Amazon’s killing an old Kindle hack, and the clock is ticking

Getting new books for your Kindle is just about the easiest thing in the world. Amazon’s got a stupid number of books available for you to buy à la carte, Kindle Unlimited offers a convenient subscription option, and you can borrow books from participating libraries. But even with so many curated paths towards growing your Kindle library, some users are always going to want to do things their own way, and for that we’ve still got Kindle sideloading. Earlier this year we heard about Amazon closing one loophole that let users convert their legitimately purchased Kindle titles into easily sideloadable content, and now it looks like another is on borrowed time.

Basically, these Kindle libertarians have been interested in getting their hands on e-book downloads from Amazon, then running those files through tools that strip the DRM and remove the limitations on how that book can be shared and read. For this to work, though, they need to have access to those files in the first place.