Hear me out: what if our outrage over an apparent Amazon Kindle Software update and DRM for ebooks is wildly overblown?
I'm not talking about the recent Kindle update that reportedly strips away the ability to remove DRM (Digital Rights Management) from downloaded books. While you might argue that there's good reason to maintain this ability, I say writers gotta get paid, and the edge cases of needing to remove electronic rights controls don't add up to a good enough one to undermine authors' ability to make money off their works.
Instead, I want to talk about the reported change that initially really ground my gears: decommissioning the "WiFi workaround." This refers to the commonly used Airplane Mode trick for reading a digitally borrowed book long after the loan ends.
As an avid reader and Kindle owner, I have relied on this workaround for years. Here's how it works: I visit the Libby app and peruse my local library's books. Overdrive's app is, by the way, still one of the best things to ever happen to Kindle reading.
Instead of buying every book I want to read, I check them out from my library. I borrow the book through Libby; it connects me to Amazon's vast book library, where I sign in to get a digital edition delivered to my Kindle.
On the Kindle, I make sure it's connected to the internet, update my bookshelf, and start reading. Loans usually last two weeks.
When I'm on vacation, I can finish three or four books in a week. When I'm working, I mostly read at night in bed and only get through a few pages before falling asleep (don't judge me). This happens every night, which means that, instead of reading a book in days, it can take me weeks or even months.
To make sure I can still read the book after the loan ends, I turn off my Kindle's WiFi and set it to Airplane Mode.
Everyone knows this hack
This is such a well-known workaround that when I called my local library to ask about it, the guy at the resources desk knew immediately what I was talking about.
"It's a well-known hack," he told me without enthusiasm.
I asked if I should be concerned that, since I wasn't "returning" my digitally loaned book on time, I was holding up anyone else's loan.
"I wouldn't worry about it," he told me, adding, "It's not gonna bother anyone else."
Basically, it doesn't matter if I took any action to return the book. The library has already reclaimed the DRM for that book and is ready to loan it out to someone else.
I would know this if I turned on my Kindle's WiFi and tried to continue reading my overdue book: it would suddenly become unavailable, as Libby and the library would've done their job and reclaimed the title. Interestingly, Amazon is not involved with managing loan expirations.
The controversy arose when people noticed that they could no longer access downloaded titles in Airplane mode. Some assumed this meant that their expired loans were being triggered even when their Kindles were offline. Others blamed a Kindle software update.
I noticed in the Reddit comments that people said they had downloaded the borrowed titles but had not opened them, which is when I remembered having gone through something similar during a recent vacation.
Before embarking on my vacation in Aruba, I downloaded a few books. Later, while lying on the beach (and at a place where my Kindle remained in Airplane Mode as it did not have access to the hotel WiFi), I tried to open one of the titles. It wouldn't open unless I connected to the Internet.
That was new. Previously, I could open any book I downloaded whether or not I was on WiFi.
Another workaround?
Amazon has not spoken publicly about any of this, but apparently has not made any recent changes to how Kindle handles borrowing library books.
If that's the case, it's possible the change is coming through Libby's system or that there's some change in how the Amazon bookstore is handling DRM for borrowed ebooks.
Regardless of the source, none of this means that Amazon or Libby will reach into your Kindle to retrieve overdue books. What may be happening is that the system now wants a DRM handshake when you first open the digital book. That's the moment when WiFi is necessary. Right after that, you can go back to Airplane Mode and keep reading the book.
More interesting is that I don't even know if the source of all this Kindle angst remains an ongoing issue. Today, as a test, I borrowed another Libby book, downloaded it to my Kindle, and then turned on Airplane Mode. The book still opened. I cannot say what will happen after the loan expires or whether there is some internal ticking clock that would not have let me start reading the book while in Airplane Mode.
Ultimately, this may be more of an annoyance than an all-out travesty. I understand that some people think the enforced scarcity of digital loans is ridiculous. You can make endless copies of digital books, after all. But then how do authors get paid for all the purchases and loans? While some books are donated, libraries are paying for digital book copies. Those revenues do go back to the publishers and ultimately the authors. If libraries buy only one digital ebook and then make unlimited copies, authors could lose most of their revenue.
I like reading good books, and I'd like to see authors financially empowered to write more of them. This change, if it even exists, seems like a reasonable middle ground between giving writers what they need and not causing Kindle readers like me undue frustration.
If you're still worried about this, here's my tip: As soon as you download the books you want to read later, open them on the Kindle to the first page. After that, no matter what happens on the book-loan side, you should still be able to turn off WiFi and read at your leisure.
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