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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

#351

Post by Yodel0914 »

anentropic wrote: post #342

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 t…

Have things changed recently? Sideloading books has always been well supported in every kindle I’ve owned, though admittedly my current model is 3 or 4 years old.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#352

Post by account42 »

pmx wrote: post #314
darkwater wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally know people who pirate books, but pay hundreds of dollars a year for streaming services or battle pass type video games. It blows my mind. I personally know people that pirate everything and PAY FOR PIRATING SERVICES. This blows my mind even more! I know that globally it's probably still cheaper to pay for those services rather than paying for 4 different streaming services each month, but god, if I go…

It isn't about the price. The level of service and the quality of the product you get by pirating is simply better. Streaming services break up shows and have s1-3 on one platform, 4-5 on another, and the rest on another still. You'll "buy" a movie on amazon prime video only for them to remove it so you can't watch it anymore. Prime video, a service you have to pay for now has ad breaks while watching shows. Even jus…

Plus, streaming services limit what devices you are allowed to watch on and what software you can use, especially if you want to watch the highest resolution version. It's completely absurd how some people accept that and continue paying those streaming services.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#353

Post by amiga386 »

gambiting wrote: post #332
chrisco255 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can have a visa revoked for any arbitrary reason, as they are a guest in the country and not a citizen. But yes, obviously serious threats of violence are not protected speech.

Right, but as confirmed over and over and over again, non-citizens also have the right to 1st amendment, same as citizens.

They do have that right, but at the same time, a chaotic and vindictive adminstration can revoke the visa of, and then physically abduct, a non-citizen. They can then make statements that plainly make it clear they did that because of what the non-citizen wrote.

They can also contravene a number of other legal safeguards along the way, and disregard judges' orders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%...

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

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

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

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

It appears the US has elected an administration that wants to turn the country into a lawless shithole, where the powerful do whatever the fuck they want, and they deliberately fuck with laws and safeguards, and deliberately target their political enemies (e.g. student activists), to flex how powerful they are.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#354

Post by matheusmoreira »

immibis wrote: post #317
matheusmoreira wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could training of AI models possibly be considered fair use?

The court said it was. Equally cynically, it's fair use because if it isn't, the entire economy collapses overnight.

Then the court is either stupid or subservient to corporate interests. In both of these cases they deserve zero respect.

> Equally cynically, it's fair use because if it isn't, the entire economy collapses overnight.

Sounds about right. If they had the moral fortitude to apply the laws as they were supposed to, they'd do the right thing and if it collapses the economy then so be it. The fact they didn't reveals political calculation in their judgements.

When laws are stripped of their moral advantage, resistance to laws, courts and authorities becomes civil disobedience and a moral imperative of citizens. We cannot have mutually exclusive ideas existing simultaneously. That's how we get distortions like "you citizen must pay outta the nose for everything but the elite corporations can do whatever they want with complete impunity". The only acceptable way for them to resolve their conundrum is to either hold corporations accountable for their copyright infringement or abolish copyright for all. Anything else can and should cause civil unrest.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#355

Post by choo-t »

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…

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

There simply no effective way to lock a book from copy while being able to read it. It will simply slow the process to free the book, at worst it will result in error or information loss (some links and fancy layout)

> 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

We, as a civilisation, don't have to respect their wish. Free (as in beer) books are a necessity for a lot of people, and free (as in speak) book should be the norm, DRM introduce plenty of problem fir thé reader, with not a single added value for the customer.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#356

Post by tripzilch »

professorseth wrote: post #73
semiquaver wrote: post #53

This is great work, but I’m not clear on why this qualifies as DRM at all. It sounds like the OP reverse engineered a protocol for rendering pages from a book to the web client. Sure, rotating the glyph ids every API call is annoying but it hardly qualifies as encryption or even obfuscation, just an extra mapping step the decoder needs to handle. Sure seems like whoever at Amazon wrote this didn’t realize that it bac…

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.

But you still did it. With awful consequences discussed in this thread. Couldn't you have done less about it ?

Do you tell yourself "well if I hadn't, the next person would've" ?

Did they force you to do it, then ? Was it worth it ?

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#357

Post by AnthonyMouse »

gambiting wrote: post #332
chrisco255 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can have a visa revoked for any arbitrary reason, as they are a guest in the country and not a citizen. But yes, obviously serious threats of violence are not protected speech.

Right, but as confirmed over and over and over again, non-citizens also have the right to 1st amendment, same as citizens.

This is the general problem with having a bunch of laws sitting around that allow the government to punish people for things ordinary people regularly do, but then exercise the "discretion" not to punish them until they do something the government doesn't like.

Because then you don't really have any rights. They can't formally punish you for speech but they can punish you for breaking the same unrelated law a million other people broke without knowing and that only you were prosecuted for, "coincidentally" right after you said something they didn't like.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#358

Post by motorest »

amelius wrote: post #346
0xEF wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

You're being needlessly obtuse. If you bother to learn about the topic, you'll understand it's about distributing software.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#359

Post by tripzilch »

makeitdouble wrote: post #109
Forgeties79 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure you already know this but I’ve actually had a lot of success getting comics on hoopla with my library card. Obviously this completely depends on your local library but if you haven’t it’s worth looking in to! Has what I want a solid 35% of the time. Not the newest releases but I’ve gotten stuff that’s only 6 to 12 months old without much issue

Slightly off-topic, but while we're at it: for all it's DRM hell and shenanigans, the Amazon kindle store is currently the absolute best way to grab foreign ebooks wherever you live on the globe. Most local ebook stores will put undue barriers on who can purchase what because of generic region policies and/or their publishing contracts being country limited. Amazon will accept any valid credit card from anywhere as l…

> the Amazon kindle store is currently the absolute best way to grab foreign ebooks wherever you live on the globe

No, piracy is.

Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM

#360

Post by motorest »

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…

> There was no law to restrict that, so they just made something up.

That's a rather facetious interpretation. You're complaining that there was no law preventing software being distributed, and as there was a need to prevent that then lawmakers fixed that problem. That's hardly surprising, isn't it?

You also seem surprised that including cryptography software in existing lists designed to prevent export of military and/or dual-use technology is also surprising, unexpected, or outlandish. If you actually think about it, is it really?

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