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."

Comments

Familiar

[djward]

Sounds like Skylarov all over again...

Re:Familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... but this software is produced by a foreign national in his own country (UK) so US law couldn't possibly apply... just like Skylarov, ohh!

Re:Familiar

[giel]

It sure does.

It seems that this software can be used to copy or extract secured data. Which might or could be a little somewhat illegal. But hey, you can use a computer to crack software... So I guess they should lock me up because I own a computer.

There is something I do not understand: if a vast majority of the public believes it is OK to copy software or electronic content, how can it be there exist laws to prohibit copying? I mean most of us live in democratic countries, don't we?

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[Mac Degger]

Ah, but we live in a truly free county, where pot is legal-ish on the grounds that it's not a harmfull substance. Not all governments have that kind of common sence.
Hell, on grounds of copyright, patent law and the odd belief that we should be able to do what we want with something when we've bought it (unless it happens to kill the neighbour or his cat), I think there's not a country on earth which has laws which enforce what the mayority thinks is right...wlecome to the real world, where justice is only blind to the laws being bought.

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[Huge Pi Removal]

There is something I do not understand: if a vast majority of the public believes it is OK to copy software or electronic content, how can it be there exist laws to prohibit copying? I mean most of us live in democratic countries, don't we?

If absolutely every law was put to referendum, we'd essentially have mob rule. What "the majority" want and what's actually *good* for us/the country are not always the same thing. If it were, all you'd have to do in the UK is point at someone, shout "paedophile," and it would be legal to string them up from the nearest lamppost.

The problem with the DMCA, etc, etc, is that it tries to solve a problem by brute force. A bit like trying to bomb other countries to get them to do what you want *ahem* :) In the UK, drink-driving laws were doing very little until, over several years of solid campaigning, drink-driving was made totally socially unacceptable, and the problem is now under control. Similarly, the problem with, say, CD copy-protection is that because the RIAA and the record industry as a whole are seen as being rich and nasty, people don't care about copying CDs to give to their friends or share over the internet. Hence, copy-protection is introduced, along with laws to stop you circumventing it, which stops *any* fair use at all.

The problem is not that the majority want it but it's not happening. The problem is that there's nothing in place in corporate America (or most anywhere else) that makes people have a social conscience over screwing the companies (and hence, indirectly, those who depend on the companies' profits) around. Now there's a whole other debate about how we can change that, which I'm not going to get into here because I think 10 other people are going to do it further down...

Re:Familiar

[Sparr0]

live in a democracy? not me, I live in a republic (USA)

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[Antity]

but this software is produced by a foreign national in his own country (UK)

I'm not sure about that. Although he claims to have (re)written parts of the code,

• His page is only about this very program AND
• He writes:

  One of the people I met while MUD'ing suggested that since I live in the UK, I could act as an agent for programmers who wish to remain anonymous but still want to release their software. I thought this would be a good idea and so this website came into existence...

IMHO this program originated in the US, was exported to the UK, changed, and (re)published.

P.S.: Of what .ZIP on the web do you want to make a backup copy today? ;-)

Re:Familiar

[Sciamachy]

Democracy comes from two Greek root words, Demos, the people, and kratein, to rule or be strong. The idea is, the majority decide what goes. Is this actually any different from "mob rule"? Or is "mob rule" an idea put about by those in power who have a vested interest in seeing that the people do not in fact rule?

The Athenian democratic system allowed all citizens to vote on all laws - granted, their cities were smaller then & their definition of a citizen was basically a free, able-bodied male who would fight for the city if it was attacked, but these days we have the technology to enable the much larger numbers of citizens in our cities to all vote. Remember also that the ability to vote doesn't neccessarily mean the voter will vote either - they'll tend to vote only on matters that concern them directly, much as US Senators and UK MPs do now, but at least then we'd have proper democracy - rule of the people by the people, instead of rule/(mis)representation of the people by a privileged minority.

Re:Familiar

[phutureboy]

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb, voting on what to have for lunch.

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[GalionTheElf]

What the greeks had can hardly be compared to what we have, our situation is very different to theirs.

They didn't have tabloid media getting people in to a frenzy over, for example, paedophiles, where it even goes so far that people go and attack a paediatrician. This could happen with (almost) anything the red-tops decide to sink their teeth in to.

It is true that what people want doesn't always equal what's good for the nation as a whole (and in the long-term individual citizens as well). If people were able to vote in anything they wanted, we'd have zero taxes and free money, but it wouldn't really work well for very long, or I at least wouldn't want to try.

