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How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

blog.pixelmelt.dev

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Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#271

Post by felixhammerl »

ashton314 wrote: post #29
harshreality wrote: post #23

I don't know what state it's in (haven't used it in years), but do apprenticealf's DeDRM tools, which has been forked to nodrm/DeDRM_tools, still handle kindle PC app downloads? Tinkering with old versions of the PC app might work even if the current version doesn't, and there's a registry hack to disable kfx downloading and get azw3 instead, which worked at some point... it's outlined in apprenticealf's DeDRM repo,…

The thing that killed the download -> crack DRM workflow is that Amazon removed the "download and transfer via USB" option. I haven't bought an ebook from Amazon since. The only viable option would be to buy the book and then pirate a de-DRM'd copy.

For those with an old Kindle, couldn't you download it onto the Kindle and then pull it off of there via USB?

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#272

Post by AmalgatedAmoeba »

47282847 wrote: post #249
monch1962 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most authors do not support a way to pay them directly. I think this is the problem that should be addressed. Musicians went through a similar process in reverse order: first Napster ("piracy") then streaming services (analogous to Kindle/Amazon, where a huge 3rd party inserts themselves between content creator & consumer). Eventually some musicians twigged that they were getting screwed every way, so they set up w…

As with music, the final product you consume involves a lot more work/expertise/people than just “writing it“. You can see the quality differences when you compare self-published print on demand to quality publishing.

Naturally. And the editors, typesetters, designers, proof readers, etc. should get paid for their work. It is just a question of ownership and power imbalance. The problem with the current mainstream system (both in books and music) is that the publisher often effectively owns the work - not the author.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#273

Post by fainpul »

dannyobrien wrote: post #98

Fun fact: this is one of the few situations in the US where a prosecutor could claim that this is criminal speech (though I hope and trust they would not, and if it did it would get thrown out by any court respecting the First Amendment). Not a civil issue, like libel or fraud, but the sort of talk that can get a policeman to come and drag you off to jail. If you've ever wondered why DRM is so roundly hated by engine…

Remember when it was illegal to export strong cryptography from the US? There was no law to restrict that, so they just made something up. It basically went like this:

Problem: we can't make cryptography exports (software exports) illegal

-> what actually IS illegal to export?

-> munitions!

-> let's just declare that cryptography is "munitions"

-> problem solved

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#274

Post by reassess_blind »

latexr wrote: post #254
reassess_blind wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A movie theatre is a bad comparison. Nowhere does it say “Buy the movie” and it’s clear to the purchaser that they’re purchasing a one time viewing. That’s not the case with an Amazon eBook where the marketing and reasonable expectation of the average consumer is they’re buying the eBook itself. Not that I necessarily agree with the other comment either.

> That’s not the case with an Amazon eBook where the marketing and reasonable expectation of the average consumer is they’re buying the eBook itself. Good luck proving that in court without reasonable doubt. Look at the image again. It’s extremely vague about what you are in fact buying. https://blog.pixelmelt.dev/content/images/2025/10/image.png

Whether it’s correct, and whether you can argue it in court against a multi-trillion dollar company’s legal team are indeed two very different things.

I wouldn’t be confident in court, but I would be confident that most users expect that ebooks they “bought” in the past could be viewed on their new Kobo eBook reader.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#275

Post by teekert »

I have to say that I usually only download ebooks illegally when the DRM stops me reading them!

I only have Linux machines at my disposal and I have a PocketBook. The device is nice, but the store is truly abysmal. Often there is some adobe based DRM on books I want to buy and I never got it to work with my ereader.

I just gave up and pirate them now, unless there is a DRM free version (authors like Ruther Bregman and Cory Doctorow provide them.)

It used to be quite easy to strip DRM from kindle books, with my old kindle keybaord, so in the past I always bought a lot of ebooks from Amazon. But now I can't get them on my device anymore. A true shame, the Amazon ebook store really has all the books.

This whole situation p**es me off enough to not feel bad about pirating.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#276

Post by bambax »

ashton314 wrote: post #29
harshreality wrote: post #23

I don't know what state it's in (haven't used it in years), but do apprenticealf's DeDRM tools, which has been forked to nodrm/DeDRM_tools, still handle kindle PC app downloads? Tinkering with old versions of the PC app might work even if the current version doesn't, and there's a registry hack to disable kfx downloading and get azw3 instead, which worked at some point... it's outlined in apprenticealf's DeDRM repo,…

The thing that killed the download -> crack DRM workflow is that Amazon removed the "download and transfer via USB" option. I haven't bought an ebook from Amazon since. The only viable option would be to buy the book and then pirate a de-DRM'd copy.

Most of the books I read are from authors long dead (current one: Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, by Frank H. Knight, highly recommended). They don't need the money.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#277

Post by nlitsme »

After researching the webviewer, and finding basically the same as pixelmelt, I found someone else already made the script,

I've been using https://github.com/teticio/kindle2pdf + tesseract to convert amazon books to text.

So that repo also disappeared. Neither is mentioned in https://github.com/github/dmca

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#278

Post by dbdr »

charcircuit wrote: post #234
lutusp wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being found not guilty supports my contention. Not necessarily. A cynical modern legal strategy is to bombard people with frivolous legal actions that only the well-heeled can afford. Defendants can argue that claims are baseless or frivolous, but to make that argument, they must hire a lawyer and appear in court. To see my point, look at the number of frivolous prosecutions now being launched by ... ah, never mind…

You could do the same thing DMCA or not.

You could, but having a law that is adjacent makes it dramatically harder and more expensive to defend yourself against the bogus accusations.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#279

Post by bambax »

ash_091 wrote: post #80
professorseth wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on the team that wrote this code. We knew it was reverse-engineerable, we just didn't care. Upper management seemed happy enough that it was pretty obfuscated, and we were happy that they didn't force us to do more about it.

> we just didn't care. Upper management seemed happy enough This is very relatable. Management want X, engineers recognise X is dumb and deliver something that sorta looks like X, management see something that looks like X and are happy.

Yes, but it's still amazing coming from Amazon. Everyone hates Amazon now but it's hard to argue they're not incredibly successful; how did they get where they are if they're staffed with Dilbert's boss types?

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#280

Post by yard2010 »

Having lived through the Amazon Kindle/ebook rise and fall shit show it's safe to say I will never ever pay to buy or rent or whatever they call it for stuff I can get for free from the internet, because when doing the latter I would never need to reverse engineer bs systems just to get what I paid for.
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