I'm not sure I agree with this sentiment here regarding "wise".
And of course Kindle and Apple customers won’t even notice, thanks to those companies’ wise decision to use their own DRM.
About the only thing "wise" about it is that if Apple were to change its own DRM scheme for the books it sells, I'm assuming they'd update iOS to include the new functionality.
Admittedly, this would still lock out older devices potentially that couldn't upgrade to the latest version of iOS.
But at least Apple and Amazon control their own destiny. If you're going to do DRM, there are some plusses to that.
If you just choose the "standard" DRM, you can end up with what happened to Microsoft customers and their MP3 players. "Apple is proprietary! Get PlaysForSure." It was a real good pitch, up until your Dell Whatever stopped being able to get new music because MS had abandoned PlaysForSure and Dell wasn't going to update their old players.
Amazon and Apple have large incentives to keep their DRMed content working on older devices, at least for a couple of years. Adobe has very little incentive to ensure that their DRM keeps working on the various Sony (and other) Readers.
Apple's tying of iBooks at least partially to iOS updates actually makes them the worst offender in this area. I'm willing to bet 1st gen iPads can't get some new iBooks, but I bet all 1st gen Kindles can still buy all books from Amazon.
I bet all 1st gen Kindles can still buy all books from Amazon.
You lose this bet. There are quite a few Kindle books like this: http://cl.ly/image/2t2m2V3Y0513 that won't play on basic Kindle devices. I discovered this when I tried to read one of my books on my gen 1 Kindle.
There are also some unexpected restrictions on some titles, such as books that are viewable only on 1 or 2 of your devices, which is quite annoying to discover when you're not near one of the previous devices to deactivate it.
I can't comment on the functionality of iBooks on Gen1 iPads because I've never purchased an Apple iBook, but your guesses about Amazon are, sadly, wrong.
I think the "available only on this devices" thing is about formatting, not DRM, although I could be wrong. (Of course, one might wonder why the original Kindle isn't being updated to support the new stuff...)
The point stands that I can't read those books on original Kindles at all. It's not like there's a "let me read the text, and don't show some graphics" option.
"There are also some unexpected restrictions on some titles, such as books that are viewable only on 1 or 2 of your devices..."
You can check this when purchasing on Amazon: the small print you're looking for in the Product Details section is "Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited". If you don't see that, it means your Kindle book is restricted (I believe to 5 devices simultaneously, though perhaps it varies from book to book.)
It varies from book to book. Some of them are only 1 or 2 devices. The annoyance is that I inevitably forget which books are device limited and end up unable to open them from work / while traveling / etc.
The nice thing about Amazon's Kindle DRM is that it's fairly easy to crack. It presumably satisfies publishers who insist on continuing with this cargo cult charade (which really should have ended after the music industry accepted DRM-free sales), and it allows educated consumers to strip the DRM if they really need to.
I'd pay for a tool that I could feed in my Amazon credentials and it would iterate through the hundreds of eBooks I've purchased, download them, crack them, and then back them up to an S3 bucket.
Judging from your user name your time might be worth more than mine, but some scripting + Calibre could do this for you with not much effort on your part.
1) Download all the Kindle books you've owned (either onto your device, or using the desktop reader - I think there is even one on Linux). You can mount a Kindle as an external drive, so you can easily move files to your hard drive even if you have too many to fit onto the Kindle.
2) Use Calibre to unlock the .mobi files, using the serial number (conveniently located under the "Device Settings" or "About this Device" menu - I forget which it's called, but it's a ~16 digit number and very easy to find.
3) Upload to S3
This works on Linux - I assume it works on OS X and Windows too.
AFAIK all common book DRM types EXCEPT for the adobe type are currently crackable. This is the main reason why I do not buy any adobe DRMed books. First thing after buying a ebook is to decrypt it and keep a copy as a backup. That way i still have it even if amazon or whoever chooses to revert it.
Comments
I'm not sure I agree with this sentiment here regarding "wise".