It is also true that the current system is not functioning as it should, it is still functioning and does a pretty good job of it and it's pretty much the best we have.

Re:Familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in Civilization.

It's damn near impossible to wage war with a democracy. Particularly when you don't have the Women Suffrage Wonder.

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[weslocke]

Actually if you look into it, the American 'Democratic' model has very little resemblence to that of Athenian government. We're most directly taken from the Roman Republic, which has very little into the way of 'Mob Rule.' (Well, there were those odd tmies, but those don't really count)

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[dukerobillard]

Democracy ...is, the majority decide what goes. Is this actually any different from "mob rule"?

It isn't, which is why no modern western country has a government that should technically be called a "democracy." That's why they're all "representative democracies" with constitutions and strong legal systems.

It's very easy to get the mob to do stupid things, like elect the Nazis. I'm against pure democracy.

Re:Familiar

[Enzondio]

Ostensibly.

Re:Familiar

[sql*kitten]

but these days we have the technology to enable the much larger numbers of citizens in our cities to all vote. Remember also that the ability to vote doesn't neccessarily mean the voter will vote either - they'll tend to vote only on matters that concern them directly, much as US Senators and UK MPs do now, but at least then we'd have proper democracy - rule of the people by the people, instead of rule/(mis)representation of the people by a privileged minority.

Ah, but the Athenians could assume that everyone with a vote fully understood the issues and we can't make anything like that assumption today. For example, most people vote the way their parents did, who vote the way their parents did. That's why in Britain we see people who still proclaim their undying hatred for Margaret Thatcher voting for her political and intellectual heir Tony Blair, and people who loved Thatcher voting against him. Also, voting was mandatory in Athens - neglecting to vote was punishable by whipping with ropes.

Consider also the redistributive nature of the tax system. There is a sizeable fraction of the population who will vote for any politician promising largesse, because those voters know that they will never have to pay for it themselves. You cannot maintain a democracy if the balance of power lies in the hands of people who don't care what the government costs!

Democracy lasts until 51% of the population realize that they can legally enslave the other 49%, and politicians realize they can bribe the voters with the taxpayer's money, since the two groups don't completely overlap - there are plenty of nominal taxpayers who are actually net recipents of public money.

Rule by priveleged minority works well if (and only if) the interests of the elite and the interests of the nation are aligned. The elite enjoy their position and the proles benefit from the services of an informed and capable elite. The present system of letting anyone regardless of their knowledge or experience have the same say is dangerously unstable.

Re:Familiar

[oliverthered]

Government is a cartell, trying to work out how much they can screw you over without being overturned.

at the moment there walking a fine line between screwing over the corporations and turning into a corporate state, running a protection racket only works when your calling the shots.

Re:Familiar

[sporty]

You know, it'd bring up an interesting idea.

Get a spam list of people, yes, spam. Bad word. 4 letter one at that. Find an open relay. Spam a few people with it. Don't be surprised when you see it circulating.

Distribute it via a virus in MS Windows.

Yes, two wrongs don't make a right, but imagine all the various outcomes.

Re:Familiar

[sql*kitten]

Surely though in this age of education for all, where there are publicly funded schools, cheaply available newspapers and 24 hour news coverage, with freedom of the press & of speech, there's more reason than ever to assume everyone voting has at least adequate means of understanding the issues.

I'm not so sure. Anyone who makes a habit of reading the Guardian has pretty much abandoned any claim they might have had on independent, rational thought - but fortunately, so has anyone who makes a habit of reading the Daily Mail, and the two groups should hopefully cancel each other out. But two equal and opposite groups of idiots don't equal one larger group of sensible decision-makers.

Parliament has bungled so many times, they cannot truly be regarded as experts in rule. What, then, is the value in handing the controls over your life to a group of people who will only ask your opinion on things every few years, and whose interests rarely coincide with yours? Surely that's as unstable as running things yourself directly?

I'm basically a libertarian, with a bit of plutocrat and a bit of timocrat. My basic political belief is in the absolute minimum of government, and that decisions about spending public money should be made by the people who paid the money, not those who receive it. I consider New Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems to be no different from one another - they differ only on the details, all three are about government controlling every aspect of a citizen's life, supported by heavy taxation.

There need to be hard limits on what a government can and cannot regulate, but as we have seen in the US, a Constitution isn't all that it's cracked up to be. The British House of Lords is a good thing, IMHO, because those people plan in terms of their grandchildren, not in terms of the next election. Anyone desiring to become a professional politican has automatically disqualified themselves.

