Slashdot Mirror
Adobe Finds No Elcomsoft-Cracked E-Books
dJCL writes "I noticed at BlackMask.com that the Adobe investigators have found not a single e-book that was decrypted by Elcomsoft's Advanced e-Book Processor, even despite the months of intensive searching of around 100,000 pirated e-books that they could find(i.e. something else was used to crack them). Just love how the laws have been able to stop people from pirating things these days."
HA HA....I just love it when a corperation screws up like this.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
...that the warez community isn't as dumb as the corporations always assume they are.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
For them to be downloading ebooks they don't own?
"Movie and recording studios, among others, say the law is necessary to stop pirating of intellectual property, which is made easy when the material is in digital format."
Unlike a VCR, which is a bitch to use.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bruce Chizen was reported as proclaiming "Doh!" at the top of his lungs. :D Actually, I thought Adobe dropped this case? (but as a criminal case, the US picked it up and ran with it).
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
There are laws that try to stop pirating?
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
Embarrassed to live in a society where capitalism takes this form. That is, the form which allows whiney 8 year-olds at the helm of massive companies who complain that a little wet spot means someone's pissed in the sandbox.
I guess if a thief goes thru the chimney instead of the door / window to get in a house, they'll never catch him.
.. umm.. bye
now if you excuse me, I have to go umm.. do something.. err.
you never heard this from me!
Have I misunderstood something, or is Adobe admitting to downloading 100,000 ebooks?
They are not the police, and do not have the right to break the law just to prove (or in this case disprove) their point.
600,000 registered users? You trolls sure are burning through the UIDs!
They're going to say "See how effective the DMCA is?"
Of course, had they found any of what they're looking for, the line would be "See how bad we need the DMCA?"
Not to give them any ideas, but if the RIAA were in a similar situation, they'd probably hire three kids for minimum wage to sit and pirate as much e-books as they could.
so they probably weren't looking very hard.
The DMCA only requires that the criminal defendant produced software aimed at circumventing copy protection. Using such software to actually circumventing copy protection is a separate offense (also under the DMCA). So the fact that they found no evidence of the software actually being used for piracy will not save the defendant from the offense of having produced the software in the first place
...whether they took any action against any of the sites/people offering the 100,000 "pirated books".
Seems to me that Adobe is merely trying to find a scapegoat, but chose an entirely wrong example to set.
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
"Opponents claim the DMCA is being used to give copyright holders greater rights in cyberspace than they have in the real world, where people can legally copy videotapes for their personal use and record music."
I'm nitpicking... but in that sentence, shouldn't "cyberspace" and "real world" should be reversed? I mean, complaints about the DMCA are that it limits copying and use of "cyberspace" digital media above and beyond "real world" analog copying and use. Normally I wouldn't complain - but this is Reuters, the source from where so many other news sources flow.
Ryan Fenton
That it wasn't much to crack anyway. It's a very simple crypto scheme, and it doesn't work... why can't judges understand this?
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
What about the visual equivalent of plugging an analogue cable into the headphone socket - take screenshots of each page and then save as JPEGs? The only surefire way of preventing e-book piracy is to prevent people from reading the things in the first place.
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
It's too bad damages aren't factored in as part of determining whether a DMCA suit is valid. Not that they wouldn't come up with something...
You know, any time you distribute a STATIC form of any kind of media, such that everyone has the same file, no matter what kind of copy protection or DRM you apply, circumventing it by the masses will be trivial. DVDs, CDs, ebooks, whatever. That should be called Jerry's postulate.
Jerry
It is kinda confusing if you read it quick, but they meant that it gives copyright holders (like Disney, or whoever) more rights. Not end users. As in "more rights to screw you."
Is it just geeks that don't like the DMCA?
The reason I ask is it seems a like a silly law made by corporations for corporations and is only used for stupid things like this...
So if it is a bad law that 99.99999% of the American population hates (100% if it weren't for the executives behind it), why does it exist? How can it exist?
I've never understood how a "free" country can have laws like this, unless a lot of people agree with them.
People who read books tend to be stuck up and think that they are really smart. People who watch movies tend to be more down to earth and cooler to hang out with because they have social skills and stuff
Especially if their excuses were:
;^)
We just needed it for research! It's just for personal use! We have a right to privacy with our own files! We deleted it within 24 hours - so it's legal! It didn't hurt anyone - we weren't going to be buying the book anyway! Mentioning them in our lawsuit is like free advertising! Potentially infringing material wants to be free!
