How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Oct 23, 2012, 7:27 PM UTC

bo1024 wrote: post #27

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

I have started going back to real books for any book I might want to keep, loan, or give to a friend when I'm finished. It would be nice not to be screwed over by DRM yet again. I like my Kindle, but it doesn't help me read. It helps Amazon make money. The only thing it does is for me is to help me carry lots of books around easily.

If your books have no DRM, how will DRM screw you over? Isn't that the point of this posting?

It's not just the books, but the reader.

This is straight Stallman: if you don't fundamentally control your computing environment, you don't own it, and you have no freedoms within it save those granted by the entity that does control that environment.

A Lessig might modify that slightly and say that your freedoms are actually balanced between four influences: Law, Norms, Market, Architecture. In the case of DRMd works on proprietary hardware, law and architecture are both opposed to the rights of the individual. Presumably Amazon responded to social norms and market pressures.

I prefer having more power on my side. It's a key reason I've avoided the e-reader game to date, despite some interest in going there.

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

#72

Post by shmerl » Tue, Oct 23, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #65

shmerl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EULAs can't override laws. Even if you break the EULA for legitimate purpose - you aren't necessarily breaking any laws.

Nobody said anything about breaking laws . EULAs are technically legally binding contracts, and breaking them leaves you liable in civil court.

Point is, EULA can't even restrict you for civil cases if it contradicts your rights. But that can vary from country to country.

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

#73

Post by runjake » Tue, Oct 23, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

This is from 2011 and hugely outdated.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.

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

#74

Post by cynwoody » Tue, Oct 23, 2012, 8:00 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #16

The Wired link adds nothing. They link to ( http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/ebooks-formats... )

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, making the solution that much easier to find for folks tired of DRM.

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

#75

Post by cynwoody » Tue, Oct 23, 2012, 8:06 PM UTC

johnrgrace wrote: post #61

oneandoneis2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All O'Reilly ebooks are DRM-free. http://shop.oreilly.com/category/ebooks.do

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?

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

#76

Post by gizmo686 » Tue, Oct 23, 2012, 8:14 PM UTC

bo1024 wrote: post #54

DanBC wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are refusing to pay Amazon (or other providers) for DRMd content - a boycott of anything with DRM. Some people are not going to break any laws, even if those laws are mostly technical and not going to be enforced. And providing means to remove DRM is more problematic because the law is enforced a bit more rigorously there.

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 exception mentioned above also, explicitly, does not apply to the following provision: "No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that-- `(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; `(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or `(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c105:1:./temp/~c105hq5...:

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

#77

Post by noste » Tue, Oct 23, 2012, 8:27 PM UTC

listic wrote: post #25

RexRollman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some books on Amazon are DRM free. The publisher is the one who decides if they want to use it.

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=...

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

#78

Post by bduerst » Tue, Oct 23, 2012, 8:31 PM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #72

bduerst wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody said anything about breaking laws . EULAs are technically legally binding contracts, and breaking them leaves you liable in civil court.

Point is, EULA can't even restrict you for civil cases if it contradicts your rights. But that can vary from country to country.

And also state to state, which is why I said pending a Judge doesn't throw it out.

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

#79

Post by gizmo686 » Tue, Oct 23, 2012, 8:35 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #66

acabal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Baen also has a problem with OCR'd text. I downloaded a Greg Bear book from them a few weeks ago and it was clearly OCR'd without a second look towards quality. It had so many typos and spelling errors that it was practically unreadable. I returned it for a refund. To be fair Amazon also has this problem. It's hard being an ebook consumer when 90% of books either have DRM or are unreadably OCR'd.

I tried doing this with some case studies in graduate school - any open sourced OCR is very difficult to deal with. Of course, this was a couple years ago. Can anyone recommend a library or API that offers a decent OCR?

I just started a project of scanning in and OCR`ing old school news-papers. Tesseract [1] works very well. The result is almost always completely read-able, with a few obvious mistakes (that seem like could be reduced to almost none with a fairly simple post-processor). In terms of usability, it is a terminal program that is run as `tesseract srcFile.jpg dstFile`. It also has a list of gui front-ends on the site (none of which I have looked at).

[1] http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/

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

#80

Post by bduerst » Tue, Oct 23, 2012, 8:51 PM UTC

gizmo686 wrote: post #79

bduerst wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried doing this with some case studies in graduate school - any open sourced OCR is very difficult to deal with. Of course, this was a couple years ago. Can anyone recommend a library or API that offers a decent OCR?

I just started a project of scanning in and OCR`ing old school news-papers. Tesseract [1] works very well. The result is almost always completely read-able, with a few obvious mistakes (that seem like could be reduced to almost none with a fairly simple post-processor). In terms of usability, it is a terminal program that is run as `tesseract srcFile.jpg dstFile`. It also has a list of gui front-ends on the site (non…

Cool - Tesseract was what I came across last week while working on one of my own projects. It's the only one I know of right now, and it's nice to hear someone confirm it.