Dealing with Kindle ebooks in calibre

[Sirtel]

The reason Amazon wants a strong DRM on their books has nothing to do with piracy. They just want us to read our Kindle books on Kindle devices and in Kindle apps, so they can data mine us. They don't want us to remove the DRM and read the book on something else, where they can't access our data.

[lkmiller]

Yes, when the unbroken DRM was only on certain books, it seemed that it was on the publishers insistance for stronger protection. But with this update, it is even on books from publishers/authors who don't want DRM on their books. So this is definitely all for Amazon. Of course, it drives a few folks like us away. But many people don't care about being able to read on other devices or having their own backups.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

So this is definitely all for Amazon. Of course, it drives a few folks like us away.

And it's genuinely frustrating because of the KDP Select exclusivity clause eroding the option to get eBooks from other sources.

[Jacques Q.]

Hello. Having been one of the first "victims" of the forced implementation of version 2.4.1 of K4PC (don't know whether French customers were their test target for this specific attack...), I found out nearly all by myself then that reverting to 2.4.0 fixed the issue of having to deal wih non-convertible "KFX-ZIP" files. I think the instructions on the first post of this thread are very clear and should bring anyone being annoyd with this out of trouble. I donwloaded the "disable_k4pc_download" program, I'm not sure whether I make it run correctly (not familiar with .bat stuff), but anyway I know that keeping the 2.4.70940 version safe will save the day should Amazon manage to do unwished for things on my my PC again...

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Jacques Q.

...but anyway I know that keeping the 2.4.70940 version safe will save the day should Amazon manage to do unwished for things on my my PC again...

That will work for now. Unfortunately Amazon has a history of eventually disabling the ability to download some or all books using older versions of Kindle for PC.

[Lief]

Originally Posted by jhowell

That will work for now. Unfortunately Amazon has a history of eventually disabling the ability to download some or all books using older versions of Kindle for PC.

That's not all, I remember that without changing version (some version of Kindle PC ago) some of my manga the day before downloaded as kfx (it was the first time they pushed kfx on manga but it was still possible to remove the drm) the day after they downloaded as azw3 again... I was so sure that I reverted to a previous version of the app that I was sure delivered kfx and it was still delivering azw3 for manga that I had a backup in KFX (or better the epub conversion without drm).

I think the local version is not 100% decisive, they also have remote control over what Kindle PC can download regardless of version (maybe with some limitation).
So if some still need to do a backup I would do it now, they can both disable the ability to download ebooks from the old version and change what the old version can deliver.