Ryan Fenton
So let me get this straight. I can go buy a gun, with little or no background checking, and have the potential to kill dozens of children, and it isn't illegal. Or, I could make a program that could theoretically be used to pirate some stupid ebooks, and that's illegal. Wow. That's such a fucked up set of priorities my head hurts. I'm going to go drown myself now...oh fuck! That's illegal too!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I read the story, and I didn't see any 100,000 figure. I also didn't read the method used to obtain this "100,000".
Without the crack:
Braille readers cannot read the work. Since they are essentially fancy serial devices, you could fake a driver and have the work printed to a file if they did.
Students, cannot cut and past a graph or text from them. They cannot resell the book when they are done with it, They cannot even give it a way. Why, because they tie themselves to one and only one computer.
Three years from now when the the ebook is out of print and your computer dies, that is the end of the book.
If you buy an ebook today, and your computer crashes or you buy a new one that is the end of the ebook unless you want to spend an hour on a phone trying to prove what happened.
A few types of ebooks are more liberal today, but at the time this software was made most every ebook were locked down to an insane extreme.
So there are several apparently legal uses for this software, some of which do not even involve the act of copying the work.
Finally, I noticed the Prosecutor called the software burglar tools. Well last I checked even they are legal to make and sell. They are illegal to possess if you are not a lock smith. So even that analogy is flawed.
--interesting stat I heard on the radio the other day, might answer your last question. The US currently is running around 67 million laws/regulations/edicts/whatevers on the books. It's close to impossible for any one person to know all of them off the top of their head. I would imagine you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who *isn't* guilty of something.
So, let me get this right...
Adobe has been looking at thousands of illegal e-books... downloading them all... looking to see what program made them...
Adobe made the e-book reading and writing software, but what gave them the right to download thousands of books that they did not purchase in any way to look at however closely they wanted to? If they have the right to download somebody else's e-book that should be selling for $20 for free, then why can't a normal person do the same thing? What gave Adobe the right to get a huge archive of pirated materal without having any license or permission to own or download the materal?
I guess the laws bend a little for the right people at the proper times...
The temperature at which eBooks melt.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
99.9999% of the people don't know what the DMCA is much less digital rights management or copyright issues. In fact that post was just a troll showing that everywhere (even in geek land) the majority aren't always right. Chalk it up to mods being fucktards as usual.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
If, as is suggested, other means of cracking these protected ebooks were used, will the authors of those programs be subject to arrest if they ever visit the US (assuming they are non-US residents)?
Be afraid, be very afraid..
Trolling is a art,
actually suicide is not illegal. so you do have the right go kill yourself :)
Not to lend weight or support to the perposterous DMCA but I thought the wording was "primary function." If it can be shown that the primary function of the software was simply to give the user their fair use rights to read their own material, how can it be called a circumvention device? In other words, if all it's circumventing is something not recognized by US laws, I don't see what leg they have to stand on. The fact that people did not use the software to violate the contents copyright by distributing the content looks very important, if and only if the DMCA is designed to prevent copyright violation. We all know that the DMCA's primary purpose is to expand the power of and preserve the position of obsolete publishers. Bah, what a stupid law DMCA is.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So if something is illegal and not used, it should then become legal? Is that the general idea that people have here?
We can assume that Elcomsoft's reader has probably been used at least a couple times for a book where the ownership rights are questionable. I mean, there is really no other reason to use their e-book reader other than when you don't own the rights to read the e-book. So if Adobe wants to continue to promote their e-books as a viable product for publishers, shouldn't they go after people who could make publishers NOT want to use their product?
If I have an atomic bomb but never use it, should I still have the right to have it?
Just wondering which P2P program that Adobe is using to download that many ebooks
Poor Adobe came up empty-handed. Maybe they'll have more success searching for Sasquatch, or the Lochness Monster, or The Second Coming, ....
As quoted from the Reuters article (my own emphasis added):
;o)
"Adobe Systems has not been able to find proof that anyone made illegal copies of electronic books using software that could sidestep copyright safeguards in the company's eBook software, an Adobe engineer has testified. "
There's a difference in not finding proof that Elcomsoft's software didn't crack the ebooks and not finding any ebooks that were cracked by it (as the Slashdot article suggests). Sorry to be picky, but the person that wrote the slashdot story was a little sensational in his wording, and I thought there was a big enough difference to mention that.
