Calibre-Web is a web app that offers a clean and intuitive interface for browsing, reading, and downloading eBooks using a valid Calibre database.

Discworld - Book Covers

I used to prefer kobodl because it's standalone, which means you don't need other proprietary software like Adobe Digial Editions or Kindle for PC (that I can't use on Linux). However, I have since discoverd a way to do this with Calibre and 2 plugins:

Leseratte10/acsm-calibre-plugin - A plugin that can read Adobe Digital Editions files that Kobo web download produces.
noDRM/DeDRM_tools - The popular DRM removal plugin.
Now you can just download the .acm file from your book list on Kobo.com and load it into Calibre desktop!

Of Captain Teach Alias Blackbeard

Edward Teach was a Bristol man born, but had sailed some time out of Jamaica in privateers, in the late French war; yet though he had often distinguished himself for his uncommon boldness and personal courage, he was never raised to any command, till he went a-pirating, which I think was at the latter end of the year 1716, ... //

Being asked the meaning of this, he only answered, by damning them, that if he did not now and then kill one of them, they would forget who he was.

Appeals court decision potentially reversing publishers' suit may come this fall. //

The Internet Archive (IA) went before a three-judge panel Friday to defend its open library's controlled digital lending (CDL) practices after book publishers last year won a lawsuit claiming that the archive's lending violated copyright law. //

"It's not unlawful for a library to lend a book it owns to one patron at a time," Gratz said IA told the court. "And the advent of digital technology doesn't change that result. That's lawful. And that's what librarians do." //

IA has argued that because copyright law is intended to provide equal access to knowledge, copyright law is better served by allowing IA's lending than by preventing it. They're hoping the judges will decide that CDL is fair use, reversing the lower court's decision and restoring access to books recently removed from the open library. //

dogbertat Smack-Fu Master, in training
9y
66
Subscriptor++

chilldude22 said:
I’ve never thought or heard of this copyright interpretation before. How accurate is this description, both in law and intent? I always just assumed we’re in America and any rules benefit the powerful by default.

I think it's accurate, although I think the pendulum has swung to far toward commercial interests in the last 50 years so it isn't always apparent. Copyright is intended to serve the commonweal, not specifically the creator, by establishing the right for a limited time monopoly on works in order to incentivize creation. "The utilitarian aim of the Intellectual Property Clause is to maximize scientific and artistic progress. It does so by attempting to balance the incentives it provides for innovation, against the chilling effects that limiting access to writings and discoveries may have on novel thought." (Cornell Legal Information Institute)//

Tempus --)------- Ars Tribunus Militum
20y
2,675
Subscriptor++

BrianB_NY said:
Internet Archive wants you to believe that they can buy one copy and then "lend" it to everyone around the world, and that this is just like a library. But that isn't a fair analogy. In the tangible book arena, libraries buy many copies of books, creating sales of the books for the publisher. So people get the benefit of borrowing and both the author and publisher get paid for their work, so they can create new books.

You seem to be under the impression that other libraries don’t do lending of digital works and e-books, and that the internet archive policies allow lending a given work to more people at a time than they have purchased copies. Neither of those things are true. //

dogbertat Smack-Fu Master, in training
9y
66
Subscriptor++

BrianB_NY said:
Internet Archive wants you to believe that they can buy one copy and then "lend" it to everyone around the world, and that this is just like a library. But that isn't a fair analogy. In the tangible book arena, libraries buy many copies of books, creating sales of the books for the publisher. So people get the benefit of borrowing and both the author and publisher get paid for their work, so they can create new books.

But that's not how the Internet Archive works. They practice what is called Controlled Digital Lending (CDL). They take a physical copy, scan that particular copy, then make it available for checkout. While it is checked out, no one else can borrow it, just like a physical library. So while the title is available to everyone to try to check out, only that one copy can be (i.e., one physical book; one digital lending available). If you see multiple titles, it's because multiple physical copies of that book are held by the Internet Archives.

Libraries don't have to buy specially licensed physical books. They can (and sometime do) buy it off Amazon and put it on the shelf (although they usually use other suppliers). For some reason, the publishers think that libraries need specially licensed digital books. These cost much more than the digital copy you would get from Amazon or elsewhere. And they can't even buy the digital book in perpetuity like you can, but only for a limited number checkouts. So the Internet Archive is testing this saying, 'Hey, I can scan the book I own and lend it so long as I don't lend more than the copies I own.". //

The only reason the publishers are fighting this is that library-licensed-ebooks are WAY MORE PROFITABLE than the normal ebook (or book!), for absolutely no reason, other than that the whole "license, not ownership" thing that's happened over the last couple decades allows the publishers to do it.

That part is spot on. Since the law treats eBooks as computer programs, suddenly all of the things that publishers could not do with physical copies (such as sell books with "licenses" forbidding resale) can now be done. So publishers can limit the number of copies that can be purchased, and have the licenses expire after a certain number of circulations and/or certain time periods, and, oh, by the way, hold back sales of "library edition" eBooks until months after publication of their physical and other eBook copies. That is why CDL is such a threat to the publishing model.