What we really need are a small group of civil servants to administer the country, but with no direct political power, and the political power to rest in the hands of people who are already accomplished in their own professions, and who can only serve one term. Perhaps politicians should be randomly chosen from a pool of people who have taken courses in history, economics, etc. The current system, i.e. "I'm voting the way I've always done" or "I'll vote for that Tony Blair, he's got a nice smile" is fundamentally broken, and will collapse under its own weight if it isn't destroyed by the libertarian-plutocrats beforehand.

Re:Familiar

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

The Athenian democratic system allowed all citizens to vote on all laws - granted, their cities were smaller then & their definition of a citizen was basically a free, able-bodied male who would fight for the city if it was attacked

And, if IIRC, Athens at its height was a city of 25,000 citizens and 250,000 slaves. Now there's democracy at work!

Re:Familiar

[Aapje]

There are many different possible forms of democracy. A direct vote on all decisions (mob rule) is only one of them. I believe that our laws should represent a long term average of our opinions. This principle has become so ingrained into our modern democracies that most of us see a constitution as the basis of a democracy (while it is a limit on our representatives' power).

As for the wolves and the lamb*, I also believe that the optimal democracy is not a 'winner takes all'-system, but a Poldermodel (decisions are made with as much support as possible). Today you may accept a small deviation from your standpoint (a small loss for you and a big gain for someone else) and tomorrow (or in four years) it's the other way around. While this is difficult to achieve, the optimal outcome can only be achieved if the majority takes the needs of the minority into account.

*Not what you said, but I'll reply to two posts at once ;)

Re:Familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, but

"American Democracy is asking for a cup of coffee and getting to choose between Coke or Pepsi."

Re:Familiar

[Huge Pi Removal]

Thanks, you've just said everything I would have said in reply to that comment. Everyone browsing at +2... read the parent.

Re:Familiar

[Daniel Phillips]

If absolutely every law was put to referendum, we'd essentially have mob rule.

Apparently, the Swiss put all their laws to referendum, and they do not have mob rule.

Re:Familiar

[Huge Pi Removal]

Nearly...

Only "True Swiss" are allowed to vote in referenda. Since the criteria for being *really* Swiss are somewhat restrictive, it's a running joke there (at least amongst non-true Swiss) that within the next ten years, the only one left making the decisions will be an aging goat.

Also, I don't believe they vote on *every* law.

Re:Familiar

[Daniel Phillips]

It's very easy to get the mob to do stupid things, like elect the Nazis. I'm against pure democracy.

Logical falacy alert! Your example is incorrect: the Nazi party was never elected by a majority.

Re:Familiar

[sql*kitten]

Hey, hey... at least the Guardian tries to report *news* rather than pointless celebrity gossip.

The Guardian isn't in the news business, it's in the opinion business (same as the Daily Mail). The people who read them pay for pre-digested opinion - they choose their own broad political position (or choose not to choose it but to mimic their parents or peers), then rely on their newspaper to fill in the cracks for them.

At least the Guardian tried to bring about (essentially) the fall of the monarchy under the EU equal rights act.

Nothing sells newspapers like a little controversy.

Oh, and it felled Aitken (yay!).

So what? Any newspaper can claim to have ousted any number of politicians. I wonder if the Guardian helped to get rid of Peter Mandelson or any of New Labour? The Daily Mail (which I am picking on because it seems to be politically opposite to the Guardian) has its own targets.

And, more to the point, the Guardian is the only UK newspaper to be legally owned by its readers

LOL, and those are the same people who rant about shareholders being evil!

Hence it doesn't wage wars against other newspapers, it just reports.

If you want news, get it from somewhere that just reports plain facts - like Dow Jones, AP or Reuters - and think up the editorial for yourself. Don't read what amounts to little more than propaganda and kid yourself that you're informed.

Re:Familiar

[dukerobillard]

Logical falacy alert! Your example is incorrect: the Nazi party was never elected by a majority.

Check it out...I didn't know that. They only got about the same percentage as the last few US Presidents. :-) Sorry 'bout that.

But, although I picked a bad example, I still think it's easy to get the mob to support stupid things.

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[susano_otter]

See, I always thought of "Government" as being a regulatory entity, where Regulation=Standards+Enforcement. While I see the logic behind the "legal monopoly on violence" statement, it always struck me as inflammatory rhetoric, rather than a realistic or productive assessment.

Furthermore, monopolies aren't necessarily bad, and while enforcement sometimes requires violence, it doesn't follow that all enforcement, or even all violent enforcement, is bad.

