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How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others
- workingbrains 14y agoFor E-book lovers it is very useful and easy to use also.
- cadab 14y agoI found this link to be more helpful, in regards to what plugins to use. (Note for Windows + Kindle) http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/06/15/how-add-kindle-drm-removal-plugin-calibre/ http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/06/15/how-add-kindle-...
- zokier 14y agoAt least that is 18 months more recent, that should help a bit.
- js951534 14y agoCheckout http://coinread.com http://coinread.com where one can download thousands of ebooks (DRM removed, scanned etc)
- s666 14y agothanks!
- digitalengineer 14y agoWhat a confusing website. After they get your email via google login you can DL a 'trial' .chm file. Full books cost "coins" Looks like a pirate site that sells other people's content for "coins".
- s666 14y agoOne does not need to login, search bar at top of main page when not logged in, downloads are all direct and free!
- digitalengineer 14y agoYou're right. It DL .chm files that are complete. However, it is a pirate website. If you really like the authors you shouldn't mind paying for it. If they don't offer a DRM-free book, well you can buy the DRM book and get your backup right here it seems.
- js951534 14y agoOf course one can pay, build a large collection and have it all yanked away at a whim > http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4682392 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4682392 Pirates on the other hand offer a much nicer service that works and doesnt treat customers like crap, maybe the publishing industry can learn from them Anyways this site and many others are busy stripping DRM of ebooks and making it free to download for all!
- digitalengineer 14y agoYes free as in stolen-content-without-compensating-the-author. I prefer DRM-free books myself (or ripping the DRM and making it DRM-free) but the books at this website are in fact all stolen. (I'm sure you know).
- js951534 14y agoNow now don't be looking down at me from your high moral horse The difference between you and the pirates is that pirates also prefer to buy books and strip DRM but they share it with everyone :D By the way authors at best get ~10% commission for each book sale, rest goes to a publisher.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
- angela13 14y agograzie! Found many new books too I couldn't find elsewhere.
- daeken 14y agoAll you do is spam this site, and half the comments under this are obvious sock puppets of yours. Why are you not banned yet?
- edufernandez 14y agoAny good command line tool for doing this?
- atopuzov 14y agoThey are included in the tools zip
- DanielBMarkham 14y agoI 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.
- bo1024 14y agoIf your books have no DRM, how will DRM screw you over? Isn't that the point of this posting?
- DanBC 14y agoSome 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.
- bo1024 14y agoMy understanding is that removing DRM for personal use only is legal in the US.
- gizmo686 14y agoIt 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/~c105hq5F7A:e11962 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c105:1:./temp/~c105hq5...:
- ansible 14y agoSadly, 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.
- acabal 14y agoBaen 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.
- ansible 14y agoI've seen that with a couple books from Smashwords, but I'd expect better from Baen. I think I've only bought books by their regular authors (Weber, Flint, Drake) and I've not had that problem.
- bruceboughton 14y agoI've never experienced this with Amazon. Presumably it is a publisher problem, not a retailer problem. What publishers have you experienced this with?
- acabal 14y agoIt's endemic in the industry. With a few exceptions, try downloading any book printed before, say, the year 2000. A good example is the Kindle copy of Dune that Amazon sells. Spend $15 ($3 more than having the print version delivered to your doorstep!) on one of the most famous science fiction books of all time only to find that it's riddled with spelling errors, grammar errors, and word omissions. (Or just read the Amazon reviews that tell you as much.) Another good example is the older Dark Tower books. I bought book 3 a year ago and it was in the same unreadable state. I also returned it for a refund. New books aren't a problem, they're designed with ebooks in mind. It's just older books that the publisher quickly OCR'd and spammed Amazon with to make a quick buck.
- oneandoneis2 14y agoSince I disapprove of Amazon's DRM policy, the only books on my kindle are tech books from O'Reilly (DRM-free) and fiction from Project Gutenburg (DRM-free) I know I could download ebooks from Amazon and just remove their DRM, but I think it's better to vote with my wallet. After all, they sell the Kindle at cost and rely on you buying books from them to make any profit. So don't buy their books and maybe they'll learn..
- RexRollman 14y agoSome books on Amazon are DRM free. The publisher is the one who decides if they want to use it.
- listic 14y agoHow do you see which books are DRM-free before purchase?
- noste 14y agoAt 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=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1351023851&sr=1-2 http://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Cinema-ebook/dp/B0089LOEBS/ref=...
- donniezazen 14y agoIs there a way to tell if this book has DRM? http://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Exploring-the-Brain-ebook/dp/B008QWSV2S/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1351042693&sr=1-1&keywords=neuroscience+exploring+the+brain http://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Exploring-the-Brain-ebook...
- jbrechtel 14y agoYes. This part in the details section: "Simultaneous Device Usage: Up to 4 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits" means that it has DRM.
- DanBC 14y agoThe Wired link adds nothing. They link to (http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/ebooks-formats-drm-and-you-%E2%80%94-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/ http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/ebooks-formats...)
