Is bricking accurate there? From what I've read the old Kindles can no longer download from the Amazon store, which is the only reasonable way to get new Kindle books onto a Kindle.
However, any Kindle books they have already downloaded to that Kindle will continue to work, and can be backed up and restored to a desktop computer over USB.
Also any Kindle books they bought for that Kindle when Amazon allowed downloading to desktop for later USB loading can still be loaded that way.
Finally, it still works for non-DRM books from other sources. It is essentially now like a non-Kindle ebook reader that also happens to be able to read the set of Kindle books you already have.
Oh, and you also have to avoid doing a factory reset or deregistering the Kindle. It will then lose the ability to read Kindle books, making it even more like a non-Kindle ebook reader.
You might not be totally screwed out of your Kindle books even then. We are talking about devices that were introduced in 2012 or earlier and last sold new in September 2014.
Amazon only succeeded in hardening their DRM to the point that DRM removal tools don't work for most people in the last couple of years or so. That means there is a good chance that the Kindle books of most of the affected users have reasonably breakable DRM.
There are some things that might have happened since they bought the books that updated the DRM on their copies, but if you just downloaded the books, and only later moved them off and on via USB (manually or with something like Calibre) to manage space on the device, and did not also read them in the Amazon desktop Kindle app then they are almost certainly still using the original DRM and that can easily be stripped.
However, any Kindle books they have already downloaded to that Kindle will continue to work, and can be backed up and restored to a desktop computer over USB.
Also any Kindle books they bought for that Kindle when Amazon allowed downloading to desktop for later USB loading can still be loaded that way.
Finally, it still works for non-DRM books from other sources. It is essentially now like a non-Kindle ebook reader that also happens to be able to read the set of Kindle books you already have.
Oh, and you also have to avoid doing a factory reset or deregistering the Kindle. It will then lose the ability to read Kindle books, making it even more like a non-Kindle ebook reader.
You might not be totally screwed out of your Kindle books even then. We are talking about devices that were introduced in 2012 or earlier and last sold new in September 2014.
Amazon only succeeded in hardening their DRM to the point that DRM removal tools don't work for most people in the last couple of years or so. That means there is a good chance that the Kindle books of most of the affected users have reasonably breakable DRM.
There are some things that might have happened since they bought the books that updated the DRM on their copies, but if you just downloaded the books, and only later moved them off and on via USB (manually or with something like Calibre) to manage space on the device, and did not also read them in the Amazon desktop Kindle app then they are almost certainly still using the original DRM and that can easily be stripped.