E-Book Copy Protection, For What It's Worth

AudioBooksForFree.Com writes "WHSmith have challenged AudioBooksForFree.Com to breaks Microsoft Reader e-book protection. It just took 30 minutes." No, they didn't break the encryption; instead, this is just an application of the idea that it's very hard to make something which can be displayed but not copied.

Comments

If you can see it, you can copy it

[bigberk]

The article hits the nail on the head: if you can see it, you can copy it. Please note that the recording industry thinks they can change this sort of thing, by requiring all analog to digital converts (ADCs) to respect some sort of digital protection. Those dumb shits... :)

Re:If you can see it, you can copy it

[binaryDigit]

if you can see it, you can copy it

Well, sorta. One thing that you can't simply "copy" is interactivity. DVD's are an excellent example. While you could copy the film, you can't "copy" the menuing. You also can't simply "copy" the various audio tracks (directors commentary, other languages, etc) and have them selectable. Now, you could copy all these things piecemeal and then put them back together with a DVD authoring program, but who'd do all that just to save $14.99.

So I think that what we'll start seeing a lot more of is "non-linear" content. Stuff that you can't just simply "press record" to get. This combined with reasonable prices will thwart many a casual copier. Then to boot, the mass pirater gets hurt because they don't want to spend the time to make "nice" copies, so they'll just copy the movie. Which will still make them bucks because a lot of people just want to see the movie anyway. But more and more people are getting addicted to all those fancy new features. And certainly, anyone who wants to "own" a copy often will definitely want those features.

So we are in the interesting place that the media industries best weapon against piracy is to take advantage of the technology more and sell it at a reasonable price, not the worst thing in the world.

Re:second impressions

[octalgirl]

It's always the simplest things. Like security, there are so many things you can do to tighten things up, but people will still tape their passwords to their monitors. I can see it now - the next wave of "innovative" copy protection will be issuing new keyboards with the Print Screen key conveniently missing.

Devil's Advocate

[the_burton]

If the world were a free and happy place, then authors and artists would be not need to be paid for their intellectual property. In this utopian land, everyone would be equals and if you provided happiness and joy with your works then that would be your job, and you wouldn't need to get paid. Unfortunately, this society does not exist and as our current one does not seem to be heading in this direction, it becomes necessary to provide the means for independant artists and authors to sell their wares.

The problem with the e-book reader is one of the greatest hurdles to overcome in order to transition to a truely electronic society. How can you protect the rights of the author when anybody with a bit of patience or some programming skills can just print screen his / her blood, sweat and tears and give it away to free for anybody on a p2p network? Anybody who argues that all information should be free obviously isn't relying on a royalty check to provide food for their children.

I have a unique idea for the e-publishing world, but there's no point in executing it if the ability to easily circumvent any security precautions exists. So basically I'm asking any programmers out there if they've come across a way to disable the print screen function in a windows app? Or to return a black window when a screen request is being made for a print screen?

Reminds me of unphotocopiable paper & SimCityR

[UnknownSoldier]

Back in the late 80's, SimCity (original PC version) shipped with this dark red paper that was impossible to photocopy and just as bloody difficult to read except if you held it at the wierdest angles. All you would get is a full page of black from the copier.

A friend of mine got the bright idea of running it thru the fax machine. He ran each succesive copy thru the fax a few times, and voila! It was clear enough to read!!

Of course I just kracked the game later (gotta luv the one byte "patch" ;-), but I learnt way back then, that if you can view it, so can a machine, and hence make a copy.

--
Maybe there is a reason why the cliché "Turn off the TV, turn on your life" is true:
Television: Opiate of the masses