I can understand how unbelievably hard it would be to find proof of cracking with Elcomsoft's software just by downloading cracked ebooks. I doubt Elcomsoft's software leaves any footprints in the decoded file, especially considering the extremely simplistic 'encryption' algorithm
Remember the EULA for the new media player? Remember the XP EULA? Big Bill knows who's been naughty and who's been nice because the all agreed to let him look. Perhaps he sold the information and all those craced Ebooks from user's computers to Adobe. Just a wild freaking guese. I'm sure law enfocement officials who've been busting warez rings have plenty of cracked ebooks, but the Bill snoop could and will happen if all goes accoriding to Bill.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Elcomsoft-Cracked E-Books finds Adobe!
Because they will have to put you in jail if you try to explain how to crack an ebook? Because they will have to jail themselves if they know? When you outlaw the truth, only outlaws can be honest.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
with the DMCA.
Disclaimer: IANAL
IIRC, either there is a Library of Congress decision that there are a couple of situations where the Anti-Circumvention provision does not apply to software or hardware that circumvents copy portection.
One of those situations is in with respect to a compiled list of URLs and controll information that web proxy filters may be using.
The other situation I seem to recall reading some place was if the technology in use was obsolete or had known faults that prevent legitimate access.
Out of my own curiosity, wouldn't the fact that there is a fault with the anti-circumvention software that causes it to fail to protect against new cirvumvention tools imply that the anti-circumvention, or encryption tool in question, was, well Obsolete?
-Rusty
You never know...
Because Adobe is trying to convince other companies/publishers to purchase into the ebook world. Photoshop, Illustrator et al is the responsibility of Adobe, and no one else. Who is going to sign on to selling encrypted books if they think they are going to be pirated?
Asobe doesn't "need" to do anything. They aren't stupid. They don't own the desktop publishing market for nothing.
The second amendment does not apply solely to firearms. The second amendment is concerned with arms and the right of the citizenry to use them to defend their rights against oppressive and tyranical government. Encryption technology can be a useful arm to defend your rights against unconstitutional laws. Many people feel that the constitution does not authorize the federal government to impose a law such as the DMCA. Cracking tools, are thus arms, used by the people to defend their rights.
Sounds like a bit of a stretch. Maybe, but nonetheless there are many important uses of crypto.
Stuart Eichert
This is strange... on the surface, I'd like to think that this is bad news for Adobe... but something tells me that this is bad news for Elcomsoft because news is out that their product doesn't work.
Although, does anybody actually steal e-books? I don't seem to recall "e-books" as a hot ticket item all the 1337 kiddiez want.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Kudos. I gotta remember to come to you when I need some sarcatic irony for something. :) (Er, but will people get it? I guess the last line is a giveaway.)
There's absolutely no legal difference between digital and analog. Both can be (mis)used to violate copyright.
The thing that bugs the copyright holders is that digital copies are immortal and copy without loss. They raised a ruckus over DAT, and wanted some sort of built-in copyproofing, like you could only make one copy or whatever. So this may be what you're thinking of -- they fear digital more.
With 100,00 cracked ebooks out there (at least) is it any wonder that Adobe got over protective of their market?
Adobe chose the wrong course of action, but would anyone really say that it's ok that there are so many pirated ebooks around?
I think you're blending "if the technology in use was obsolete or had known faults that prevent legitimate access" together with "a fault with the anti-circumvention software that causes it to fail to protect against new cirvumvention tools." The first is an example of a valid licensee losing access; the latter, simply progress in cracking tools. ... if I understand you right ...
Even if they did find one, or two, or three. Thousand.
That would mean that they way they choose protection to maintain their business model was wrong?
No!
Doesn't it mean nobody has been using the software to make illegal copies?
No!
So, what does this news means? Are we sure that we want to believe in a such black and white world?
--
Geeks Forever (2nd sig)
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Yep, for various independent reasons. There's no intent to break the law, the affected copyright holders couldn't possibly care about interfering with their vendor trying to enforce their rights, the copying of illegal "cracked" copies is germane to their lawsuit, and, believe it or not, it's probably fair use. :)
The DMCA doesn't kick in so far as I know -- these are just plain text files.
Sue the bastards!! - Sir Freddie Laker
Could a defense against the DMCA be the second amendment
In adition to the first amendment being a defence?
Could a defense against the DMCA be the second amendment?
Only if you're in a well-regulated militia.
