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Extracting content from an LCP “protected” ePub

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Extracting content from an LCP “protected” ePub

#31

Post by ziddoap »

kristo wrote: post #29
ferbivore wrote: post #2

> You can, for sure, publish information relative to your discoveries to the extent UK laws allow. After study, we'll do our best to make the technology more robust. If your discourse represents a circumvention of this technical protection measure, we'll command a take-down as a standard procedure. Disgusting behaviour, as expected from the publishing industry I suppose. This "EDRLab" outfit appears to be little more…

They make a software to help libraries lend ebooks for free. Without their DRM you either wouldn’t be able to borrow ebooks because publishers would never agree to it, or would be limited to kindle/libby to read them. They’re not perfect but how is it bad behavior to say you’ll issue a takedown notice if your copyright material is republished? I don’t really understand why they’re being treated as the enemy here?

>I don’t really understand why they’re being treated as the enemy here?

The gross manipulation attempt is what did it for me.

"We were planning to now focus on new accessibility features on our open-source Thorium Reader, better access to annotations for blind users and an advanced reading mode for dyslexic people. Too bad"

The legal threat at the end wasn't very cool, either.

Re: Extracting content from an LCP “protected” ePub

#33

Post by snailmailman »

dvngnt_ wrote: post #24

Do book drms even make sens? i can understand games, but how do you encrypt words that are meant to be read. People used to record music on the radio. It seems easier to ocr a book and generate text that way.

A big place where this gets used is to make Kindle ebooks only able to be read on a kindle.

Any time they update and change the DRM there’s a brief period where newly-released amazon kindle books essentially cannot be read anywhere except kindle hardware and official kindle apps. People have pretty consistently found ways around the DRM (for now). But amazon is always trying to crack down on this.

Re: Extracting content from an LCP “protected” ePub

#34

Post by grayhatter »

> KOReader never contacted us: I don't think they know how low the certification fee would be

It's between 350USD (per platform) and 1,700USD per year. So the possible range is between 1700USD, and 3k USD... Yeah, that's totally reasonable for a FOSS project where the lower yearly cost is 110% of the amount they make in donations every year.

Re: Extracting content from an LCP “protected” ePub

#35

Post by MyOutfitIsVague »

kristo wrote: post #29
ferbivore wrote: post #2

> You can, for sure, publish information relative to your discoveries to the extent UK laws allow. After study, we'll do our best to make the technology more robust. If your discourse represents a circumvention of this technical protection measure, we'll command a take-down as a standard procedure. Disgusting behaviour, as expected from the publishing industry I suppose. This "EDRLab" outfit appears to be little more…

They make a software to help libraries lend ebooks for free. Without their DRM you either wouldn’t be able to borrow ebooks because publishers would never agree to it, or would be limited to kindle/libby to read them. They’re not perfect but how is it bad behavior to say you’ll issue a takedown notice if your copyright material is republished? I don’t really understand why they’re being treated as the enemy here?

The effect, very often, is to force anybody with specific reading habits to buy Amazon or be unable to read their books. This is especially bad if you don't just buy books, but read through the library or especially if you get ARCs (advance reader copies, for pre-release reviews). Advance readers who don't have Kindle are jerked around constantly by DRM and especially changes in DRM schemes. It's really hard to not see this as collusion, as it suspiciously always works for the benefit of Amazon and the detriment of every single other person and company involved.

> how is it bad behavior to say you’ll issue a takedown notice if your copyright material is republished

It's not. That's not what happened here, though.

It is bad behavior when you threaten legal action against somebody working within their rights to legally allow people to read things that they paid for on devices that they've paid for. The DMCA has specific carve-outs for interoperability. Threatening legal action there is bully behavior. I'd argue that the ethics are pretty clear-cut here too. A ton of copyright law is incredibly badly balanced against the consumer and even against small artists in favor of the biggest players. If this was illegal, it would be the law that is unethical.

Re: Extracting content from an LCP “protected” ePub

#36

Post by MyOutfitIsVague »

joecool1029 wrote: post #25
damnitbuilds wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To further Streisand this, I think the restored repo is here: https://repo.or.cz/DeDRM_tools-LCP.git

It works. Though I've found it only works for LCP epubs, not pdf's.

