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by salamandersauce 1688 days ago
It still works for Amazon but it doesn't really work for books in their newer KFX format. It's best to use an older version of Kindle for PC or use their download and transfer to USB if you have a physical eInk Kindle to get an AZW3 file which should unlock no problem.
2 comments
AdmiralAsshat 1688 days ago
Installers for older versions are becoming increasingly elusive, I've found. Anything newer than Kindle for PC v1.26 and DeDRM can't break the encryption. Installers for v1.17 or v1.19 can still be found, but on Linux those versions can't connect to Amazon because one of the SSL certs used by the app has expired.

That leaves v1.21 as the "sweet spot", but most of the sites that used to host that installer EXE have mysteriously disappeared.

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Jiro 1688 days ago
You can get the missing certificate from the links in https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=342186&uid... .
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criddell 1688 days ago
That workaround gets you the text but it's missing a lot of the recent typographic improvements. It's fine for extracting text for TTS, but isn't ideal if what you are trying to do is maintain a DRM free archive of books you've purchased.

It's like saying you can break BluRay DRM by recording the screen with your phone camera.

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sbst32 1688 days ago
What kind of typographic improvements do you have in mind?
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criddell 1688 days ago
Stuff like drop caps, kerning that isn't terrible, hyphenation, and better word spacing. None of it matters if you are feeding the text to a speech synthesizer, but it can make a difference when reading.
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salamandersauce 1688 days ago
Some of that stuff you can get back by using an ePub version and reader from the AZW3 file which can typically be done using KindleUnpack. Some of it is less the file format and more the rendering engine used and they simply haven't bothered to backport it to their AZW3 renderers. Amazon does AFAIK precompute some stuff like hyphenation but not everything.
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sbst32 1688 days ago
The point is the KFX format does have all that natively.
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salamandersauce 1688 days ago
And my point is that some of it not native (it's handled by the renderer) and it's possible to get back or similar enough (precomputing hyphenation).
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