Comments on: HOWTO break Kindle book DRM

By: hassenpfeffer

hassenpfeffer — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Love it. Python + de-DRMing == pure satisfaction.

By: travtastic

travtastic — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The best insurance is still to not involve yourself in their system in the first place.

Readers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your DRM.

By: webmonkees

webmonkees — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

will have to integrate that into my set of support tools for the new kindles in the family. they’re buying the same books (never at a discount like the printed versions..)

Used to be you finished a book, then someone else read it. I know, strange.

need to research that rumoured book-loaning feature, but the only info I can find is in a Kindle e-book. someone loan it to me?

By: hassenpfeffer

hassenpfeffer — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

No doubt, travtastic, but by God I love the smell of Python and DRM-cracking in the morning. ;-)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Somehow, authors managed to survive during the era of public libraries (which allowed people to read a book and then return it so that someone else could read it) and used book stores (similar concept, except that ownership changed hands).

By: travtastic

travtastic — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It’s probably the same feeling I’m going to have when I finally get around to rooting a Nook Color.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Anon – you always could have put your ePubs on the kindle. Just convert to .mobi with Calibre and you’re done.

By: hassenpfeffer

hassenpfeffer — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

To clarify, I don’t own a Kindle, but my Dad does. Hey, Dad, mind if I experiment?

By: lecti

lecti — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I wish I could get all my books w/o DRM, but the fact is other ebook libraries are very poorly stocked, and very few goes completely without DRM. It’s GOOD to pay for content, but what I hate is all the legitimate ways to buy things really restricts you on what you *can* buy (e.g., foreign books).

By: kylerconway

kylerconway — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Agreed. I lugged 15,000 pages over 1000 miles to study for my exams over the past summer. A lugged another number of pages for casual reading the same distance. I WANT an e-reader and I WANT to buy digital books — but I just can’t do it with this DRM nonsense. I’m part of the market you’re completely missing out on.

By: Stooge

Stooge — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Cory, is there any legal impediment (real or imagined) that you can see preventing anyone from wrapping this up in an exe and making that available instead?

By: Duane

Duane — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

When I put my book up on Amazon I made sure to hit that “No DRM” button. They made it relatively painless, but in a different publishing engine where I was making it available in PDF as well and the question came up, it was worded in this weird way that said stuff like “Yes I want to make sure that I am paid for my work” or “No DRM, I understand that thousands of people will be able to copy my work without my permission.” Maybe not that bad but it was clearly trying to talk first time authors down the DRM path, and I wasn’t having it.

No DRM!

By: Pantograph

Pantograph — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I have tried this method to read an Amazon book on my non-kindle reader and it works but it is very cumbersome.(and you need the right version of kindle for PC) Still waiting for a Calibre plugin that does this transparently. Luckily Amazon DRM is even more thoroughly broken. EPUBs can be liberated with two clicks.

By: weltregierung

weltregierung — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

You bet. But not more illegal than supplying the original scripts. The cabbages guy is probably very much in violation of the DMCA and thus keeps a relatively low profile, the video guys are basking in the glory of his work, and Cory dares Amazon in a pretty big way by educating the public at large.

We are witnessing a fight between society’s interests (free exchange of ideas) and publishers’ interests (control of the value chain) (see Lessig for detailed arguments). Cory, as always, is taking a bold stance in the fight…

By: Pantograph

Pantograph — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

That should of course read: Adobe DRM is even more thoroughly broken.

By: traalfaz

traalfaz — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Cool, the Kindle now meets my minimal criteria for purchase – broken DRM. I buy my books, but I refuse to be locked in. I’ve been down that path before and I own a few hundred dollars worth of books that are only readable on a years-old abandoned piece of software on a platform I don’t own anymore – IE they’re useless and unreadable. Not interested in doing that again.

I have owned a Sony reader for about 3 years now, when I bought it I only bought from Baen because they were the only place that sold unDRMed stuff (and I downloaded PD stuff too). When I Heart Cabbages published the epub crack, I was able to start buying from other sources (though I still prefer to give my money to places that don’t use DRM in the first place).

So when I buy a book these days, it doesn’t even go onto my device before I break the DRM. In fact my reader isn’t even registered on my account, that way if it loads I know I did it right.

By: traalfaz

traalfaz — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

@Pantograph – I doubt Calibre will incorporate it – there’s no real need for the author to do so and it opens him up to legal trouble. I don’t WANT him to incorporate it, because it might lead to Calibre becoming unavailable.

I Heart Cabbages published a nearly identical epub crack a long time ago and that’s not incorporated into Calibre yet, so I assume he has no intentions of incorporating any cracks into the software.

By: peterbruells

peterbruells — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Any definitive tips on how to accomplish this? DRM is the single thing that prevents me from buying more books, safe those of Oreilley and BAEN at the moment.

And I’m thoroughly confused about the matter. On the one hand I think that the honest customers will buy the books, on the other I see people bitch about 79 Cents in the AppStore.

