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How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

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Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#341

Post by tmoertel »

fainpul wrote: post #273
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_fr…

Do you also remember the researcher Philip Zimmerman’s hack to get around the cryptography-is-munitions edict? The source code to PGP was published by MIT Press as a book that just happened to be in a format suitable for OCR. That framing made it into a First Amendment issue, one the researchers were confident they’d win in court.

https://archive.org/details/pgpsourcecodeint0000zimm

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#342

Post by anentropic »

TBH I might be inclined to put up with the DRM if the Kindle reader was also usable for other things (PDFs, ebooks purchased from other vendors)

But the library management is broken/non existent

So it's not just that you can't read Kindle books on other devices, but the Kindle itself is pretty much useless for reading things you purchased from other stores

Even though it was cheap and 2nd hand, I regret buying this thing

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#343

Post by amiga386 »

pxeger1 wrote: post #327
amiga386 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but can you point to any prosecution of someone for a _prose description_ of circumvention (as opposed to actually making code available)? I'll do you one better: 2600 Magazine was prohibited from saying which website hosted DRM-circumvention code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v... They were legally prohibited from saying, on their own website, words like "You can get DeCSS from http:/…

> I'll do you one better I think this is a weaker example.

Which part of the text "You can get DeCSS from http://lemuria.org/~tom/DeCSS/" on a website constitutes distribution of "technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof" ?

Judge Kaplan very likely went beyond what the law allows, in issuing the injunction against Eric Corley for even _adding a hyperlink_ to the DeCSS code on his website.

However, we don't know this for sure, because Corley did not take this to the Supreme Court. There is a chance that the SCOTUS would have accepted the case, and found that neither a hyperlink to computer source code, nor computer source code itself, constitutes "technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof"... but at the same time, maybe they wouldn't accept it, and maybe they would but it'd cost a lot of money Corley didn't have to see the case through. So who knows? Corley seemed satisfied enough that, even though he was personally enjoined from linking to DeCSS, it nonetheless spread like wildfire all over the world, and DVDs were effectively copyable from that day forward.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#344

Post by cl3misch »

Arch-TK wrote: post #333

Please don't write your blog post with AI. Don't force me to either get another AI to remove all the fluff, or to skim read. There's an interesting article here, covered in a layer of AI slop.

How do you get the feeling this is AI-generated? Because of the many bullet points?

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#345

Post by tripzilch »

gruez wrote: post #155
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That law should be changed. If you distribute your intellectual property with DRM, that work should forever be exempt from copyright protection. You get to choose one or the other, but never both, because DRM effectively removes the work from the public domain in perpetuity. Even accidentally releasing a demo or preview with DRM should invalidate copyright on that software/movie/book/whatever.

> because DRM effectively removes the work from the public domain in perpetuity. This doesn't make for a good anti-DRM argument because the concern can simply be addressed by requiring a DRM-free copy to be deposited at the library of congress (or similar[1]) so it can be released in 150 years (or whatever) it actually becomes public domain. Moreover how would you even define what "DRM" is? Is spotify refusing to pro…

yeah, in 150 years Disney bought all rights to library of congress

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#346

Post by amelius »

0xEF wrote: post #328
fainpul wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_fr…

Not that I agree with it, but I do see the logic. The word "munitions" can be replaced with "materials," since it literally refers to materials used for warfare. That isn't necessarily limited to things that shoot or explode. It's a brilliant bit of pedantry if you step back and think about it.

So it can refer to people and what is in their minds too?

Anyway I'm not surprised. This kind of pedantry is what lawyers do for a living.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#347

Post by account42 »

prmoustache wrote: post #239
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…

OTOH this is not DRM nor copy protection. It is just obfuscation.

All DRM where the content can be played back on your own devices is just obfuscation.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#348

Post by worldsavior »

Can someone tell me another effective way to combat book piracy that is not Amazon's way?

I don't understand the author complainant. If you don't like the app, don't use it! Pirate it all you want I don't care, but don't say it's because you didn't like the app. You want books? Buy them physically or find another way to obtain them digitally.

There are authors to these books on Kindle, and they don't want their books free on the internet, it's Amazon's jobs to combat this. They have no choice but to DRM.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#349

Post by roblabla »

worldsavior wrote: post #348

Can someone tell me another effective way to combat book piracy that is not Amazon's way? I don't understand the author complainant. If you don't like the app, don't use it! Pirate it all you want I don't care, but don't say it's because you didn't like the app. You want books? Buy them physically or find another way to obtain them digitally. There are authors to these books on Kindle, and they don't want their books…

Then amazon should make it clear you aren’t buying a book. Putting buy there is deceptive.

And also, amazon is on the hook for providing an actual, working app here.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#350

Post by pjmlp »

tmoertel wrote: post #341
fainpul wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_fr…

Do you also remember the researcher Philip Zimmerman’s hack to get around the cryptography-is-munitions edict? The source code to PGP was published by MIT Press as a book that just happened to be in a format suitable for OCR. That framing made it into a First Amendment issue, one the researchers were confident they’d win in court. https://archive.org/details/pgpsourcecodeint0000zimm

My university had that book, I think it can be used as a weapon actually, given its weight.
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