The BookHub — The World of Books

But corporate mega-publishers want purchasing a book to be like renting a movie or streaming an album. //

Buying a book should be no different from buying an apple. When you buy an apple, the farmer can’t show up in your kitchen later and decide your time is up, and you’ve got to pay for it again. It’s yours forever—to eat, or paint in a still life, or cut up for a kid’s snack. And thanks to the first sale doctrine of copyright law, codified by Congress in 1909, the books on your shelves are yours forever, too, in exactly the same way your apple is; you’re free to read them (or not), loan them to friends, or sell them to a used bookshop, without restriction. Copyright law balances the public good—our collective right to access information—with the rights it grants to authors and inventors.

Publishers can’t demand more money for the paper books you’ve already bought, but the technology for copying and distributing books has evolved a lot since 1909. So four titanic corporate publishers are currently in court, insisting on the effective right to barge in and demand multiple, recurring payments for digital books–like they do for digital movies, music, and software–and they want to exercise that same power over the books in libraries.

This threat to the ownership of books is what makes the ongoing publishers’ lawsuit against the Internet Archive politically dangerous, and in an altogether different way from earlier challenges and amendments to copyright law. At a time of increasing book bannings and attacks on libraries, public schools and universities, it is not safe for democracy, or for our cultural posterity, to leave an “on/off” switch for library books in the hands of corporate publishers. //

As I’ve argued before, the lawsuit hinges on the question of whether ebooks are books, subject to the existing laws governing the sale of books, or whether the publishers can redefine ebooks as temporary, rental-only media–a new class of unownable goods, like streaming-only films from Disney or subscription-only software from Microsoft. But libraries must have the option to buy and own their books–all their books, including ebooks–and own them absolutely, like an apple. //

In the summer of 2020, Hachette, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley accused the Internet Archive of “mass-scale copyright infringement” because of the way the Internet Archive’s Open Library loans its ebooks to patrons. Instead of renting their ebooks from publishers, the Internet Archive scans them from the paper books it owns, stores the paper originals, and loans each scan out to only one patron at a time, a common library practice known as Controlled Digital Lending (CDL). Following the reasoning of expert copyright lawyers and library scholars over the last twelve years, the Internet Archive, along with hundreds of other libraries and archival institutions, maintains that CDL is a fair and logical way to preserve traditional library practices for the digital world. //

The publishers’ objective had been to forbid the Open Library to loan any of their in-copyright books as ebooks. That was the explicit request in the original complaint. But not even this industry-friendly judge was willing to go that far; he sided with the Internet Archive’s interpretation of the decision instead. For now, the Open Library will have to stop loaning only those ebooks for which the publishers are offering their own “competing” ebooks for license. In other words, the order relies solely on the argument that the Open Library is harming the publishers’ revenues from ebooks, a distinction that seems to go to the heart of the dispute. //

The publishers shouldn’t be able to pick and choose the bits of copyright law they want to abide by; as we’ve noted, copyright law balances the public good with commercial rights. If publishers’ ebook revenues are protected by the extant provisions of copyright law protecting rights holders, then, presumably, readers and libraries should also be protected. The Internet Archive, and all libraries, should have the same protections under the first sale doctrine that have always allowed them to preserve and lend books to readers.

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven effort to produce a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced ebooks. The text and cover art in our ebooks is already believed to be in the U.S. public domain, and Standard Ebooks dedicates its own work to the public domain, thus releasing the entirety of each ebook file into the public domain. All the ebooks we produce are distributed free of cost and free of U.S. copyright restrictions.

Author
Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte, 1819-1899

Title
Capitola's Peril
A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand'

At some point you will run into the situation where you have transferred an ebook in .mobi format to your Kindle Fire and it is displayed as a document instead of a book. This creates an inconvenience since now your books are in two locations instead of just one. Here is how to make your .mobi files be registered as books on the device.

The issue that is causing the device to register your .mobi file as a document rather than a book is that there was a personal doc tag (PDOC) placed in the .mobi file during conversion. This tag needs to be removed by reconverting the book without the problematic PDOC.

Open calibre, click preferences, second row down (conversion), click output options. in the list on the left select mobi output. delete anything in the "personal doc tag" and leave it empty. click apply then close prefernces and close and restart calibre. now when you send book to device, they should show up in the Books category on your kindle.

Drauku • 5 yr. ago • Edited 5 yr. ago
EDIT: I think I found a solution to this. When I was converting the book files to .mobi format, Calibre automatically added a '[PDOC]' tag, and this makes the Kindle organize those "doc" files differently (as personal documents). As soon as I removed that tag from the conversion process, no more lost books! I had to go back through my entire Calibre library and re-convert the .mobi files in order to remove the tag. If this still doesn't work, try adding the '[EBOK]' tag to the MOBI output convert dialogue.

Here's a good guide on how to remove the [PDOC] tag in Calibre: https://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/20147/kindle-fire-how-to-display-mobi-files-as-books-and-not-documents/

The above guide describes how to remove the tag on each conversion, if you want to remove the default behavior of adding [PDOC] every time you convert to .mobi, you need to remove the tag from the Convert settings for the .mobi format