Many if not most of the pirated copies of Photoshop that I've seen are *not* in the hands of 14-year-olds. They were in the hands of full-grown adults who simply didn't want to pay the $600 (or whatever) for the program.
If you buy a gun legally (ie from a liscenced firearms dealer) you DO have to undergo a background check. It's quick, but through. They get your information, call the police, who check the data base and either confirm, deny or delay the transaction based on the results. A felony record, outstanding warrant, and so on will stop the transaction.
Dimitry may or may not have violated the law. First reports said he demo'd the software in addition to the speech. If so, he broke the stupid law. Either way, RegNow is in the USA and was the one taking payments for the software so I would assume they could be held liable if Dimitry is off the hook.
Rather, wrong on both counts.
And according to The USA post DMCA, you're guilty unless and until you can prove yourself innocent! The fact that something hasn't been used to break the law doesn't mean that it CAN'T be used in that way. So by doing a pre-emptive strike, the Govt. can make sure that it never will be used to break the law. Get it?
If someone shoots someone else and gets rid of the gun and the body does that mean no crime took place. No, obviously not.
If I smuggle something into the country and nobody knows, does it make it mean it didn't happen? No, obviously not.
And to think I used to respect this community, what a bunch of idiots.
There are laws that try to stop pirating?
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Soon it will be legal : under the P2P Prevention Act or whatever it is called, media pimps, be it RIAA, MPAA or others, have the right to DOS attack P2P network. Downloading 100,000 files from a P2P network IS a DOS attack, you obviously aren't going to read them all.
It's too easy to hide you used Elcomsoft's software : you just install a pirated version of acrobat, open the pirated ebook, and then print it through the virtual printer provided by acrobat. And you've got the advantage of reducing the file size, by just choosing a lower output resolution.
I just thought that I would mention my use of copyright circumvention with PDF's that falls under 'fair use'. I have downloaded a few ebooks in my day, and they all give me license to print (1) copy for my own use. Well that is all fine and dandy, only I have an old ink jet money and time waster. I also have an access to my universitys high speed high quality dirt cheap laser printers. The only issue being getting the hard-disk locked document from point a to point b, unencrypting it is not only within my rights but it is far more convineant then trying to circumvent the university networks security to print the file from home.
What the hell is an "Ebook"? And who needs them if at all? Adobe? yep, but no one else. Woot!
But the first few seconds sting like buggerey...
I mean: there are not that much crypting settings available and 1 setting f.e. excludes multiple options in the reader.
An example: I recently bought Thinking in C# (almost finished version), in e-book format (pdf) which the writers offered for 5$. That's a bargain, so I thought "lets give it a shot". I tried acrobat, but I soon found out that the e-book was not that handy: i.e.: the advantages an e-book has over a paper-version (searching, bookmarking for fast browsing, highlighting and deleting, unlimited notes on 1 page etc) were gone in the acrobat reader since the e-book as encrypted and printing was disabled, plus there was no bookmark browse tree included. Search did work however but I couldn't print a page, couldn't copy/paste a section of a page and I couldn't create bookmarks!. I found out that Adobe offered another tool, eBook reader. So I downloaded that tool, opened the book and what a suprise: search was disabled too but I could create bookmarks.
So here I was: I paid for a legal ebook and there wasn't software to use it in full. I downloaded Jaws PDF Editor for windows. It's not a free program but the trial was enough. I loaded the ebook in the PDF editor and unlocked the encryption settings. By enabling printing, everything worked again in the eBook reader and now I can use the ebook I bought with all the features only available for electronic versions of a book.
Not thanks to adobe however, who offered only rotten tools to use the book I bought. What's wrong with having a lot of options to secure a book but still allowing users to fully enjoy the benefits of an electronic version of a book?
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
In the 2600 case, the MPAA was unable to enter into evidence a single movie decrpyted with DeCSS. Yes, probably because it's impossible to distinguish a movie decrypted with one tool versus another. In fact, these are almost perfectly analogous circumstances.
They still won their case.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
I know that I would never even consider buying an ebook for the simple reason that I can't print it out if I want to. I have never even seen ebooks on sale in any large numbers and the famed electronic book craze of a few years back (Microsoft, Adobe and another company all making proprietry standards) has completely dried up. I cannot find electronic book readers in most stores anymore and adobe's ebook reader has got to be one of the less popular downloads around today.
