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Microsoft Reader Format Cracked

Anonymous Coward writes "Pocket PC Addict has a cool story about how some guy named Dan Jackson is distributing an unfortunately named program that will remove the security from Microsoft Reader ebooks. Once the security is removed, it then allows the book to be converted to html, text or any other format."

7 of 448 comments (clear)

  1. Code can be downloaded here by itsnotme · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can download the code from his homepage here: http://members.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell/clit.zip

    And obviously his homepage is: http://members.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell

  2. Re:The Name by 0x0d0a · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not Free software. The guy didn't hand out the source (which is a shame, or else Linux folks could be reading eBooks right now).

  3. lit was cracked a long time ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's been a Windows macro floating around for a long time that converts lit to text. It basically sends window events to the MS Reader program to scroll through the e-book, and more windows events to dump the text to Wordpad. It's just a few dozen lines long and isn't much of a jump in sophistication over taking screen shots. Face it Microsoft, as long as the book content is displayed on the screen where people can see it, there's no way to stop it from getting captured.

  4. source code? by Ashish+Kulkarni · · Score: 5, Informative
    I doubt that the source code has been made available to "Dan Jackson". Relveant quote from the post original program's author made on the newsgroup:

    Please note that right now this is VERY alpha. It's the first release. It also is available only as a binary, for Windows console. I wrote a GUI in ASM, but porting it to WINAPI is a pain in the arse... I won't bang on about it, but it's pathetic that it's easier to code in ASM than C on the Windows platform. The original was written under *NIX --- but I'm not willing to distribute the source just yet, for a variety of reasons.

    There WILL be a polished GUI, as well as a source release in the future. I am unable to post here anonymously (and hence using a public library system and some vulnerable machines for this post) so, updates will probably NOT be announced here, unless someone is willing to play proxy for me.

  5. Re:where to get ebooks? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Online Books Page

    Over 10,000 online books free to the public.

  6. Re:Okay, great. But... by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hey, I know a guy that bought - sorry, I mean licensed - a bunch of eBooks. Then he bought a new handheld, and found out that he couldn't transfer the license, so he'd effectively paid for a bunch of scrambled bits. For those who don't know, that's how eBooks work, they're licensed per machine. If you upgrade devices (or your device breaks), you lose the right to read.

    Believe me, he won't be buying - sorry, licensing - any more, even with this thing available.

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  7. Too Late - It's on Freenet!! :) by Corrado · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to this Usenet post it's available on freenet with a key of KSK@MSReader_Converter.zip. I knew freenet would come in handy someday. :)

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