• DashboTreeFrog@discuss.online
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    11 months ago

    I honestly hadn’t considered that eBook licensing data could be used in the way they describe in the article. EBooks becoming part of big data surveillance somehow feels especially disheartening to me.

    Lately I feel like I’ve been duped for years since I used to believe strongly in the phrase “if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product” but it feels like with every paid product or service nowadays you’re STILL the product…

    But a pirate is always free 🏴‍☠️

    • Deceptichum@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Yar har, fiddle de dee
      Being a pirate is alright to be
      Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
      You are a pirate!

    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 months ago

      Pirate the ebook, buy a paper copy to support the author (they generally even earn more per paper copy, iirc). Ideally at a local book store, as they are a dying breed as well.

      Don’t like dead trees around? Gift it to someone. Or ask the local library if they want it

      • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        Yeah, in some cases piracy feels more straightforward and honest than having to sign away all my rights and data so I can do something as simple as reading a book.

      • Uranium3006@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        It used to be you worried about getting a virus from pirated books, now the corpo options are provably malware

        • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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          11 months ago

          Oh no… I’ve believed the propaganda uncritically for most of my life and am just now realising how absurd it was to ever trust the establishment’s narrative.

  • DarkPassenger@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Never considered my library was spying on me. Spent years hyping the library system to save money on ebooks. Does pirating all your ebooks solve the problem or does tracking also take place on the e-reader side too?

    • Uninvited Guest@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      I used a Kindle, but get the lion’s share of my ebooks from Anna’s archive. Books are often delivered to my Kindle through the email to Kindle service.

      I have no illusions that every single book I read is fed through Amazon’s data machine. The Kindle estimates the time to completion of a book based on your reading speed - everything that it could possibly interpolated from your reading… Will be. And you can bet it will be sold, or at the very least advertised to you on Amazon.

      • DarkPassenger@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I do the same by feeding my kindle via email. Got my kindle but wonder if there are more privacy friendly readers

  • nick@midwest.social
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    11 months ago

    Ayuuuup. Libgen, calibre, and Apple Books for me these days.

    I’ve bought around 1000 kindle books over the years, but that shit ended this year when I found out about this stuff. Spent a week stripping the drm from all my purchases (the ones Amazon didn’t burn up in the memory hole, anyway; bout a dozen of the books I paid for are no longer available for download), adding them to calibre, and backing the data up.

    Now I use the apple books app on my phone to read them. It’s not as convenient, but fuck Amazon.

  • Keith@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Pirating and Librera or e-reader nevernconnected to internet.