Being a normal human being I believe that I own something when I buy it. Everything else I consider as rent. Strange laws might call it DMCA or licence but I consider it rent. Since a real book doesn't cost all that much more than most of these books, I reckon most people would go for the real paper version.
Not only that but I fear that Orwell's 1984 and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 are becoming more and more real all the time. When will the thought police come to my house to burn my books? Is there a difference between that and the taleban?
They're going to say DMCA should be enforced much more because someone published how their eBooks were "encrypted" and and pirates have created their own tools based on the published knowledge. To prove that they just have to show the 100k pirated books decrypted with other tool than Elcomsoft's Advanced e-Book Processor and someone publishing the knowledge.
hmm, maybe I shouldn't have said that, "they" might get bad ideas.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
from the You-can't-patent-hyphens-because-we've-been-doing- it-for-years dept.
That is funny but seriously a VCR records analog which is legal to use
Of course. If they wanted VCRs to be illegal, they'd've called it the Analog Millenium Copyright Act...
-JDF
Intent to break the law has nothing to do with whether something is legal. If you kill someone, whether on purpose or accidentally, you will still be charged. Yes, the charge will differ (manslaughter vs. murder), but it is still illegal.
Second, unless Adobe has ALL of the affected copyright beholders permission to do this, they are breaking the law. Perhaps they downloaded 100,000 of some work they got permission for, or maybe they didn't. Hard to say.
These are NOT plain text files. They are PDF. There's a big difference.
Used to be a common misconception, though. Try here.
May we never see th
"That's why intellectual property is property, because it's gone when someone else gets it."
:(
Actually, I think that's exactly what the ultimate goal is: to make IP of every sort into "physical" property (ie. locked files that require a particular physical medium to work).
That way when someone "steals" a file, it would indeed be "gone". Thus in the event of IP "theft" someone would be actually *deprived* of their property. And that would fall under the laws covering ordinary property theft, which would certainly make prosecution easier.
Somehow your comment no longer seems so funny, eh?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I suppose this could be a matter of how hard they were looking .. 10,000 ebooks would be within 1 CD for statistical purposes.
(1) actually you're wrong, manslaughter also requires intent, if not to hurt someone, then to commit reckless acts; (2) I don't have the time to explain the rest of criminal law to you, take a class (it is clear you have not); (3) there's not a whit of difference between PDF and text for what DMCA is concerned about is circumvention.
I remember a movie in the 60's about all the knowledge of the world being stored in a single computer in Brussels. Everyone that needed to know anything got it from the one computer.
Some guy went to a terminal to research something in the past and discovered that huge chunks of history were disappearing from the computer.
Each time he went back more and more time periods had vanished. I think it was some sort of Illuminati Conspriracy..
I can't remember the exact plot or name of the movie as I haven't seen it in over 20-25 years. Maybe someone else remembers it..
Point is, this is coming. Paper does NOT last forever, as most of us know and there has been this gung-ho push to digitize everything in existence.
All it takes is one person with a mission in mind to change the course of history, past, present and future when all that there is has been reduced to 1's and 0's..
Bill Gate$ is working hard to take us there.
Microsoft is the single greatest threat to National Security and personal freedom on this planet..
I might need a piece of software like this for palm's e-book format. I bought a handful of palm's e-books a while back. They appear to use the credit card number you purchased the book with as a security key (scary huh? I hope it's a secure one-way hash). However, I've long since lost the card mine were purchased with and don't have record of the number anywhere. Unless customer service will cut me new copies for free, I'm going to have no way to read the books again.
At this point I'm assuming customer service will help me. But if they were to go out of business, I would have no way of reading the stuff ever again without cracking their encryption (illegal under the DCMA and if anybody ever gets their shit together, difficult to the point of being nearly impossible). It makes me angry. I paid good money for the stuff. I own it. I have a right to read it.
Actually, ya know what? I think I'm done buying e-books until somebody starts selling them in an open, unencrypted format. Screw this crap. I'm a customer, not a thief. The hell if I'm giving my business to a company that can't figure that out.
... is that Adobe's own software is probably responsible for many of the pirated e-books out there. All it takes is one employee at the company the e-book was developed at to save the e-book without the DRM protection and oh my god, people are suddenly able to distribute copies of that one file. Truthfully you cannot tell me that a good portion of pirated software/e-books don't come directly from the developing companys employees leaking stuff.
Regards,
Ryan Pritchard
Fun Extends All Basic Life Expectancies