BooXtream EPub Watermark Remover

Thanks. I found the background article from Torrent Freak useful.

https://torrentfreak.com/researchers-crack-social-drm-ebook-...

That's not DRM, but Watermarking.

I don't see any reason why you should object to watermarking. Contrary to DRM it doesn't hurt real costumers at all and only helps finding people that distribute books without compensating the author.

Playing Devil's advocate, these watermarking increase the probability that innocent people will be convicted. Under the law, copyright infringement is not a strict liability tort, ie., one must be at least unreasonably negligent in allowing the work to be copied. But with this mechanism, if an ePub containing a watermark appears on a file sharing network, the buyer is always assumed to be the culprit.

As an example, imagine the user kept 24 books in a personal Dropbox account for easy reading across devices, and someone stole the account's credentials and released the books. The user is now on the hook for $200k in statutory damages despite being himself the victim of a crime instead of the perpetrator.

This is a filter of sorts, not a cracker. Think of it like a reverse Instagram filter to restore the original photo. Whether that's within a certain jurisdictions disallowed things to do publicly I don't know.

Some reasons why watermarks could be objectionable are covered in the accompanying Torrentfreak article (already linked in other comments here):

"'Books should be used as tools for disseminating knowledge and information. What ‘social DRM’ watermarking systems do instead is turn books into tools of surveillance and oppression by monitoring who shares what knowledge, where,' IBI explain.

"'We don’t like this, and because the publisher Verso has refused to remove the watermarks themselves, we decided to do it for them, and to show everyone how these systems work.'

"But there are bigger issues at stake. While people in the West take the freedom to read books of their choosing for granted, not everyone has that luxury.

"'Imagine if a watermarked ebook contains someone's name (as many do). Suppose that someone is reading that watermarked ebook under a regime that bans the particular kind of material covered in that book,' IBI add.

"'If the operatives of the regime see the watermark, they would then be able to arrest and perhaps even execute the purchaser of the ebook if they too are living under the same regime.'

"But matters of life and death aside, IBI say they believe that people should not only be able to read whatever they want, they should also be able to share that knowledge with others."