Amazon removed books from my Kindle

[meeera]

I gotta say... even though I personally use Kobos, I have recommended Kindles to a number of people for whom I thought it would meet their needs better. I might have to stop doing that, if there's any chance they'll fall into the group of people affected by this.

[jlinear]

Originally Posted by haertig

My point in bringing this up being, you can't always call an entire company a dog because of the actions of some of its employees.

I'm not sure Amazon deserves the benefit of the doubt in this matter. Makes me wonder if the Kindle developers at Amazon bother to use their own product. Why on a Kindle must I use FONT_RAMP to adjust font size in a reasonable manner? Why on a Kindle must I use Calibre to make the margin and line-height adjustments I prefer? Have Kindle engineers never pickup up a Kobo ereader and noticed how their Kindle software sucks in comparison? They make improvements at a snails pace. It has been obvious for some time that the Kindle developers just don't care. And they are displaying the very same attitude in this matter.

[Quoth]

The original 2007 kindle had obsolete format and rendering on release and only latin-Roman support. A problem solved more than 10 years earlier on the Linux used.

Kindle ebook sales is very low down on Amazon's income. The ereaders even lower.

[jhowell]

I have a Kindle Oasis 2 running 5.16.2.1.1 firmware that has been offline for a couple of months so I thought I would use it for a test of e-book deletion. The device only had books on it that were purchased from Amazon or delivered using send-to-kindle.

I created some additional e-books for testing and sideloaded them via USB. This included at least three books each in AZW3 (KF8) and KFX formats. Some were marked as a Kindle purchase (CDETYPE=EBOK), personal document (CDETYPE=PDOC), and not specified (no CDETYPE metadata).

I saved a copy of the documents folder of the device, turned off airplane mode, and synced it with Amazon. The result was the deletion of all of the books I had USB sideloaded with CDETYPE=EBOK. No other books were deleted from the device.

A system log created using ;dm showed the same number of the following messages as the number of books that were deleted:
240429:145014 cvm[10279]: I ReaderSDKImpl:Information::Processing remove item
240429:145014 cvm[10279]: I ReaderSDKImpl:Information::Successfully deleted content

To me this appears to be evidence of the intentional deletion of books that are marked internally as having come from Amazon for which there is no associated record in the user's account.

[Gone]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I8)

To me this appears to be evidence of the intentional deletion of books that are marked internally as having come from Amazon for which there is no associated record in the user's account.

A good thing Kobo is not doing the same with sideloaded Kepub. Yet?

[Strether]

Originally Posted by jhowell

To me this appears to be evidence of the intentional deletion of books that are marked internally as having come from Amazon for which there is no associated record in the user's account.

When books were deleted from my Paperwhite a few weeks ago, everything was deleted except KU books. That included mostly books from Amazon which had no DRM on them, but also books from other publishers and also a few that I had made myself from Gutenberg or from fan fiction. I took it to be an assault on everything that had been side-loaded using Calibre. Not sure how many books were on there but guessing 500 or so.

The first time I lost books, it was from the Scribe, which had my total library on it: 2,000+ books, all side-loaded from Calibre.

Jim

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Strether

That included mostly books from Amazon which had no DRM on them

To be clear were those books from Amazon delivered to the device over the air by Amazon or were they side loaded via USB?

I ask because Amazon keeps track of which of your devices are expected to have a copy of each of your purchased books and a book showing up on a different device might be subject to deletion in this case.

[jlinear]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I ask because Amazon keeps track of which of your devices are expected to have a copy of each of your purchased books and a book showing up on a different device might be subject to deletion in this case.

All of the books on both my Paperwhite and Scribe were purchased from Amazon and downloaded from Amazon to be transferred via USB. Both devices spent most of the time in airplane mode. Target device for all downloaded books was the Paperwhite. All transferred by Calibre. Obviously, the Scribe had content targeted for the Paperwhite. Upon connecting to Amazon via WiFi books on BOTH devices were deleted. Target device seems irrelevant in my case.

[Strether]

Originally Posted by jhowell

To be clear were those books from Amazon delivered to the device over the air by Amazon or were they side loaded via USB?

