Category: books, reading,

Kindle and Digital Purchases: A Problem With a Solution

There seems a lot of furore this week over Amazon and its decision to remove a feature called “Download and Transfer” which enabled people to download Kindle books and transfer them to their devices via USB and save a copy remotely. A feature that served other purposes too making is useful for people to back up copies of ‘their’ books but also piracy too. The books are downloaded with DRM protections which can be removed through various ways. The removal of this feature has caused concern about rights and digital ownership, something people often overlooked. Since the days of iTunes and iPods you don’t own a digital purchase, you merely have a license to access it whether its a download or stream. In today’s world where digital purchases are more common people are now realising that you don’t actually own what you buy whether its a track, book, movie or video game. Almost all digital purchases are licenses to access rather than ownership. For example to play Gran Turismo 7 on the PS5 you need to be online depsite downloading the game it won’t play unless it verifies your account and is always online.

Unless you download a copy and remove the DRM protections, it has been this way all along but people didn’t realise or read the small print and assumed your purchase is yours to keep. It exists as long as the provider provides it. Like Flixster which used to offer digital movies and closed down but that did allow downloading of all movies prior to closure and moving purchases to a different site.

As a Kindle owner going forward I am affected by this, I have over 5000 books I have purchased over the years and all along since I first got an iPod I have religiously backed up iTunes purchases and e-book purchases. My first e-reader device was a Sony PRS-650 e-reader which had its own proprietary store and allowed side loading of books providing there are no DRM on the files. The files were .epub files that had Adobe DRM. No biggy, there are ways around it. I never had a problem buying and backing up. I then switched to Kindle and maintained the same thing to backing up my library. Whatever the book and format and DRM there have been ways around it until now. Now I am seriously considering my future purchases and whether I will be purchasing from Amazon going forward or not. The problem is I am well entrenched in the Amazon/Kindle ecosystem both in terms of convenience and cost. I know it is only a matter of time until people work out how to remove the DRM from the current e-book format, or maybe a matter of time until side loading on a Kindle is removed.

As such I have experimented buying one or two books from Google Play Books. The prices are reasonable but it doesn’t have the selection of Amazon and Kindle but there are some books there that were unavailable on Kindle. For example The Passenger: South Korea was a book that was available for pre-order but removed on Kindle but I found it on the Google Store. I purchased it to try and see how easy it is to back up and convert it for use on Kindle and how well the conversion goes and appears on a Kindle Colorsoft device. It feels full circle as I am back to Adobe DRM removal and it gives you an .epub file which you can then upload to your Kindle library via Amazon’s SendToKindle service.

As you can see it has worked really well, three of the books were sent via the method above (except The Peepshow) and they work perfectly. The photos on The Passenger: South Korea have lost no clarity and everything works as it should.

For me until the KFX-ZIP format of Kindle is cracked this is how I am going to be purchasing my books going forward, especially those that are new releases and full prices. It isn’t perfect but it works. It seems too the Amazon Kindle Monthly deals carry over for the most part onto the Google Play Books Store but the Kindle Daily Deals do not. I may stick to Kindle if it benefits me in terms of a Daily Deal or Whispersync.

Villains of All Nations by Marcus Rediker

Its been a few weeks since I finished my last book and I haven’t been neglecting my reading, I have been chipping away at two books, this one and Eye of The Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman which should be finished in a few days.

This is a book that I have owned for 10 years or more and wanted to read it for so long but always put it off. I decided to give it a proper go and what a great and surprising read. It is a very detailed book and not dry but can seem a tad repetitive. It changed how I see pirates, we see them as villains and to the authorities they were BUT amongst themselves they were very social and making sure they all had fair treatment, rations and despite being disorderly and violent they had charters and good conduct amongst themselves. A bad captain was demoted by popular vote, stealing rations was punishable, women and children not allowed on board to keep the peace and if a woman was part of a captured vessel she would be protected and any pirate who tried to be with her unwillingly was executed.

The pirates came from legal privateer, merchant and Royal Navy stock and had suffered mistreatment whether it be by poor treatment, unequal rations and withheld pay. For the pirates being an honest fellow was more important than someone’s status. Their reputations of course were deserved but they were ahead of their time too with equality and democracy among shipmates. The truth of a pirate is in the middle of the romantic and legal view.

A surprise too was on the rare instance of a female pirate, they are more than matches for their male counterparts and certainly had balls of steel and were as strong and able as any man. The most notable being Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Anne Bonny said to be an inspiration for the Statue of Liberty and the painting of Liberty Leading The People by Eugene Delacroix

It was a great read and I am glad I have finally read this book. I would enjoy reading more about pirates and piracy in general. My only complaint with this book is that a chunk of it is Index and Notes.

The Night of The Panthers by Piergiorgio Pulixi

Wow, superb read and I thoroughly enjoyed this read. I had started it a long while ago and put it down due to being quite deep in other books and picked it up again last week to try an Italian crime book that wasn’t a Montalbano, Ricciardo or Bordelli. This was one heck of a read throughout and so much going on.

A great noir and it was full of twists and I gasped several times, absolutely thrilling and violent but not too voilent. It worked. Reminded me of Suburra, I think like Suburra it would make an excellent film/series. I enjoyed the characters and the relationships between them and I was expecting a few turns and double turns in the betrayals. A satisfying read and conclusion.

I believe in Italian this book is part of a longer series but sadly in English we have only this book translated, which is a shame as I would love to read more both by this author and of this series.

Babylon Revisited by F Scott Fitzgerald

My fifth read of the year done. I do enjoy F Scott Fitzgerald though I have only read The Great Gatsby despite owning his full library of novels and short stories.

This one is a short book of three short stories, about 100 pages or so long.

Babylon Revisited

Reading this I felt I had read this one before and it seemed familiar to me, I only bought this the day before so maybe its a part of an anthology I have read before or a sample I started long ago (EDIT – I seem to have read this in 2020). It was a bit of a sad read a father from the height of Jazz age Paris trying to regain his daughter from her guardianship, proving he is responsible and safe to his sister in law. The thing I notice is the women are always weak and prey to their nerves. I wonder if that was true to the time or just how they are charactised?

The Cut-Glass Bowl

A haunting read following the life of a beauty where a large cut glass bowl seemingly has been the catalyst of pain and decline of a woman’s life. From the decay of her marriage and love, to the disability of her daughter and the ruination of her husbands upcmoming business partnership, finally to tragic consequences.

The Lost Decade

Short and sweet, not much really to say about this one.

Overall I quite enjoyed these but I got the feeling I had read them before somehow, I don’t recall reading this book before but perhaps I have.