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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."
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.
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?"
"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
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.
It is a criminal case, and Adobe is a alleged victim.
l
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/021203/crime_dmca_2.htm
"In testimony, Thomas Diaz, a senior Adobe engineer, said under cross-examination from Burton that ElcomSoft was not the only company to create software that allows people to circumvent security measures of Adobe software.
Apple Computer Inc.'s (NasdaqNM:AAPL - News) latest operating system, OS X, also disables some of Adobe's copyright prevention functions, he said."
So maybe Apple is next?
Does that mean it's legal for me to copy for "sharing purposes" with my friends from a DVD as long as I pass it through an analog format before reconverting it to digital? If the only distinction is the fact that it's digital I think the law has no ground to stand on.
--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.
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...
I'm not familiar with eBook cracking at all, but wouldn't different "methods" leave different checksums?
So take eBook you own, get checksum, take cracked eBook, check checksum.
But I'm just talking out my ass.
The headline posted to /. read "...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)". Yet, nowhere in the article did it state anything to the effect of the headline.
What the article states is "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." That is quite a departure from the 'blurb'. In fact, the article to which the blurb was referenced does not state how many searches were executed.
Perhaps this is the source of the "100,000": "In testimony in U.S. federal court, Daryl Spano, who formerly worked on Adobe's anti-piracy team, said the software company gets hundreds of tips on alleged piracy daily and could not follow up on all of them."
Oops. If they can't even follow up on "hundreds of tips daily", then how did they cover 100,000? If they did ten tips per day, every day, they'd have 27 years to get the data. Have people been pirating Adobe software for 27 years? Or can Adobe engineers (or "investigators") see future crimes now? Even at 100 tips per day its a three year chug, and I dare say imagining Adobe getting 100 or even 10 search warrents per day, every day for years is highly unlikely.
That's fair use! WTF!
Of course it is. That ain't the problem.
Did you know that the DMCA explicitly guarantees our right to fair use? It really does!
And then, in the same breath, it conveniently criminalizes any and all means of exercising that right. The tool is forbidden; the action itself remains completely legal.
It's a lot like passing a law that affirms the principle of universal suffrage and then goes on to declare that all polling stations must be in men's bathrooms.
---
Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
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.
Software with the primary purpose of circumventing copyright technology is only intended to break the law as defined by the DMCA. Note it's circumventing copyright technology they make illegal, not circumventing for the purpose of violating copyright law... just circumventing the copy protection software period.
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.
With 100000 pirated ebooks, I think it's already been proven that their "ebook technology" doesn't work.
In fact, calling something as kludgy and retrofitted as PDF with its bogus "encryption" a "technology" seems like giving it too much credit.
I agreed with his reasosn, but added that nothing in fair use here authorizes breaking the law. There is no priority given a "more established" (older?) law. Fair use is merely an exemption from copyright law.
Stealing is not civil disobedience, and violates plain old copyright law anyway. If you don't like the product don't buy it, there is no more powerful message to a capitalist. I'm perplexed why some people justify not doing that -- nothing would send a clearer message to the companies or bring change faster.
Again, his reasons are all good ones; I personally agree. I don't like the DMCA, and for that matter I don't like the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. But there's no reason for breaking these selfish laws but selfishness, a desire to have the product and boycott it, too.
Books are available in other and, IMHO, superior forms. Our local library has even started offering free online access to eBooks.
I'm not trying to be contentious, just arguing for the moral high ground.
The thing is the DMCA did curtail "fair use," by the back door as you say. It was just a sacrifice the industry was willing to make. :)
... that's opinion!); (2) Congress is aware that people are upset by the incursion into fair use. Re the partricularly draconian CBPTPA (rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?) see here.
It's only illegal (pay attention, this is the important part) to provide anyone else with tools or information that will allow them to do so!
I'm not so sure even self-help, which would work for few of us anyway, is permitted. The weird thing about the DMCA is that whereas it specifically disavows any curtailment of fair use, it also fails to provide adequate exceptions to the anti-circumvention measures. See this FAQ. It could be said this is a back door attack, or more likely sloppy legislative drafting. That's what I would argue to a court, and I'm sure has been, that Congress goofed and it's clear intent to preserve fair use should override its implicit repeal in the anti-circumvention section. That's a tough argument though, and would leave the court in the position of creating new language for the anti-circumvention checklist. They're going to leave that to Congress, I think, and anyway the courts should not be in the lawmaking business so broadly.
Fair use is mostly not a constitutional question. The problems would come, IMHO, when it runs up against the First Amendment, and that would about to near evisceration of fair use, itself a mere statute.
You are incorrrect there was no federal speed limit. There was, enforced via the Spending Clause. Yes, there is no Speeding Clause (who would have anticipated one, and it would have been thought a state matter anyway), but this exercise of power is valid. Believe me, a wide spectrum of laws are rooted in this power, it's nothing novel.
More to the point, the federal gov't was up front about what it was doing. Yes, people debated endlessly whether this was appropriate policy. I imagine it was challenged constitutionally. Note that the rule was defeated politically.
The rest is just policy. And the game's not over becuase (1) the courts have not finished deciding what all those clauses in the DMCA mean (e.g., "showing that the prohibition has a substantial adverse effect on noninfringing uses of a particular class of works") -- which in the 2600 case was kind of untenable, IMHO
I'm not trying to contradict you in every way I can -- you are right in law and principle in general -- rather this is an area of law that interests me. From my inexpert opinion, the EFF has some good evenhanded orientation materials on the content, litigation, and public opinion fight of these different initiatives.
Finally, boycott is possible and perhaps morally compelled. For example, a LOT of people are used to the idea of ripping their own music CD's, and will go WTF when they realize that's gone. Civil disobedience is a possible, too, but I think too many people are simply stealing for their own convenience. Those who commit civil disobedience must be prepared to go to jail for it. Is fair use a good enough reason for a felony conviction? Between CD and lobbying Congress, the latter is the better choice for me. I mean, this is so far about entertainment and only one form of it.
Again, I'm not sure evn your own cracking is OK, and even if it is almost none of us will have access to the tools. I really wouldn't want to ask others to break the law and risk serious legal trouble to help me, even if they're willing. That's probably their civil disobedience choice to make, unless they're profiting, in which case they're mostly garden-variety criminals.
The LoC survey deadline comes up in a few days, there's a place to start.
That's not what I get from the article, since it says that those books may have been cracked using other methods.
In any case, either way, it doesn't matter, since there are plenty of PDF readers that will just display "encrypted" PDFs for you without even the bother of cracking them. If you like, you can print to a file and re-encode to PS from those.
So, Adobe's ebook technology is broken, period.