If you are not blocked, you fix your Kindle or
get a replacement
and your backup is just there
for you. It's only if you are an Amazon Non
Person
that you have no backup.
Does Amazon have an agreement
in place whereby they guarantee you that your backup is available forever? Do
they have any such agreement in place at all? What happens if Amazon is
acquired by another company that decides they don't want to continue this
service, or if Amazon itself goes bankrupt? (It could happen.)
If you are
concerned about these things (or many other things), you shouldn't buy e-books.
Indeed, you should probably stick with paper. There is no digital medium that
has lasted longer than high-quality paper and ink stored under proper
environmental conditions. These paper-and-ink copies can be read by nothing more
than one's eyeballs.
On the other hand, any digital medium will eventually
have to be both refreshed and migrated to remain current. (Can you still read
8" floppy diskettes? Do you still have the hardware and software to download
data over a 110 baud telephone modem?) And refreshing and/or migrating data
that wasn't created by you raises copyright issues in a way that storing and
preserving a book does not. Not only that, it uses up energy (even just reading
digital media uses up energy) and wasting energy doesn't help the
environment.
Digital books are fine for some purposes, but stick to printed
books when you can and realize that electronic data is always going to be
transient and much less replaceable by comparison.
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