Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the upside, when my Dad bought a G4 Mac, the brief block on exporting it due to its dangerous power was maximum nerd points.
They had a great add then (I also had a lot of G4’s ;-)
How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
451–460 of 538 posts
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#452I have 3 rules: 1. If possible, buy from the author directly (I mostly read tech books, so that's often an option). 2. Otherwise buy from elsewhere, without DRM. 3. If all other options fail, buy from Amazon but immediately download a DRM-free copy from libgen and use that. This is both ethical and practical.
How is paying for a DRMed book ethical? I agree that buying a DRM free book is clearly right, but if someone is only providing a book in a way that infringes on your rights, why would you give them money for that? If someone sells a book that you want to read and you have the money to pay for it, by all means, buy it. But if you are unable to buy the book because the author decided to publish it in a way so that you…
Your right to buy a DRM-free book?
I put that in the same bucket as my "right" to buy your house for $1.
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know and - cough cough - I might be embracing that as well. But still paying someone that basically leeches on someone else (and I don't mean Hollywood/Netflix etc, I mean the ripper themselves) unethical.
A lot of the time the distributor (or legal IP owner) is like a billion times more immoral than the ripper (or IP violator), and they are the ones leeching. You can choose legality over morality, but then don't claim moral high ground.
You have probably misunderstood. There are 4 parties here:
A) the content creator, owner of the IP
B) the people that copy the content made by A and publish it (i.e. the "release groups"). They can distirbute the content over bittorrent, sharing sites etc
C) people that run platforms that share copies made by B, and they offer access to those copies (sometimes even just a hash to a torrent) with some kind of paid subscription. Their added value is making it easier to access content copied by B.
D) final users, they can choose to consume content from A, B or C.
My point was that D paying for C are... weird, in my opinion.
Edit: technically there is a 5th group, like C but that do it for free, running forums etc at most hosting some banner to pay the hosting cost and not much more.
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
That sounds simple, but wouldn't the ebook you "pulled off" the Kindle still be in Amazon's format with DRM? I don't think this solves the original problem.
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of the time the distributor (or legal IP owner) is like a billion times more immoral than the ripper (or IP violator), and they are the ones leeching. You can choose legality over morality, but then don't claim moral high ground.
You have probably misunderstood. There are 4 parties here: A) the content creator, owner of the IP B) the people that copy the content made by A and publish it (i.e. the "release groups"). They can distirbute the content over bittorrent, sharing sites etc C) people that run platforms that share copies made by B, and they offer access to those copies (sometimes even just a hash to a torrent) with some kind of paid sub…
[deleted]
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kobo's pretty good. Anything to avoid Kindle books.
I bought one, but it didn't have any of the books I wanted. It seems to be nowhere near as comprehensive as the Kindle library.
I bought one to replace my aging Amazon Kindle Oasis, after the DRM move.
I've loaded it up with the epubs I have in my Calibre library (which ironically contains mostly books I've bought from Amazon before they made stripping DRM unreasonably hard).
Now I won't buy anything from Amazon because I can't strip the DRM, and hence can't read the books on my e-reader of choice.
Their loss, not mine.
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#457[dead]
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
Videogames could give them a run for their money, I guess, but only certain genres.
Most genres really. Even a 60 euros for a 6 hour experience comes at 10 euro per hour, cheaper than music and on par with movies. Add replayability, multiplayer, longer games, cheaper games, ... and many many games are under 1 euro per hour, sometimes far under. Even someone playing fifa or call of duty has a price to hour ratio thats absurdly good. And the range available is insane, used to be if you liked some genr…
Cheaper than music?! Not while Spotify is around. Assuming my listening stats are accurate I hover around 2¢/hr annually.
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
The stormlight archive isn't a representative example because: - Brandon Sanderson's books are actually relatively inexpensive, despite their popularity - Brandon sanderson ebooks are available without DRM. Interestingly, this is actually more common for fantasy and SF than other genres. Other books are more expensive and more likely to be locked behind DRM for digital books.
> Interestingly, this is actually more common for fantasy and SF than other genres. Because it's a Tor policy? Brandon Sanderson's ebooks are DRM-free because his publisher is Tor.
Yeah, it's a Tor policy, and Tor is one of the biggest publishers in fantasy/scifi, which does have a big impact on why DRM-free is more common in those genres than any other.
But it's also useful to point out that it isn't just Tor. Baen, best known for military scifi, has had a DRM-free policy for slightly longer than Tor. (Not just that, but the Baen Free Library is a really cool approach to ebooks as well, with DRM free copies of some of their most out-of-print/hard-to-print books and also the first book or two in nearly every series that they publish for a "try before you buy". Some of their hardcovers have even included CDs of sections of the Baen Free Library over the years.)
Baen did it first but Tor did it louder in that Tor's parent Macmillan went to bat for Tor and few other brands in a big lawsuit with Amazon that Amazon was applying their DRM whether the publisher wanted that or not because it was a lock-in moat for Amazon, which led to why there is now a required "This book is DRM free at the request of the publisher" acknowledgment on kindle copies of most Tor books (and a few other publishers).
Re: How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM
#460Interesting stuff. My first thought was "this is topaz" but if the font is bookerly, that makes less sense.
There's this old patent for earlier kindle web obfuscation, which used CSS layout to scramble text https://patents.google.com/patent/US8700991B1