- stuff4ben 14y agoI wouldn't say that. Wired offered a good synopsis to what apprenticealf's site contains which is all a lot of people want, including me.
- bandy 14y agoIt add nothing other than exposing Apprentice Alf's blog posting to their large readership - which is more than nothing.
- cynwoody 14y agoI 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.
- DanBC 14y ago"The Wired link adds no value for the readers of HN, apart from a tl;dr".
- tomrod 14y agoI disagree--I learned something.
- DanBC 14y agoWhat extra information did the Wired link add over the page that Wired link to? (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/how-to-strip-drm-from-kindle-e-books-and-others/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/how-to-strip-drm-from...) (http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/drm-removal-tools-for-ebooks/ http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/drm-removal-to...)
- RexRollman 14y agoThe real problem is there is nothing that requires companies to provide continued access to DRM-encumbered media; they can turn it off whenever they want. In my opinion, if a company can't or won't provide a way for a customer to access their purchased files, then they should be required by law to provide a way for the customer to un-DRM those files.
- jiggy2011 14y agoI would think that the problem is that one of the reasons people like Amazon want to use DRM is to ensure that no DRM free copies of the media exist. One DRM-free copy can multiply into 1 million DRM free copies very quickly. Of course in reality this is laughably unworkable unless they release a future version of the kindle which requires DRMd media.
- dredmorbius 14y agoAnd that's happened. Several times. One that comes to mind was a Microsoft product, though I know there've been others. Does anyone know of an "orphaned DRM systems" list somewhere? Another, from Yahoo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/27/AR2008072701435.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07...
- danso 14y agoDoes 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
- fab13n 14y agoNo it doesn't. You reload DRM-stripped books on the device, as if it had never been bought from Amazon. Don't forget that DRMs aren't here to save Amazon from piracy. Today and for the next couple of years, what they really care about is securing a dominant position. So the DRM security only needs to be good enough to reassure clueless edition managers, who believe that DRM will help their business rather than hurt it. So they have no incentive to get out of their way to bug DRM-stripping customers (in light of which, I'd guess some of the morons who handled Linn Nygaard's case will be fired, and deservedly so). Same as iTunes DRM actually, which Apple ended up discarding once they were in a position to tell the music editor to just shut up.
- danso 14y ago> No it doesn't. You reload DRM-stripped books on the device, as if it had never been bought from Amazon. Yeah that's the issue...From what I can tell, Amazon differentiates between both and I imagine that would affect how its central database of highlights/bookmarkings keeps track of each individual book. I suppose this would affect you only if you were highlighting a DRM book and then stripped the DRM...which I guess is mostly an edge case.
- TeMPOraL 14y agoFrom what I saw on my own Kindle, there's no "central database of highlights/bookmarkings"; it's stored per book in new files Kindle create next to each book.
- danso 14y ago> No it doesn't. You reload DRM-stripped books on the device, as if it had never been bought from Amazon. Yeah that's the issue...From what I can tell, Amazon differentiates between both and I imagine that would affect how its central database of highlights/bookmarkings keeps track of each individual book. I suppose this would affect you only if you were highlighting a DRM book and then stripped the DRM...which I guess is mostly an edge case.
- CookWithMe 14y agoHe publicly admitted that he cracks his ebooks. IANAL, but his missteps would be much easier to proof in court, compared to the case of the Norwegian kindle user. But for some reason, I strongly doubt Amazon will ban him...
- Derbasti 14y agoFrankly, 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 care, either. It's just a pacifier for publishers.
- aik 14y agoThere'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?
- makmanalp 14y agoAll you lawyers: Is removing / tampering with Kindle DRM legal in this case? Considering we bought the material?
- bduerst 14y agoIt all comes down to the end user agreement you agree to when purchasing the ebook. Content providers are within their right to define how they want their copyrighted works to be used - though a judge could potentially throw out the end user agreement in court. So, if Amazon stipulates that you should not tamper with or remove the DRM from the ebook, it's a violation of your purchase agreement if you do. Basically, you agree to not remove the DRM when you pay them for their content. The only legal alternative is to not buy from them.
- incision 14y agoI've always just sort of tolerated the Kindle. Lately I've been doing most of my reading via Safari. I pay for the "library" level plan and feel it's worth every penny, in spite of the horrendous mobile app. Every few months, I spend Safari token on an ePub copy of something particularly good. I'd like to see all publishers offer the option to purchase a print + DRM-free digital copy for not much more than print alone just as O'Reilly and Pearson do today.
- runjake 14y agoThis 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.
- zzzmarcus 14y agoIt still works. I can verify that from having seen it done first hand as recently as yesterday.
- lemming 14y agoThis 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.
- ixacto 14y agohttp://thepiratebay.se/browse/601 http://thepiratebay.se/browse/601 + a spiral binder + a laser printer. Knowledge should be free.
- gizmo686 14y agoWith 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-1201-Statement.html http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2010/Librarian-of-Congress-120...
- segmond 14y agoI have a kindle but I find that it's still cheaper to buy most paper books, I just buy them used and the price is still cheaper than getting a kindle version. I use the kindle for checking out books from my local library for free.