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When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

bbc.co.uk

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Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#51

Post by idonotknowwhy »

anatoly wrote: post #41
frosted-flakes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same with Audible. As far as I can tell, there's no way to remove the DRM that is both easy and free, so against my better judgement, I paid $30 for a program to do it for me[0]. I now have every audiobook I've bought in mp3 format, split by chapter and tagged with the correct metadata. Now I can dump them on a USB drive and plug it into my car stereo for road trips (I don't mind listening to good books more…

http://archive.is/U0c83

Probably easier to just plug my phone into the aux input and record with audacity.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#52

Post by bredren »

r3bl wrote: post #25
asveikau wrote: post #8

I didn't start buying ebooks from Amazon/Kindle until I realized it was relatively easy to break its DRM. I've never used the files anywhere else but I keep a cracked copy of every purchase just in case. That old story about "1984" being removed gave me too much of a negative impression.

I also prefer Amazon over other ebook stores simply because I know I can break the DRM effortlessly and reliably. I am well-aware that it's a bad thing to do from a legal perspective (and especially encouraging others to do the same), but legal =/= moral. I'm paying a full price for them and treating them as my property. That includes being able to read them on any screen I want with whichever reader I want, even if…

I do the same, break drm on every ebook I buy from amazon. I think little of it—I pay a premium for their ebooks and I buy a fair amount of them.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#53

Post by crispinb »

asveikau wrote: post #8

I didn't start buying ebooks from Amazon/Kindle until I realized it was relatively easy to break its DRM. I've never used the files anywhere else but I keep a cracked copy of every purchase just in case. That old story about "1984" being removed gave me too much of a negative impression.

Ideology aside, my main practical reason for breaking DRM is that I want to read all my books in a single reader of my own choice. With hundreds of books, I'm certainly not willing to try and remember whether I bought each one from Amazon or wherever else. I wouldn't shelve physical books by purchase origin so I'm damned if I'm going to do it with ebooks.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#54

Post by crispinb »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #24
asveikau wrote: post #8

I didn't start buying ebooks from Amazon/Kindle until I realized it was relatively easy to break its DRM. I've never used the files anywhere else but I keep a cracked copy of every purchase just in case. That old story about "1984" being removed gave me too much of a negative impression.

So they still get your money and you deal with the inconvenience? Try buying from https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebooks where possible (DRM-free).

It's often not possible, particularly with niche books from small publishers. Many of my sailing books, for example, were available from Amazon only. A DRM copy is always my last choice, but I'll get one and strip DRM if necessary.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#55

Post by Alterlife »

nil-sec wrote: post #26
gnicholas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annotations would presumably be lost as well (if the platform supported them).

Maybe. But these are all hypotheticals. The article presents it as I should be morally disgusted by this move. I don't really see it.

You're getting down-voted, but I agree with you on this particular point.

The vendor is providing a full refund to customers including an additional $25 credit for customers who used the annotation service.

DRM is an annoying customer unfriendly solution to a problem that I'm not convinced exists... but people have been given full access to these books for a while. They've been able to read them from date of purchase until now. Some of them are probably finished reading the books and I'm sure "more than a few people" have exported their books to open formats.

Microsoft has handled this as gracefully as it could, all things told.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#56

Post by 0815test »

r3bl wrote: post #33
hombre_fatal wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they still get your money and you deal with the inconvenience? Try buying from https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebooks where possible (DRM-free).

Inconvenience? It's really not that complicated. You download them from a web interface and you drag and drop them into Calibre (with a de-DRM plugin installed). Done, they're now available together with all the ebooks that you got from other sources. Having all the purchased ebooks in one place is more convenient for me, not less. The alternative isn't a different book store, it's pirating. While I do have an apprec…

> Inconvenience? It's really not that complicated.

You're joking, right? DRM-stripping is inherently unreliable, by definition. It's a last resort only, and we shouldn't be expected to deal with it.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#57

Post by snorlaxle »

idonotknowwhy wrote: post #51
anatoly wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://archive.is/U0c83

Probably easier to just plug my phone into the aux input and record with audacity.

Not really. The hardest part is getting the activation bytes and even that is actually quite simple and you only have to do it once. For the actual converting I have a bash script that can convert all the aax files in a directory and convert them to a m4b format with all the metada intact. Using your approach you would have to manually set the chapters and the cover art. I have thousands of hours worth of audiobooks but even if you only have a single 10 hour book I think this approach is still the easier of the 2.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#58

Post by Wowfunhappy »

0815test wrote: post #56
r3bl wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inconvenience? It's really not that complicated. You download them from a web interface and you drag and drop them into Calibre (with a de-DRM plugin installed). Done, they're now available together with all the ebooks that you got from other sources. Having all the purchased ebooks in one place is more convenient for me, not less. The alternative isn't a different book store, it's pirating. While I do have an apprec…

> Inconvenience? It's really not that complicated. You're joking, right? DRM-stripping is inherently unreliable, by definition. It's a last resort only , and we shouldn't be expected to deal with it.

By definition?

Not a heavy eBook user but I buy all movies and TV shows through iTunes because I have a (lossless) De-DRM program I can use. Works consistently every time on everything. It may stop working altogether someday, but if that happens I’ll stop buying from iTunes. Until then, the program is 100% reliable.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#59

Post by nil-sec »

gnicholas wrote: post #36
nil-sec wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. But these are all hypotheticals. The article presents it as I should be morally disgusted by this move. I don't really see it.

Hypothetical? Every major ebook platform offers annotations (and I just checked — this platform did too). MS apparently recognizes the additional inconvenience to people who have annotated, as they are offering an extra $25 to anyone who has made annotations. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4497396 I agree that this closure is not world-ending, and I think the point of the article is that if MS can do this t…

What do people annotate generally that's worth 25$? I'm genuinely curious.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#60

Post by cbluth »

durability wrote: post #35
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep your $30. Or... Pay me $30 :) ffmpeg -activation_bytes 1CEB00DA -i test.aax -vn -c:a copy output.mp4

Does this really work?

Yes, it does. You'll have to use the correct activation bytes to decrypt, but those can be retrieved by signing into the audible account.
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