Kindle

[flammableBen]

Bit of a loungy question, but say hypothetically I'd decided to buy a kindle (can't afford it at the mo anyway), and pirated thousands of books? Any chance amazon are using the email convertor to catch such horrible thieves? Sorry if that's a stupid question, I haven't used one at all.

I guess there are places other than amazon who sell books in a variety of formats so there's not much they can do to track it?

[Barry Scott]

No, at the moment, you can email copyrighted shit. (I have - lots and lots.)

I suppose there's actually not a cost effective way of them checking - think of the bandwidth and database sizes!

[flammableBen]

No, at the moment, you can email copyrighted shit. (I have - lots and lots.)

I suppose there's actually not a cost effective way of them checking - think of the bandwidth and database sizes!

See, if I was running amazon, I'd form some sort of anti-piracy group with the other major e-book sellers with an agreement that when they sold a book in whatever format they'd tag a 10byte individual footer (doesn't even have to match up with a user, could be completely random) to the file of whatever format it was. Then they could just calculate the checksums of the e-book files as they get converted by their system when you email them across, and flag it up when a lot of different people have matching checksums. Then investigate as required.

Or some similar system.

[Barry Scott]

That'd be great and far more effective than my copyright protection theory! The trouble is most of the books I've got are simple scan + OCR to pdf affairs, I think, so in many cases have little beyond raw text. You do have DRM on Amazon books, along with their competitors, so you can't share proper paid for shit to my knowledge.

[flammableBen]

That's the beauty though. If somebody has scanned a book in and torrented it then everybody who's grabbed it will have the exact same file with the same checksum. My anti-piracy system breaks down where somebody has legitimately bought a file from a site which gives everybody the same pdf(orwhatever), there'd be no way of distinguishing that from the ones they copy to their mates / the world.

I think that's what you meant anyway, unless you mean you've scanned them in yourself after borrowing them? In which case surely it's easier just to buy the bloody things?

[pumbaa]

Question for you Kindle geeks. If I, hypothetically, had a number of existing ebooks in Word/pdf format, can you get them onto a Kindle without going through the Amazon e-mail system palava?

[Barry Scott]

Yeah, you could use Calibre to convert them, or simply copy them across by USB. I think it supports both as is, although pdf support requires that you use pdf in landscape or it's a pain in the arse. (Like reading sideways isn't!)

[Batch]

so you can't share proper paid for shit to my knowledge.

There must be a way of stripping the DRM somehow! I'll google and google until I find it. Though I'm at work so it can wait.

As an aside in the states,.....they've just introduced a "loan" system whereby you can loan books to 1 person for 2 weeks (DRM technology). I guess this is what a library does so perhaps not that groundbreaking (besides. other ebook services already do this).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200549320

[jonny72]

Question for you Kindle geeks. If I, hypothetically, had a number of existing ebooks in Word/pdf format, can you get them onto a Kindle without going through the Amazon e-mail system palava?

I just got an iPad, one of the main reasons was to be able to read PDFs. Looked at the Kindle and whilst it's a great device the screen isn't big enough to view PDFs fll screen and for them to be easily readable. The iPad is perfect for them though, no need to do anything fancy with them - just copy them in to iTunes and you're done.

[Peter Venkman]

Ordered the missus one of these as a late Christmas present at the weekend, hopefully it will be delivered today, she will read a book in 2 days and I am fed up of buying her new ones!

Already downloaded 1,800 classics in mobi format, no idea if they will work or not though.

[pumbaa]

Anyone got a suggested software package to convert .lit files to something the Kindle can read? Can Calibre do this? Or is there something better out there?

Thanks

Kindle virgin.....

[STFC_Manc]

I have used this site a few time

http://www.2epub.com/

Loving my kindle, had it a few weeks and onto my fifth book.

[Peter Venkman]

By far the easiest to use to convert files to .lit (and loads of others too) I use it for the missus kindle is called calibre e-book.

http://calibre-ebook.com/

And its totally free!

[Bathtime]

FUCK THE KINDLE GO BUY A PROPER BOOK...WHAT`S THE MATTER WITH YOU

[Ginginho]

Don't be a dick, if you do a lot of reading the Kindle is ideal and you don't end up with 100's books all over the place.