Are Gemstar eBooks Crackable?

igaborf writes: "Last night on C-SPAN's BookTV (the only thing on TV Sunday nights worth watching other than The Simpsons -- sorry X-Files fans), Henry Yuen, chairman and CEO of Gemstar-TV Guide was touting the Gemstar eBook. In particular, he was telling the audience of publishers about the strong copy protection the product provides. But how strong is it? Briefly, each eBook reader unit has a unique embedded encryption key. When the reader is used to download a book, the book is sent in encrypted form and the key needed to decrypt the book is itself encrypted with the unit's own key. Clearly, if the decrypted book-encryption key is divulged and shared, copying the book would be fairly straightforward (albeit a violation of the DMCA). Of course, the decrypted book text itself could be shared. Their belief that neither scenario is likely seems to rest on the fact that the eBook is a closed system. I dunno, this doesn't seem like a particularly hard crack. Comments?"