Amazon is continuing its fight against book piracy and closing a loophole in the Kindle that allowed it to remove digital rights management (DRM) from e-books. This is reported by Android Police.
The company started showing users notifications that starting from February 26, 2025, the "Download and Transfer via USB" feature, which allowed them to download e-books to their device, would no longer work. This feature was used by the pirate community to obtain versions of books from which DRM could be easily removed.
Amazon has used different book formats in its history, from AZW to KFX, and with each new format, it has become more difficult to remove DRM. Because of this, users have turned to older versions of the Kindle and the USB Download and Transfer feature to get files in the AZW3 format, which is easier to process for DRM removal.
Although it is illegal to remove DRM from any file, including Kindle ebooks, this has not stopped the piracy community from circumventing these restrictions. However, the new changes that Amazon will introduce may help reduce the spread of pirated content.
Although the ability to download books and transfer them to other devices via USB will disappear, users will continue to be able to share e-books via Wi-Fi. So for most people, these changes will not have a critical effect. But the piracy community will have to look for new methods.