I ask because Amazon keeps track of which of your devices are expected to have a copy of each of your purchased books and a book showing up on a different device might be subject to deletion in this case.

They were all downloaded via USB and then side-loaded via Calibre. But they took books I’d bought from times before Amazon even had ebooks, from the days when there was an industry at MR formatting the classics and a large number were books bought from Baen.

Jim

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Strether

They were all downloaded via USB and then side-loaded via Calibre. But they took books I’d bought from times before Amazon even had ebooks, from the days when there was an industry at MR formatting the classics and a large number were books bought from Baen.

Jim

Most Kindle eBooks on MR were converted using some version calibre. Baen also uses calibre.

[zuma]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I have a Kindle Oasis 2 running 5.16.2.1.1 firmware that has been offline for a couple of months so I thought I would use it for a test of e-book deletion. The device only had books on it that were purchased from Amazon or delivered using send-to-kindle.

I created some additional e-books for testing and sideloaded them via USB. This included at least three books each in AZW3 (KF8) and KFX formats. Some were marked as a Kindle purchase (CDETYPE=EBOK), personal document (CDETYPE=PDOC), and not specified (no CDETYPE metadata).

I saved a copy of the documents folder of the device, turned off airplane mode, and synced it with Amazon. The result was the deletion of all of the books I had USB sideloaded with CDETYPE=EBOK. No other books were deleted from the device.

A system log created using ;dm showed the same number of the following messages as the number of books that were deleted:
240429:145014 cvm[10279]: I ReaderSDKImpl:Information::Processing remove item
240429:145014 cvm[10279]: I ReaderSDKImpl:Information::Successfully deleted content

To me this appears to be evidence of the intentional deletion of books that are marked internally as having come from Amazon for which there is no associated record in the user's account.

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but does this mean that I can avoid having sideloaded books deleted by setting them as personal documents? If so, is the method to accomplish this checking the "create personal document instead of book" box in KFX conversion menu? Is there any downside to doing this? Thank you.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by zuma

...does this mean that I can avoid having sideloaded books deleted by setting them as personal documents?

You should test the theory. Report back on the results if you do.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by zuma

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but does this mean that I can avoid having sideloaded books deleted by setting them as personal documents?

In my single test nothing marked as a personal document was deleted. I cannot guarantee that will always be true for everyone.

Originally Posted by zuma

If so, is the method to accomplish this checking the "create personal document instead of book" box in KFX conversion menu?

Yes, for KFX.

Originally Posted by zuma

Is there any downside to doing this?

Some features, such as Goodreads integration, do not work for personal documents.

[jackm8]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I have a Kindle Oasis 2 running 5.16.2.1.1 firmware that has been offline for a couple of months so I thought I would use it for a test of e-book deletion. The device only had books on it that were purchased from Amazon or delivered using send-to-kindle.

I created some additional e-books for testing and sideloaded them via USB. This included at least three books each in AZW3 (KF8) and KFX formats. Some were marked as a Kindle purchase (CDETYPE=EBOK), personal document (CDETYPE=PDOC), and not specified (no CDETYPE metadata).

I saved a copy of the documents folder of the device, turned off airplane mode, and synced it with Amazon. The result was the deletion of all of the books I had USB sideloaded with CDETYPE=EBOK. No other books were deleted from the device.

A system log created using ;dm showed the same number of the following messages as the number of books that were deleted:
240429:145014 cvm[10279]: I ReaderSDKImpl:Information::Processing remove item
240429:145014 cvm[10279]: I ReaderSDKImpl:Information::Successfully deleted content

To me this appears to be evidence of the intentional deletion of books that are marked internally as having come from Amazon for which there is no associated record in the user's account.

That's pretty serious. It's positive proof that amazon is scooping at users devices and deleting content at will.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by jackm8

That's pretty serious. It's positive proof that amazon is scooping at users devices and deleting content at will.

Amazon probably has buried and hidden in their syncing software user agreement a statement like "By using this software, you give perpetual license to Amazon allowing scanning for and/or deletion of any ebook from any device that you own at Amazon's sole discretion..." Probably down around line 15,329 of the agreement. I wouldn't put it past them.