Enable Web Browsing and Full Catalog Access on International Kindle

Ever since Amazon’s Kindle 2 arrived in Gadget Lab’s Spanish Bureau (aka my apartment), I have been trying to restore its lost functionality. Finally, with some rather annoying account jiggery-pokery, I have enabled full (and free) web access and I can now buy any book I like from the Kindle Store.

To recap, the Kindle International edition shipped in a somewhat crippled state, with access to a (rather small) subset of the Kindle Store’s contents, and with 3G web browsing limited to the Kindle Store itself and to Wikipedia (and worse, the U.S. Wikipedia). Also, there are no for-pay blogs, and no pictures in newspapers. To be fair to Amazon, these problems are caused by international publishing rights and by the wireless carrier AT&T, but it is still a pain.

Regular readers will know we have managed to work around much of this, but last night I managed to turn all these features back on. It’s not pretty, and it has some fiscal penalties, but it works.

The hack is easy, and has been used by those outside the United States to buy Kindle content ever since the U.S.-only v1.0: Amazon ties your Kindle to your billing address, so all you need is a billing address in the U.S. and suddenly everything is switched on. First, set up a new account with a U.S. address (we’re not suggesting you fake an address here, so use a friend’s address or something similar). “But,” you say, “I have no U.S. credit card. How do I pay?” This is the delicious workaround: You use your regular account in your own country to buy gift cards and apply them to the U.S. account. This will let you shop as normal for books. For this reason its a good idea to open up a second browser so you can stay logged in to both accounts simultaneously.

Once you have the new account, you’ll need to switch your Kindle over to point to it. This can be done in two ways, either by putting the Kindle’s serial number into the Kindle management page on the web, or just by logging out of you old account and into the new from the Kindle itself (from the Home page, hit Menu and choose Settings).

I was a little worried that my previously purchased content would disappear, but no, it all remains. Amazingly, this is also true of the iPhone Kindle app. De-and-re-register the iPhone to your new account and it will happily mix books bought on both. Whispersync, though, only works with the currently registered Kindle account.

Web browsing also works, and according the letter that Amazon will send to your Kindle when you try this hack, it is free, as is browsing the Kindle store. But it isn’t all so smooth: You now count as a U.S. customer who is roaming abroad. This incurs a $5 per-week fee to have newspapers and magazines delivered, and a $2 fee for book and single-title periodical downloads. The data fees for sending your own content also rise to $1 per megabyte.

Or do they? I applied a $10 voucher to my new account and was able to buy a $9.99 book. Clearly here, then, the $2 fee wasn’t applied, and as I have no credit card associated with the account, it cannot be charged. Even if it was, books typically cost a few bucks more for us foreigners anyway, so it would work out the same.

Could Amazon switch off this loophole? We guess your account could be closed, and the “experimental” web access could certainly be disabled (a shame, as I can now read Gadget Lab wherever I happen to be). On the other hand, anyone trying out this hack is clearly doing it in order to give Amazon more money. We hope that this might cause the company to turn a blind eye.