The popular e-reader, the Amazon Kindle has been hacked this week, allowing for all purchased content to be transferred off the device via a PDF file.
Kindle e-books are sold as .AZW files which have DRM that stops users from transferring the purchased books to other devices that are not Kindles.
That should no longer be a problem thanks to Israeli hacker “Labba” who has cracked the DRM. A second hacker, “I <3 cabbages,” has released the “Unswindle” program, which will reformat digital content downloaded and stored on the Kindle for PC app, converting it to easily movable formats, such as PDF.
“Cabbages” did note that Amazon’s DRM process was tough to crack, although ultimately Amazon’s work was in vain. “Amazon actually put a bit of effort behind the DRM obfuscation in their Kindle for PC application. And they seem to have done a reasonable job on the obfuscation. Way to go Amazon! It’s good enough that I got bored unwinding it all and just got lazy with the Windows debugging APIs instead,” he said.
Result for: drm
Cory Doctorow, the keynote speaker at the O’Reilly Tools of Change (TOC) conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair, had a few choice words for publishers who continue to use DRM on their e-books, calling them “the real pirates,” and “bent on the destruction of publishing.”
Doctorow is the author of the Boing-Boing blog and long time activist in the industry.
Says Doctorow, via BookSeller.com: “Digital licensing systems currently employed destroy the bond between the readers and the book.”
He continued that DRM was a “farcical” way to exploit consumers, adding that “there is no mechanism whereby a retailer of a [print] book can take it away from you,” and that a system wherein that exists is “insane.”
Doctorow concluded that the “most valuable asset that publishers have” is the knowledge that a book “is passed to kids or has come from your parents”.
Result for: drm
Yesterday we reported that the AACS Final Adopter Agreement had been made available and surprisingly still included in the license was the controversial Managed Copy which allows owners of Blu-ray movies to make themselves one legal digital copy to be played at home.
Today, Michael Ayers, chairman of the AACS Licensing Authority, has confirmed that all discs beginning in January 2010 will allow for one full 1080p resolution copy, which will be a Windows Media DRM video file which can then be burnt once to recordable BD or DVD discs.
Unfortunately, Ayers admits, most Blu-ray owners will not be able to make the copies immediately as current players will not have the ability to make the “managed copies.” Suppliers do not expect to get new players out with the ability to do so until the Q2 2010 at the earliest.
Additionally, the major studios have the ability to charge for the copy and will have full control over what kind of backups can be made.
According to VideoBusiness, “the way managed copy is expected to work is that a consumer would insert their disc in a Blu-ray player and the disc’s menu would include an option to make a managed copy or the consumer might have to press some buttons on their Blu-ray device to make a copy, Ayers said. Once they choose the option to make a copy, the Blu-ray player connects online to an authorization server, run by a studio, supplier or the AACS-LA. The authorization server then gives the go-ahead to make a copy.”