Take the electromagnetic spectrum, for example: without standards specifying its use, airplanes wouldn't be able to fly, cell phones wouldn't work, and televisions would receive nothing but snow. And without enforcement, pirate radio stations would freely override airport navigational beacons, cell phones, and television programs. It'd be the whole "Mexican Radio" problem, writ large.

Overall, I'd say that any community that did not establish a "legal monopoly on violence" (or, as I like to call it, "regulation") would collapse under the weight of its own malefactors.

You'll need to get rid of the malefactors before you can begin to think about getting rid of the government.

[Insert whole other debate about the efficacy of this or that specific government, the proper limits of a government's power, gun control, and the obvious superiority of the libertarian point of view.]

Re:Familiar

[oliverthered]

the problem is that the 'goverment' is in the business of keeping it's self in bussiness.

I'm sure most pollititians aren't in it because there kind people who want to do the best for everyone, there in it at least in-part for themselfs.

Re:Familiar

[susano_otter]

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Ooh! Ooh! I've got another one! Imagine a mountainous island nation, with limited farmland, an inhospitable climate, and primitive agricultural technology. The only way to survive is by forming small communities, and preserving the copmmon good at all costs. Failure to sacrifice individual freedoms for communal welfare results in death--not just for the individual, but for the community that supports that individual in spite of such uncooperativeness. Anyone who doesn't put the community ahead of themselves is exiled, and almost certainly doomed to die during the next harsh winter (and all the winters are harsh, on this island). This makes perfect sense, since everyone has the liberty to live like an individual. The only restriction is that they also get to die like an individual. The communities, meanwhile, thrive and grow, and technology advances, and one day the community can afford the luxury of individual liberties. This is, of course, after many generations of eschewing those liberties in favor of communal well-being.

Are these people giving up their liberties because they're delusional, or because they're clear-headed pragmatists? Is the extreme individualist truly any more laudable than the extreme conformist?

Edmund Burke's statement is absolute (note the use of the word "never"), and therefore logically unsound. It is also, I think, provably untrue.

Re:Familiar

[susano_otter]

The Greeks may not have had tabloid media, but somebody must have whipped them into a frenzy over Socrates's "corruption of Athenian youth" with his "unorthodox and offensive philosophies". And in their frenzy, they killed him. Nowadays, we just sue, or censor (unless you wear a tinfoil hat--then we kill).

Re:Familiar

[susano_otter]

It seems like your argument is that the only thing between us and Utopia is a corrupt government. Yet you pointed out that politicians are in it for themselves, rather than the good of the nation. Since eliminating the corrupt government would do nothing at all to eliminate the corrupt people in our society, it seems much more likely that the only thing between us and Utopia is ourselves, and that we will always fail to produce that Utopia with any form of governance (or non-governance).

Re:Familiar

[jafac]

Yes, I think it's time to put this "democracy" monster to bed.

If there were TRUE Democracy, things would be very different.
For instance: Look what "the people" have chosen in the past several years in the commercial marketplace. These are the kinds of decisions "the rabble" would choose - apply the same thinking to politics, and it yeilds a hideously frightening prospect:

Microsoft Windows, 95% Marketshare.
Titanic - Best movie of all time.
Backstreet Boyz - #1 musical group of the 20th century.
Harry Potter - #1 work of literature of the 20th(21st?) century.
Coke or Pepsi - your choice.
Ford Escort - #1 selling car in America.
GWBush - 88% Approval rating, Oct 2001.

I came to accept this fact long ago. People are frickin idiots. True Democracy would be a very scary world.

Re:Familiar

[leereyno]

"The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears..."

There are people who have similar snide comments to make about freedom of speech too. The right to bear arms and freedom of speech are the foundation of a free society and the only thing that even comes close to guaranteeing its survival. Mao was right when he said that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. Remember that the next time you feel the urge to disarm yourself. The next time you feel the urge to disarm someone else remember that NRA members like me are well armed and not at all averse to fighting a war to protect our freedom. I'd rather die fighting to preserve freedom that live to see it perish.

Lee

Re:Familiar

[sql*kitten]

I can't help but think of the Simpsons episode where the Mayor leaves town and a group of "learned" scholars (i.e. Lisa, Dr. Hibbard, the Professor, comic-book guy, etc) take over...with hilarious results.

Indeed, but I was thinking more along the lines of Victorian Britain. Government by privileged elite saw the creation of probably the greatest empire in history - the so-called democracy since then has seen Britain's power and influence collapse.

Re:Familiar

[leereyno]

I can't comment on other countries because, as an arrogant American, I'm not really all that aware of the existance of nations outside the US, except the ones that are in need of nuking that is.