By: Dave Parker

Dave Parker — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Skindle decodes topaz files. It only has a command line interface though.

By: Pantograph

Pantograph — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I think we are mostly in agreement.
I don’t want him to incorporate it either.
Because of the risk of legal challenges, it should be implemented as a third party plugin by someone with no connections to the Calibre project.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

just wait til you try to get a penguin-bought ebook on to a kindle.. it starts as an .acsm, then you need to install adobe digital edition to download the .epub. next install python and a few other things to run a script which gets the drm key, then another to decrypt the .epub, then install calibre to convert the now drm free epub to .mobi, then send it to the kindle.

all so that i can read a book i paid for on a device i paid for.

are you fucking joking.

By: weltregierung

weltregierung — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

1. You can already share your books in the family, by linking all your Kindles to the same Amazon account (you can still give them different identities and @kindle addresses).

2. I understand if people want to unDRM their books, if only because they do not want to be locked into Amazon’s hardware forever. It is nice to be able to do lossless conversion between mobipocket and epub (don’t use PDF as suggested in the video: PDF is a one-way street and removes the chance to use different font-sizes and page-formatting).

3. The book-loaning feature is limited to two weeks, and only permissible for books that have the loaning-bit set by their publishers.

By: Jizo2tehBezos

Jizo2tehBezos — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I tried the fix listed above and there are several issues with it. The one I have is that scripts don’t work with the newest version of kindle for PC. You have to download a specific beta and disconnect from the internet to prevent it from auto-updating.

By: travtastic

travtastic — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It’s GOOD to pay for a fair price for content, to the person or poeple making it.

I’m not going to give my money to music labels, or print publishers. Aside from less-than-legal methods, I have purchased DRM-free stuff directly from artists/writers/whatever. I want to support them, not the middle-men of the world

There’s no way I would pay more for Apple’s music than I would for a physical disc. There’s no way I’d pay the same or more for a Kindle book than the dead-tree version. And I’d most definitely not pay for software when there’s freeware out there to do everything.

What we’re witnessing right now is a new market trying to find its balance, that is between costs and customers. I fully intend to wait it out.

By: Mythus

Mythus — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I use this so I can buy books on Amazon and read them on my Nook. Amazon is slightly cheaper and has a much better selection. I don’t have any moral compunctions about it. I’m not torrenting the books with the DRM removed or anything like that. I bought the book and I want to read it on the device I choose.

By: pidg

pidg — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This actually makes me want to buy a Kindle more.

By: darth_schmoo

darth_schmoo — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Has much energy been invested in making an alternate operating system for e-book readers? Sort of like what Rockbox did for iPods and other MP3 players? The closest thing I could find was http://hackaday.com/2009/09/03/ubuntu-9-04-on-kindle-2/ but it doesn’t look remotely deployment ready.

The possibilities are intriguing. Read the formats you like, browse websites and download e-books directly to your reader. Unfortunately, you’d probably lose access to Amazon’s book store. On the upside, Amazon’s book store loses access to your reader as well, so they couldn’t delete features and books at their choosing.

By: darth_schmoo

darth_schmoo — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

On an unrelated note, the fact that Windows doesn’t come with Perl, Python, and Ruby pre-installed makes me question its utility as an operating system. Remind me again how Microsoft stays in business?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to the Kindle and ADE cracks, I decided to buy a Kindle. I am very happy with the hardware, but would never want to be tied down to only Amazon books. I actually spend quite a bit of money buying Swedish and Norwegian ebooks in epub, which I can know read comfortably on my Kindle. I can even put library books on it. And thanks god to the font hack, which lets me read proper Chinese…

With all these hacks, everyone is earning money from me. Without them, I would not have bought neither the Kindle, nor the ebooks.

By: Jizo2tehBezos

Jizo2tehBezos — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I got a pocket ereader when they were cheap. Then when Ipads dropped the price on all ereaders I grabbed a nook, and just recently a kindle. As I got each new device I passed the old ones around my family. Now my wife has the nook and my son has Sony.

For those people that are “waiting” to purchase an ereader. Stop.

I almost never purchase ebooks. Obviously the DRM prevents me from sharing them with the wife and kids readers unless we swap devices around. Which is annoying, especially if we are reading books in the same series.

So, I usually download ebooks through torrent or filestube. Yes, they can be badly formatted and usually have to be converted (via Calibre). Yes, companies have started uploading “fake” ebooks. Yes, sometimes I simply can’t find the book.

However, this is the exception not the rule and still better than paying $40 for a book that my entire family wants to read and at the end of all that STILL not owning a actual copy of it.

So, buy an ereader and read books for free. You want to repay the artists that created them? Buy a hard copy and give it to a friend. Feeling really righteous? Go to a school or library and ask them which books they would like to have and buy some of those.

Why wait for market forces to allow you to do want is right.