Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 111 posts

Re: How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others

#91

Post by aik »

Derbasti wrote: post #38

Frankly, I don't care about DRM for fiction. I generally only read fiction once, anyway (and donate the paper book afterwards). For technical books it's a different story, but then the Kindle is not a medium that works well for diagrams and special formatting that you would expect in technical writing. So in the end, Kindle DRM does not hurt me much. Then again, it is so easy to strip that I think Amazon does not car…

There's a 3rd category: non-fiction that doesn't necessarily require diagrams. For this category, ebooks are great in the sense that I can add highlighting and notes very easily. For me this is the largest category of books and so DRM scares me. It also scares me that the highlights and notes are not owned by me. I wonder if I can somehow retrieve all of them?

Re: How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others

#92

Post by donniezazen »

noste wrote: post #77
listic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you see which books are DRM-free before purchase?

At least some books mention that "At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied." in the book description field. For example: http://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Cinema-ebook/dp/B0089LOEBS/ref=...

Is there a way to tell if this book has DRM?

http://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Exploring-the-Brain-ebook...

Re: How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others

#93

Post by bo1024 »

gizmo686 wrote: post #76
bo1024 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that removing DRM for personal use only is legal in the US.

It is not. Section 1201 of the DMCA specifiys: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." There is an exception to users whose ability to make legal use of the protected material is impeded, but only after the Librarian of Congress rules that the given type of user of the given type of work qualifies for the above exception. The exceptio…

Interesting, then some of the news articles I've read on this are incorrect.

Re: How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others

#94

Post by lemming »

runjake wrote: post #73

This is from 2011 and hugely outdated. As far as I'm aware, the newer Topaz Kindle format hasn't been cracked and thus the DRM cannot be stripped. It's been a long time since I've bought a book that wasn't Topaz-imprisoned.

This is not true. Topaz is a scanned, PDF like format that Amazon uses for older books where for whatever reason they can't get a digital copy. While it's true that Topaz books can't have the DRM easily removed, only around 5% of Amazon's books are in this format.

Re: How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others

#95

Post by nsp »

cynwoody wrote: post #75
johnrgrace wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you can resell their DRM free ebooks. Just let that sink in for a minute.

Do they make you promise not to resell a book more times than you bought it?

Unsurprisingly, yes. You have to delete the book after you sell it. Relevant quote: "Resale: If you buy an O'Reilly ebook, when you are done with it you may resell it, provided that you do not retain any copies of the book after you sell it. This is the same as the situation when you sell a used print copy—when you sell the copy, you deliver it to the buyer and no longer have a copy in your library. If you have bought a hard copy/ebook bundle, you may of course retain the hard copy, if you sell the ebook." - Under more about usage. Still an awesome policy.

Re: How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others

#96

Post by gizmo686 »

With respect to the conversations about the legality of stripping the DRM from e-books (in the USA). I just looked up the Librian of Congress's 2010 DMCA statement, where it is stated that one of the classes works which qualify for exception from the no disabling DRM clause of the DMCA is:

"Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format."

I suspect that it is in error, but this excemption does not specify that the reason for disabling DRM is to use it for one of the mentioned purposes, only that stripping DRM would be nessasary for the mentioned purposes. The lack of enforcement probably makes this a moot point, but if all of a e-book's versions have DRM, and you get in trouble for stripping the DRM off, this would probably hold up as a solid technicality.

Granted, it is still illegal to distribute software designed to aid people in lawfully stripping DRM from e-books.

Source: http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2010/Librarian-of-Congress-120...

Re: How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others

#97

Post by tomrod »

DanBC wrote: post #81
cynwoody wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Wired's nice little introduction will make more people aware that they don't have to put up with DRM. Wired's attention will also make it easier to find definitive info on DRM removal. When I'm not looking for anything in particular, I look at sites like Wired. But when I want to know how to do something specific, I go straight to Google. And Wired's story will boost Apprentice Alf's search ranking, makin…

"The Wired link adds no value for the readers of HN, apart from a tl;dr".

I disagree--I learned something.

Re: How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others

#98

Post by extesy »

2mur wrote: post #48
danso wrote: post #22

Does removing the DRM also remove the highlight tracking/syncing provided by Amazon? If so, that'd be a deal breaker for me to use this other than as last resort backups

No. You need to have a unique ID set in the header. You can do this in calibre. Specifically, a unique 4 byte character sequence at the 32 byte offset in the header (MOBI header). See: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/MOBI If that's set (easy in calibre), you will sync across your devices.

Can you provide more details? Assuming I have some random AZW3 book and calibre - how to correctly upload it back to Kindle and not lose that unique ID along the way?

Re: How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others

#99

Post by vsl »

ansible wrote: post #11

Sadly, I would be glad to pay a reasonable price for books without DRM, but my options are still quite limited. I've been waiting patiently for Tor's ebook store to open (promised "by the end of summer 2012"). Baen is fine for a couple genres, but I don't trust Smashwords because of sockpuppet reviews. I don't want to pirate, I am glad to give authors their fair share.

iBookstore allows publishers to sell books as DRM-free, so Tor books should be OK from it. Subterranean Press' books are DRM-free in iBookstore too.

Unfortunately, other's aren't (I only bought a few books there and it's a 50/50 split so far) and you don't have any way of knowing before buying.

Re: How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others

#100

Post by jhdevos »

doesnt_know wrote: post #88
arkem wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While http://dragonmount.com is a Wheel of Time community they sell the entire range of DRM free TOR science fiction novels (among others). Definitely a good place to shop.

> they sell the entire range of DRM free TOR science fiction novels Which are all not available outside the US. I could only find 4 books on that entire site that were actually available to be purchased outside the US.

I just tried entering a bogus US address, and got as far as the page where you can choose a payment method (which includes PayPal, so presumably you don't need a US credit card). If you get access to the books as a download, I suppose that you actually would be able to buy a book in this manner... Has anyone tried doing this?
Post reply on HN