[lordleft]

I've used a kindle for years and have bought hundreds of ebooks through Amazon's platform. The convenience of being able to carry a library with me in a single device is undeniable. ~14 years of support seems reasonable, especially in the context of modern tech. And yet decisions like this always upset me. For all the limitations of physical books, I can hand my physical books to my literal children and grandchildren when I die. As long as I tend to the book, I have it. The fact that this isn't guaranteed for DRM-locked ebooks, for all their advantages, makes me feel like we are somehow going backwards, despite our progress technologically. Instead of a future where products get unambiguously better, the future seems filled with products that come with significant trade-offs. The trade-offs are beginning to not feel worth it to me.

[bityard]

Lots of us felt the same way since the beginning of ebooks. If you lose your Amazon account, you lose your books, which means you never really owned them.

There are (and have been) DRM-free eBook stores. You _might_ be able to strip the DRM from your Amazon books. However, the process and ease of doing so seems to change often, I don't know if it's easy or hard right now.

In the future, consider supporting ebook manufacturers and stores that don't lock down your device, and sell DRM-free books. Kobo is one example. We have a bunch of these in our household. They don't require an account, I can just upload books via USB port on any computer, and they are pretty hackable.

[Larrikin]

We are going backwards. The concept of a library would be illegal if invented today. They are only allowed to exist today because they've been around for hundreds of years. There are still people who attack them and try to shut them down.

[Insanity]

I buy both physical and digital books and much prefer digital, reading on my kindle is more convenient (especially to adjust the font size). For sharing with family, I have a family library set up with Amazon and the experience is really smooth.

I do enjoy owning physical copies of books I liked, and they are part of the “decor” at home at this point. I have limited space so I have 2 completely stacked bookshelves, and then piles of books around the kitchen on top of the cupboards etc.

So I don’t think it needs to be “either or”. :)

[arifmeticus]

Are you okay with losing your entire Kindle library in case you lose your amazon account?

[lxgr]

> I can hand my physical books to my literal children and grandchildren when I die. […] The fact that this isn't guaranteed for DRM-locked ebooks

In fact, the opposite is pretty much guaranteed. To my knowledge, you can’t inherit Amazon Kindle licenses, and you definitely can’t give them away otherwise (which is the obvious next thing to do when inheriting books you think somebody else has a better use for than you).

[tim333]

There's always being naughty and downloading pirated ebooks.