4 ms·

In the case of Amazon at least, the DRM on Kindle ebooks is ludicrously easy to crack. Every book I purchase, I crack - both for self-preservation (the removal

by frio 14y ago

In the case of Amazon at least, the DRM on Kindle ebooks is ludicrously easy to crack. Every book I purchase, I crack - both for self-preservation (the removal of 1984 from every device it was installed on was worrying), and because not being able to share frustrates me. More than games, music, etc., not being able to share books drives me crazy. Everyone in my flat has a small library; we share our books between eachother. When we started getting Kindles, that was stymied: after reading the first book in the Void trilogy on paper, I was unable to let my flatmate (who read the first book after me) read the second book - because I bought it on Kindle. That was... well, lame. So now, I manage my Kindle with Calibre. Every book I buy gets cracked.

caf 14y ago
This is exactly what I do with my Kobo. I buy EPUB format books and immediately crack the DRM off and load them into Calibre, confident that I'll be able to convert it and load it onto whatever device I may buy in the future.
runjake 14y ago
Either you are buying off a different Amazon store or there's some new Topaz DRM decryption scheme. As far as I know, most current Kindle books aren't crackable.
- wging 14y ago
  Hardly new... they're definitely crackable.
- freehunter 14y ago
  I've had one Kindle book recently that Calibre wasn't able to crack automatically. It was a Kindle print replica textbook which I bought to read on my Touchpad in class. Turns out when they say "PC/Mac/iPad Compatible", they really mean ONLY PC/Mac/iPad. Android Kindle apps can't read them. I spent the entire weekend cracking their various obfuscation methods to find out it was a DRM'd PDF wrapped in a Palm Database format container. When I got it completely stripped, it was a straight PDF with no loss of functionality. Could they have sold it as a PDF with their normal Kindle DRM? Yes. Would this have been sufficient enough to keep piracy to acceptable levels? Yes. Any miniscule amount of DRM is enough. It's like putting WEP on your router. It will keep out the riff raff (which is good enough for most cases) but anyone who is determined to break your encryption will figure out how to do it. With something like an ebook, I would imagine that 9:1 sales to piracy rate would be realistic, and that's well within acceptable range in my opinion.
wazoox 14y ago
listen, if you want to get rid of DRM legally and as soon as possible, the only reasonable way is not to crack, but to boycott DRM laden ebooks, plain and simple. That's what I do. It's annoying but it's the price to pay if you want things to be what's right and not what egoistically please you more.

by frio 14y ago

caf 14y ago

This is exactly what I do with my Kobo. I buy EPUB format books and immediately crack the DRM off and load them into Calibre, confident that I'll be able to convert it and load it onto whatever device I may buy in the future.

runjake 14y ago

Either you are buying off a different Amazon store or there's some new Topaz DRM decryption scheme. As far as I know, most current Kindle books aren't crackable.

wging 14y ago
Hardly new... they're definitely crackable.
freehunter 14y ago
I've had one Kindle book recently that Calibre wasn't able to crack automatically. It was a Kindle print replica textbook which I bought to read on my Touchpad in class. Turns out when they say "PC/Mac/iPad Compatible", they really mean ONLY PC/Mac/iPad. Android Kindle apps can't read them. I spent the entire weekend cracking their various obfuscation methods to find out it was a DRM'd PDF wrapped in a Palm Database format container. When I got it completely stripped, it was a straight PDF with no loss of functionality. Could they have sold it as a PDF with their normal Kindle DRM? Yes. Would this have been sufficient enough to keep piracy to acceptable levels? Yes. Any miniscule amount of DRM is enough. It's like putting WEP on your router. It will keep out the riff raff (which is good enough for most cases) but anyone who is determined to break your encryption will figure out how to do it. With something like an ebook, I would imagine that 9:1 sales to piracy rate would be realistic, and that's well within acceptable range in my opinion.

wazoox 14y ago

listen, if you want to get rid of DRM legally and as soon as possible, the only reasonable way is not to crack, but to boycott DRM laden ebooks, plain and simple. That's what I do. It's annoying but it's the price to pay if you want things to be what's right and not what egoistically please you more.