Do you really personal the books you purchase in your Kindle?

Abstract

Amazon lately made the controversial determination to take away the ‘Obtain & Switch through USB’ possibility from its Kindle ereader lineup.
This growth raises the necessary query of whether or not you really personal the books you buy and obtain onto your Kindle pill.
Digital possession (or lack thereof) of media recordsdata raises necessary considerations and issues for customers to navigate by way of.

Amazon lately made headlines with its common Kindle ereader line, however this time for all of the unsuitable causes. Seemingly out of nowhere, the corporate has opted to remove the helpful ‘Obtain & Switch through USB’ possibility throughout its whole digital ebook ecosystem.

For these not within the know, this aforementioned possibility means that you can plug your Kindle into a pc by way of USB, after which bodily switch backups of your book library onto a hard drive or different storage medium.

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With the choice formally sundown as of February 26, 2025, the one (formally sanctioned) option to switch your Kindle book library going ahead is wirelessly through Wi-Fi, utilizing the ‘Ship or Take away from System’ performance.

Amazon’s determination to take away this beforehand out there perform has been met with criticism from each bookworms and client rights activists the world over. Many are even outright second-guessing their determination to spend their hard-earned money inside the Kindle ecosystem going ahead.

With all this in thoughts, an important and vital query is being raised now greater than ever: do you really personal the books you buy in your Kindle ereader by way of Amazon’s market?

Amazon Kindle

Amazon’s first-party Kindle app for downloading and studying all of your favourite ebooks throughout your cell gadgets.

Do you really personal the books you purchase in your Kindle?

Possession within the digital age is a sensitive topic

The lengthy and wanting it’s that while you buy and obtain a ebook from the Kindle Store, you are not instantly shopping for possession of the digital ebook file in query. Moderately, you are buying a license that enables you entry to the written work — a license which might technically be revoked at any second in time.

If a ebook is ever delisted from the Kindle ecosystem, both as a consequence of copyright disputes or in any other case, then you definately’re put in a tough state of affairs. The model of the ebook that you have paid for and downloaded onto your machine continues to be accessible, however in the event you had been to delete the file, it would not be out there for redownloading by way of Amazon’s servers.

In different phrases, your book file is proprietary and solely readable on official Kindle ereader {hardware}.

There’s additionally the query of digital rights management, or DRM for brief. Once you obtain an book by way of the Kindle Retailer, the digital file itself is embedded with a particular little bit of software program that retains the file locked into the Amazon ecosystem.

In different phrases, your book file is proprietary and solely readable on official Kindle ereader {hardware}, which is a sore level for a lot of. DRM is normally justified by corporations as a option to fight piracy, nevertheless it’s clear that ecosystem lock-in is a significant unstated incentive as effectively.

A hand holding a Kindle with a loading bar over a dark red background.

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What does this all imply?

DRM is the secret as of late

As talked about, the prevailing realities of the present Kindle ecosystem is certainly one of DRM-laced ebook recordsdata, ecosystem lock-in, and the newfound incapability to again up your books through USB.

This raises necessary questions in the case of media file possession within the digital age, and whether or not there’s sufficient readability within the client area total. Many are unaware of the variations between proudly owning a digital file and buying a license to entry a given piece of media.

Considerations over media preservation additionally come into play, with Amazon and different tech giants in a position to take away entry to books seemingly on a whim. Presently, the one saving grace for ebook lovers is open file codecs like EPUB (of which Kindle devices support), and entry to literary works from websites just like the Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, and extra.

In case you’re thinking about doing so, you’ll be able to wirelessly add DRM-free EPUB ebook recordsdata onto your Kindle machine, by heading over to Amazon’s official Send to Kindle web portal. It is an imperfect answer, however in the meanwhile, it is one of the simplest ways to retain some semblance of management over your digital library possession, in addition to to safeguard your future capacity to modify between {hardware} ecosystems.