About the only thing "wise" about it is that if Apple were to change its own DRM scheme for the books it sells, I'm assuming they'd update iOS to include the new functionality. Admittedly, this would still lock out older devices potentially that couldn't upgrade to the latest version of iOS.
But at least Apple and Amazon control their own destiny. If you're going to do DRM, there are some plusses to that.
If you just choose the "standard" DRM, you can end up with what happened to Microsoft customers and their MP3 players. "Apple is proprietary! Get PlaysForSure." It was a real good pitch, up until your Dell Whatever stopped being able to get new music because MS had abandoned PlaysForSure and Dell wasn't going to update their old players.
Amazon and Apple have large incentives to keep their DRMed content working on older devices, at least for a couple of years. Adobe has very little incentive to ensure that their DRM keeps working on the various Sony (and other) Readers.
Apple's tying of iBooks at least partially to iOS updates actually makes them the worst offender in this area. I'm willing to bet 1st gen iPads can't get some new iBooks, but I bet all 1st gen Kindles can still buy all books from Amazon.
I bet all 1st gen Kindles can still buy all books from Amazon.
You lose this bet. There are quite a few Kindle books like this: http://cl.ly/image/2t2m2V3Y0513 that won't play on basic Kindle devices. I discovered this when I tried to read one of my books on my gen 1 Kindle.
There are also some unexpected restrictions on some titles, such as books that are viewable only on 1 or 2 of your devices, which is quite annoying to discover when you're not near one of the previous devices to deactivate it.
I can't comment on the functionality of iBooks on Gen1 iPads because I've never purchased an Apple iBook, but your guesses about Amazon are, sadly, wrong.
I think the "available only on this devices" thing is about formatting, not DRM, although I could be wrong. (Of course, one might wonder why the original Kindle isn't being updated to support the new stuff...)
The point stands that I can't read those books on original Kindles at all. It's not like there's a "let me read the text, and don't show some graphics" option.
"There are also some unexpected restrictions on some titles, such as books that are viewable only on 1 or 2 of your devices..."
You can check this when purchasing on Amazon: the small print you're looking for in the Product Details section is "Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited". If you don't see that, it means your Kindle book is restricted (I believe to 5 devices simultaneously, though perhaps it varies from book to book.)
It varies from book to book. Some of them are only 1 or 2 devices. The annoyance is that I inevitably forget which books are device limited and end up unable to open them from work / while traveling / etc.
The nice thing about Amazon's Kindle DRM is that it's fairly easy to crack. It presumably satisfies publishers who insist on continuing with this cargo cult charade (which really should have ended after the music industry accepted DRM-free sales), and it allows educated consumers to strip the DRM if they really need to.
It's not an optimal solution, but it's mostly OK.
I'd pay for a tool that I could feed in my Amazon credentials and it would iterate through the hundreds of eBooks I've purchased, download them, crack them, and then back them up to an S3 bucket.
Judging from your user name your time might be worth more than mine, but some scripting + Calibre could do this for you with not much effort on your part.
I've not had success using Calibre on Linux, even for backup purposes.
You were right. Took about ~30 minutes. Thank you!
1) Download all the Kindle books you've owned (either onto your device, or using the desktop reader - I think there is even one on Linux). You can mount a Kindle as an external drive, so you can easily move files to your hard drive even if you have too many to fit onto the Kindle.
2) Use Calibre to unlock the .mobi files, using the serial number (conveniently located under the "Device Settings" or "About this Device" menu - I forget which it's called, but it's a ~16 digit number and very easy to find.
3) Upload to S3
This works on Linux - I assume it works on OS X and Windows too.
Wouldn't uploading your cracked books to S3 be a bit of a risk?
I use the Send to Kindle app to put the cracked books back on my Kindles.
AFAIK all common book DRM types EXCEPT for the adobe type are currently crackable. This is the main reason why I do not buy any adobe DRMed books. First thing after buying a ebook is to decrypt it and keep a copy as a backup. That way i still have it even if amazon or whoever chooses to revert it.
So is the nook DRM.