New DRM Added to Kindles with 5.18.5 Update, Breaking DRM Removal

It looks like Amazon is closing off one of the last remaining methods that allows people to remove the DRM from their purchased Kindle ebooks, locking down the Kindle platform even more than it’s ever been before with a new type of DRM for Kindle devices.

This comes after Amazon removed the ability to download purchased ebooks from their website earlier this year. They’ve also gone out of their way to break other DRM removal methods, and now they’re making it so you can’t remove the DRM from ebooks downloaded to (newer) Kindle devices.

Here’s a quote from Jhowell over at MobileRead, who knows a lot more about this kind of stuff than most people:

This DRM is applied to any newly downloaded books regardless of purchase or publication date. However it is not applied to books where the publisher has requested the DRM not be used, as shown on its sales page with “Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited” in the product details.

This new DRM uses an account secret stored in an inaccessible location as part of the key needed to unlock the encryption of the book. The only hope of being able to remove it requires access to that storage, which is only possible if the device was jailbroken prior to being updated to the new firmware.

It appears this new strengthened DRM was added to Kindle devices with the latest 5.18.5 software update. The new DRM might not be activated for all devices with the new software right away; it sounds like it might be one of those things that happens for some and not for others, like whenever Amazon rolls out new features to Kindles.

So far there are only a few reports of people encountering difficulties removing DRM from ebooks downloaded to their Kindles after the 5.18.5 software, but there are a few corroborating reports so it’s something to take seriously if you rely on that method to backup your Kindle ebooks.

So far the 5.18.5 update is only available for 11th and 12th gen Kindles, along with the Kindle Scribe and Kindle Colorsoft. If you have an older Kindle it shouldn’t be affected by this new DRM yet, but it’s hard telling what Amazon will do down the line at this point. The Kindle for PC method appears to still work for DRM removal too, with some stipulations.

I wonder if Amazon is going to use their strengthened DRM as a bargaining chip to convince authors and publishers that Kindle ebooks are more secure from piracy than other platforms that use Adobe DRM for ebooks that can be easily cracked and pirated. It doesn’t really serve Amazon to strengthen DRM to such a degree otherwise when people can just buy most ebooks elsewhere and easily remove the DRM in about 2 seconds.