It doesn't work for the newest encryption scheme for epubs. Current epubs downloaded from NetGalley won't decrypt with it, unfortunately.

Re: Extracting content from an LCP “protected” ePub

#37

Post by Mindwipe »

op00to wrote: post #28

The only time to directly threaten legal action is when you don't think legal action will achieve your goal, and you've got nothing else. Otherwise, there is no benefit to threatening legal action. Sure, you can imply it, but you gain nothing by showing those cards.

This isn't true at all.

Legal action costs lots of money, no matter who you are, and it's slow. Threatening legal action is usually the most successful mechanism to make things happen, even if you have a one hundred percent chance of winning your case.

Re: Extracting content from an LCP “protected” ePub

#38

Post by grayhatter »

kristo wrote: post #29
ferbivore wrote: post #2

> You can, for sure, publish information relative to your discoveries to the extent UK laws allow. After study, we'll do our best to make the technology more robust. If your discourse represents a circumvention of this technical protection measure, we'll command a take-down as a standard procedure. Disgusting behaviour, as expected from the publishing industry I suppose. This "EDRLab" outfit appears to be little more…

They make a software to help libraries lend ebooks for free. Without their DRM you either wouldn’t be able to borrow ebooks because publishers would never agree to it, or would be limited to kindle/libby to read them. They’re not perfect but how is it bad behavior to say you’ll issue a takedown notice if your copyright material is republished? I don’t really understand why they’re being treated as the enemy here?

> They’re not perfect but how is it bad behavior to say you’ll issue a takedown notice if your copyright material is republished?

That's not what they said. This is how you should have read their reply:

> If your discourse represents a circumvention of this technical protection measure, we'll command a take-down as a standard procedure.

If you say something we don't like, if we think we can make the argument that the information about methodology and implementation you share for free, is circumvention of our DRM, we'll follow our existing strategy to abuse the legal system silence you and prevent you from sharing information.

> I don’t really understand why they’re being treated as the enemy here?

Because they are the bad guy, they're actively working to make the world worse. They're pretending like if it wasn't for their kindness, access to these ebooks would be impossible. But in reality they only care about controlling other people by force. The legal threats, insane arguments about how it's better if how their DRM works is a secret, the intent of the software they're defending, and the messages they sent; are just ways or attempts to exert control what other people are allowed to do, or are allowed to know

I'd also like to discourage this argument generally

> Without their DRM you either wouldn’t be able to borrow ebooks because publishers would never agree to it, or would be limited to kindle/libby to read them

The (unfair) translation of this is: If it wasn't me abusing you, it would be so much worse! You should be saying thank you that it's me abusing you! Not complaining about how you don't like how you're being treated!

Everything can always be worse, the point is to make it better, not accept something harmful.

Re: Extracting content from an LCP “protected” ePub

#39

Post by spudlyo »

lxgr wrote: post #7
spudlyo wrote: post #4

Granted, Readium LCP[0] may be one of the less odious DRM solutions out there for eBook contents, however it's still DRM. Handcuffs are still handcuffs regardless of how comfortably they fit. DRM is in my view is too often used as a cudgel to mandate hardware and software level restrictions that take away the control of our own computing devices and environments. I personally hold that intellectual property isn't pro…

> I find myself uncomfortably on the side of AI bros like Sam Altman who argue for the expansion of the fair use doctrine Why? Are you training LLMs? I highly doubt they'll fight a pro-consumer fight completely incidental to their objectives (if not detracting: don't need to buy the source textbook if you can ask ChatGPT about its contents as soon as it's released).

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Anything done to strengthen fair use is in my opinion a positive outcome. Happy to see copyright holders go toe-to-toe against a bully their own size. If both OpenAI and entrenched IP interests get bloodied in this fight, it's a win-win.

Re: Extracting content from an LCP “protected” ePub

#40

Post by [deleted] »

edent wrote: post #23
miki123211 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you even need Thorium for this? If the files are just AES-encrypted and the links are there, as the linked article suggest, it seems that it would be easy to create a standalone script to download and decrypt these.

(OP here) I discussed how the DRM works in an earlier blog post - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/03/some-thoughts-on-lcp-ebook-... Essentially, the key for decrypting the files is made up of the book owner's passphrase and the super-secret key embedded in the closed-source binary. I wasn't able to reverse engineer the binary or extract that key.

[deleted]
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