5 ms·

This is a complete hunch, but I bet in a few years time the DRM on books is going to go away much like the DRM on music has recently with iTunes/Amazon MP3's.

This is a complete hunch, but I bet in a few years time the DRM on books is going to go away much like the DRM on music has recently with iTunes/Amazon MP3's. Amazon needs a hook to get publishers to trust the device. If it gains mass appeal you'll probably see the DRM fade away.

rbanffy 17y ago
It's much harder. E-books don't have a huge analog loophole.
- khafra 17y ago
  Like a photocopier/scanner?
  - JoelSutherland 17y ago
    No, not like a photocopier/scanner. A song with DRM can be played and rerecorded in real time. So ~4 minutes a song. This can also happen without human intervention. A book can be scanned in hours at best, with a human involved the whole time. (I am sure there is specialty hardware that can do this, but that isn't quite the same a a commodity PC)
    - 0x44 17y ago
      http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-from-Trash-and-Cheap-C/ http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-... According to the author of the above instructable, it takes about 20 minutes to scan a book.
      - ramchip 17y ago
        Still requires a lot more hardware and work than for music, but I must admit I've been surprised by the (obviously hand-scanned) books you can find sometimes on the net. Sometimes people are willing to go the extra mile...
        0x44 17y ago
        In 1998, a CD-ROM drive cost around $100, and ripping a CD took around twenty minutes. That was CD-ripping's nascency. We're only dipping our toes in the book-digitizing nascency, and it takes around twenty minutes to rip a book and $300 for the platen and a couple digital cameras.
    - natrius 17y ago
      The Kindle app can run in the emulator, right? Write a script to take screenshots and page through the book. Bonus points for OCR. Is there a reason this wouldn't work?
      - mikedouglas 17y ago
        The Kindle app can run in the emulator, right? Nope. The iphone simulator doesn't emulate the ARM architecture, so even if you cracked the app store drm, you'd need to run it on an actual device. For something to run in the simulator, it would need to be compiled to i386.
        rbanffy 17y ago
        It shouldn't be that hard to make a QEMU-based iPhone (or Kindle) emulator. Obviously, Amazon and Apple would unleash their hordes of lawyers upon the poor person who ventured in such an ill advised adventure. Sounds like a fun ill advised adventure to take part in.
    - DannoHung 17y ago
      Scanned PDFs are a pretty big analog loophole, even if they've not been OCR'd.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    Exactly. Laboriously scanning a whole book is far more effort than ripping a CD.
  - bartl 17y ago
    One loophole is that the contents for most books is plain text. I remember having read that within days after some Harry Potter books were available in bookshops, they were already available in electronic form, retyped by dozens of volunteers. (for example: http://chrishall.wordpress.com/2006/03/17/link-list-reading-20-summit/ http://chrishall.wordpress.com/2006/03/17/link-list-reading-...)
    - furyg3 17y ago
      Some were even translated... amazing.
- ynniv 17y ago
  Who uses the analog loophole anymore? Do what modern audio DRM stripping utils do and take the output of the document before it leaves the computer and programmatically re-assemble it. The eBook version of this would be creating a program that scrolls around the page area taking screen shots and reassembling them.
- graphene 17y ago
  Even if the loophole for books is smaller, the point is, it only has to be applied once by anyone anywhere, after which it can be shared freely like any other non-DRM'ed file. I'm not convinced that the total amount of internet sharing of a work is decreased too much by the fact that is was in a physical form to start with.

rbanffy 17y ago

It's much harder. E-books don't have a huge analog loophole.

khafra 17y ago
Like a photocopier/scanner?
- JoelSutherland 17y ago
  No, not like a photocopier/scanner. A song with DRM can be played and rerecorded in real time. So ~4 minutes a song. This can also happen without human intervention. A book can be scanned in hours at best, with a human involved the whole time. (I am sure there is specialty hardware that can do this, but that isn't quite the same a a commodity PC)
  - 0x44 17y ago
    http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-from-Trash-and-Cheap-C/ http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-... According to the author of the above instructable, it takes about 20 minutes to scan a book.
    - ramchip 17y ago
      Still requires a lot more hardware and work than for music, but I must admit I've been surprised by the (obviously hand-scanned) books you can find sometimes on the net. Sometimes people are willing to go the extra mile...
      - 0x44 17y ago
        In 1998, a CD-ROM drive cost around $100, and ripping a CD took around twenty minutes. That was CD-ripping's nascency. We're only dipping our toes in the book-digitizing nascency, and it takes around twenty minutes to rip a book and $300 for the platen and a couple digital cameras.
  - natrius 17y ago
    The Kindle app can run in the emulator, right? Write a script to take screenshots and page through the book. Bonus points for OCR. Is there a reason this wouldn't work?
    - mikedouglas 17y ago
      The Kindle app can run in the emulator, right? Nope. The iphone simulator doesn't emulate the ARM architecture, so even if you cracked the app store drm, you'd need to run it on an actual device. For something to run in the simulator, it would need to be compiled to i386.
      - rbanffy 17y ago
        It shouldn't be that hard to make a QEMU-based iPhone (or Kindle) emulator. Obviously, Amazon and Apple would unleash their hordes of lawyers upon the poor person who ventured in such an ill advised adventure. Sounds like a fun ill advised adventure to take part in.
  - DannoHung 17y ago
    Scanned PDFs are a pretty big analog loophole, even if they've not been OCR'd.
- Semiapies 17y ago
  Exactly. Laboriously scanning a whole book is far more effort than ripping a CD.
- bartl 17y ago
  One loophole is that the contents for most books is plain text. I remember having read that within days after some Harry Potter books were available in bookshops, they were already available in electronic form, retyped by dozens of volunteers. (for example: http://chrishall.wordpress.com/2006/03/17/link-list-reading-20-summit/ http://chrishall.wordpress.com/2006/03/17/link-list-reading-...)
  - furyg3 17y ago
    Some were even translated... amazing.
ynniv 17y ago
Who uses the analog loophole anymore? Do what modern audio DRM stripping utils do and take the output of the document before it leaves the computer and programmatically re-assemble it. The eBook version of this would be creating a program that scrolls around the page area taking screen shots and reassembling them.
graphene 17y ago
Even if the loophole for books is smaller, the point is, it only has to be applied once by anyone anywhere, after which it can be shared freely like any other non-DRM'ed file. I'm not convinced that the total amount of internet sharing of a work is decreased too much by the fact that is was in a physical form to start with.