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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?"
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.
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.
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Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
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.