $20 eBook credit that will be automatically added to your account after purchasing a new device (valid through June 20th, 2026, 11:59pm PST - Terms and Conditions apply). Our newer Kindle devices bring meaningful improvements in screen quality, performance and accessibility — and you'll have access to your complete Kindle library and the Kindle Store. You can also continue to read all your books on our free Kindle apps (Android, iOS, Mac, and PC) and Kindle for Web.
If you have any questions or require assistance, please visit https://www.amazon.com/help/kindle/devicedeprecation.
Sincerely, The Kindle Team"
My jailbroken Kindle has been sitting in a drawer for a while, but I do go into phases where I am using it heavily for months at a time. But, what I'm really getting at is, I don't find myself having to undertake the procedure to root a Kindle on a regular basis.
Could someone clarify for me -- if I nab another secondhand device from eBay after May 20, will I be able to jailbreak it?
When I bought mine, it was updated to the latest firmware. I wanted to jailbreak mine, the method was “there isn’t one yet” so I set it in airplane mode. For a bit I manually copied all books over usb to the kindle, or disabled airplane mode to read new books if there wasn’t a new firmware version out yet anyway. A few months later, there was a jailbreak method. Now ive jailbroken. I can even connect it to the internet, and auto updates are prevented.
If the kindle is old enough it doesn’t recieve updates anyway though, then it should be very easy.
Personally i would not buy a kindle with the intent to jailbreak it, just buy a kobo.
The exception being if you want a scribe. There is no other 10” 300dpi ereader. I bought mine from an eBay seller who had one on the correct version and jailbreaking it was a bit anxiety inducing, given the cost and the fact I had no use for it if it were unsuccessful.
In any case, Oasis firmware seems to already be capped and isn't among the models being sunset anyway, should I decide to try it out.
The biggest downside was not having a frontlit display.
I recently switch to an xteink x4, and found that several others in that community migrated from kindle 4s as well. So there are still some number of users in the world that value the device.
I'm actually surprised that Amazon didn't offer to do a buyback of them.
Will I be able to load books via USB? Or there is some new DRM the kindle won’t be able to decrypt?
As long as I can still keep loading books on it over USB, and it's just their DRM ecosystem that will stop working, that's fine with me.
But if they are aggressively bricking the units, if I accidentally turn on wifi by accident and it just completely stops working, I will be extremely pissed.
what is on the kindle will stay and keep working.
if you reset the kindle, DRMed content won't work anymore.
That does minimize the disruption for me. In fact I will never buy a new kindle nor buy an ebook from amazon ever again.
I think the more plausible and likely explanations are:
1. Kindles take a beating when people actually use them instead of putting them in a drawer. Not many older kindles are still in circulation that are old + used. How good is a 14 year old lithium battery at best doing?
2. Added to the above, how is a 14 year old CPU doing when trying to support modern features and eBooks that now have metadata that did not exist at the time, such as fancier typesetting and color?
3. As for the Windows app, it's terrible. Horrible. Awful. Nobody liked it. Nobody uses it. It will not be missed.
I used that research to build something similar. It only works for manga and comics right now, but I have been tinkering with implementing glyph support as well to be able to handle full books.
https://github.com/Alexia/kandle-downloader
The original research is here, but the web site is down right now. https://blog.pixelmelt.dev/kindle-web-drm/
Any idea why your script does not seem to flag as a valid greasemonkey script when I try to use it in the Falkon (KDE) browser? Even if I attempt to add it manually, the script then disappears from my gm scripts.
Issues and PRs are available to open.(I just have not gotten any yet.)
> Any idea why your script does not seem to flag as a valid greasemonkey script when I try to use it in the Falkon (KDE) browser?
Honestly, no idea. I have only tested it with Tampermonkey on Firefox. Manually installing it should still work.
All of these discontinued devices support the AWZ4-format (which can be de-drmed and what im guessing this whole thing is about), but the newer ones use KFX which locks you perfectly into the Amazon and Kindle-ecosystem
This is a really unfortunate move by Amazon. My next e-reader will be one that I own (instead of just rent).
Glad that I took the time to jailbreak and pause updates on my 2017 kindle paperwhite while I could.
Also hearing good things about XTEINK X4.
I really appreciate that the company that makes the device has embraced the community firmware scene and even links directly to them from their website as a semi-blessed alternative to their official one.
Their main advantage is providing access to all e-reading apps available on the Google Play Store, including Amazon's own Kindle app, as well as sideloaded ones such as KOReader.
On the downside, the battery life on those isn't as good as that of dedicated Kindles, Kobos, or other lightweight e-readers, but they still hold a charge for four or five days if one turns off their antennas, which is plenty of time to recharge them.
As for the ebooks themselves, I switched to purchasing from Kobo and other ebook stores. Some sell DRM-less ePubs, which is nice, while those that come with DRM can be easily liberated. And for the occasional Kindle-exclusive that is struck with (temporarily) unbreakable DRM, the Kindle app, although annoying, works well enough.
I do miss physical buttons a little, but that’s minor gripe.
I struggled with reviews when buying as I do love having a local library and the ease/difficulty of setting this up is never in device reviews.
I'll never own a kindle again. Does anyone know which platforms work with Calibre De-DRM? Or do we need to build a screen cap tool for transforming books to an open format?
Well, I happen to use it everyday. I honestly don't know what exactly is "terrible/horrible/awful" about it. I'm neutral about its UX - neither memorable nor despicable. It may be missed if the new app's UX turns out to be worse on whatever metrics you're using.