You can still download books you paid a license to Amazon for, you just have to use a Wi-Fi or 4G LTE-enabled Kindle to do it.

Which may or may not be possible. For 2G Kindles like the Kindle 2 there is no more 2G service and there is no Wifi. Download and Transfer was the only remaining way to load books on from Amazon without ironically removing the DRM.

Accurate info, edited my comment to specify.

Not suggesting it as a good option but does the Kindle app on Windows and macOS not work with these devices?

Nope. Kindle for PC can't send books to devices.

Yes, but this is a different method. Using the encrypted books downloaded by the app for PC viewing.

Right now they use an old version of the app though, that can easily be blocked by Amazon. I'm surprised it wasn't.

The good thing about the download option on the web was that some older Kindles don't support any newer DRM methods so it would always work.

It's partially blocked. The old version of Kindle for PC won't let you download books published after Jan. 2023.

Assuming that you have Wi-fi and that your Kindle is compatible with it. Someone with a hardwired-only connection, an older Kindle that doesn't support Wi-fi at all, or one that doesn't support WPA3 will be stymied.

(The models that don't support Wi-fi at all originally had cellular service for wirelessly downloading books, but that was sunset a few years ago. So there will be literally no way to copy new books to those devices anymore.)

Yeah and Amazon stopped supporting those kindles too. My Kindle 4th gen no longer connects to the hive even with WiFi. It's not a cellular model (and I think they had dropped that option by then anyway). It's still the old non-touch UI though.

Apparently it needs to be "up to date" but because Amazon no longer publishes firmware updates, it is not.

Speaking as someone who’s pretty happy with his still-working DX — and values hardware longevity — this is half the issue precisely.

(the other half of course being what happens when material is pulled when it’s only cloud-resident and vendor administered)

Yes but not over USB of course. Another thing that bothers me about that, is that Amazon could block my account for whatever reason and I'd lose access to all my content. Of course this goes for many such services. Like Apple's app store, google play, steam, microsoft store (not like anyone ever uses that lol), content bought on itunes etc.

“Just” - my gen 2 kindle only has 2G connectivity so this removal effectively renders it unable to get Amazon-purchased books in any way. “Just” implies buying an entirely new kindle “just because”.

I mean, you’re not wrong, but Woot has them on sale for ~$30 fairly often. Your Gen 2 is about sixteen years old at this point.

That’s $30 that I shouldn’t have to spend. (And I mean, no worries, I won’t, I’ve had enough with Amazon rendering perfectly good kindles obsolete, and I can get plenty of books for free elsewhere - still, it’s not a choice I should have to make just so Amazon can save the cost of what’s essentially an app to check your permissions and set up a pre signed s3 download link for you).

Or their app, on any platform where you can get access to its file store (e.g. Android, Windows, macOS...).