This change is only for the Kindle Unlimited service.Ĩ0% of commercial trade book publishing in the US/UK/EU is dominated by five multinationals, the 'Big Five' - Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and HarperCollins.Ĭorporate policy at all of these companies except Macmillan absolutely requires DRM on digital products, no exceptions permitted. The important part is that nothing has changed for books purchased directly from Amazon individually. Kindle Unlimited is no different, but for books. You don't own any of this content, it is just lent to you for the duration of an active subscription. Netflix, HBO, Hulu, etc all let you download movies now, but they expire unless you maintain a subscription. For example you can download songs with Spotify, but they automatically expire after 30 days unless they 'phone home' to confirm you still have a subscription. This is no different than we see from any other service where you pay a monthly fee for access to content while maintaining an active subscription. The restriction from allowing the downloaded books on this service actually makes a lot more sense when you understand the service. You don't own titles through Kindle Unlimited, you are borrowing them. Because you 'own' the book you buy directly. You can still download and un-DRM books that you buy individually from Amazon directly.

Think of Kindle Unlimited as the book equivalent to Spotify Premium. The article is noting that they blocked the downloading of books that use 'Kindle Unlimited' which is a subscription, that runs $10 a month, for unlimited of select Kindle titles. I think its important to clarify a few things.

Remove drm from kindle books