The US is not a democracy in the truest sense of the word. It is a representational democracy and/or a republic. The structure of our government was crafted to provide a system that while responsible to the people and responsive to its needs and wants, did not respond very quickly.

The reason this is important is because approximately 50% of the population is of below average intelligence. The world is full of idiots. If governmental policy changed with the tides of whatever political or ideological fad was most popular, you'd have nothing but chaos. This problem was recognized by the founding fathers and described as the "fevers of the people." The solution that was created is what some people today like to complain about as "gridlock." Gridlock exists because the system pits "ambition against ambition" in the form of checks and balances. This helps ensure that very little is done very quickly. Before anything can be done, a majority must agree and agree for a significant ammount of time. Therefore gridlock is good. The only time you need swift certain action on the part of the government is in an emergency, which are rare. My favorite aspect of gridlock is that it encourages people to take responsibility for things instead of looking to the government to solve their problems for them. It has also helped the US avoid an awful lot of communist/socialist bullshit that is currently plaguing most of europe and that will have to end if the it ever hopes to be relevant in world affiars again, let alone a become a super-power and a counter-balance to the US in the form of the EU.

Of course there is a flaw in the system, it requires that citizens fulfill their civic duty by being informed about what their government is doing and exerting control over it by voting. Politicians listen to two things, money and votes. Not everyone has the former, but almost everyone has the latter. Of the two it is the most important. Politicians in this country pay very close attention to who does and does not vote. They have statisticians working hard to determine exactly who among their constituents they need to keep happy in order to stay in office. Nowadays the only people who are voting are old people and political idealogues. Joe and Jane Blow sit on their asses at home and let senile people and those with an axe to grind determine the fate of this country, and that is just sick. So the next time you're upset about what the government is doing, ask yourself one question, did I vote?

Lee

Re:Familiar

[$carab]

Actually, the American democratic system has shown remarkable stability and generally a lack of the horrors you describe. The real threat to a democratic system is a long term economic slump, like the Great Depression. When the economy is worse, fewer people vote, and more people are willing to vote radical. This is how we end up with Huey Long.

Re:Familiar

[JohnFluxx]

Similiar arguments have been made about slaves in the Egyption times all the way to the black slaves.
Skewing off a bit, this sort of thing is why you also have two very different testaments in the bible.

Re:Familiar

[mangu]

OK, to see what's "socially acceptable", think of the following situation: my cousin is thinking about buying an intellectual property (software, CD, film, whatever) I have already bought.

Scenario 1: I tell him "It sucks, don't buy it". Result, he doesn't buy it, the producer doesn't get the profit from one copy of the media.

Scenario 2: I tell him "Here, get a copy". Result, he doesn't buy it, the producer doesn't get the profit from one copy of the media.

Question: Why do the media companies think one of the above scenarios is illegal?

Re:Familiar

[AME]

GWBush - 88% Approval rating, Oct 2001

You had me until that last one. Let's see...
Sep, 2001: Enemies of the U.S. kill thousands of U.S . citizens, promise further attacks.
Oct, 2001: President of the U.S. vows to come down hard on the perpetrators. U.S. citizens approve.

What's idiotic about that, exactly?

I suppose I will never understand how Bush-haters have become so cavalier in their disposition that they believe it is a foregone conclusion that anyone who approves of his governance must be a "frickin idiot."

Re:Familiar

[mangu]

Actually, I told him "It sucks, but since I know you are boneheaded enough to get it anyway, here, get a copy". Otherwise, the "moral" thing to do if you buy it and don't like it afterwards, is to recoup your losses by selling copies.

Re:Familiar

[mangu]

What's idiotic about that, exactly?

The idiotic thing about it is January->August 2001: GWBush does everything in his power to ignore/obstruct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Remember what the Spider Man said: with great power comes great responsibility. If you want to be the cop of the world, you are responsible for each little fight happening anywhere.

Re:Familiar

[AME]

GWBush does everything in his power to ignore/obstruct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Supposing that your unsubstanciated statement and its associated insinuation were true, all you have said is that the President's political priorities changed because of a major world event. There is still nothing necessarily idiotic about it.

If you want to be the cop of the world, you are responsible for each little fight happening anywhere.

This is false. Even if we assume that the U.S. wants to be the cop of the world, which is also false.

If all of your political ideology comes from Marvel comic characters, you may want to shy away from serious political debate in the future.

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[cp99]

Remember, the United States is not a democracy, its a republic. There is a very big difference.

Wrong. A republic isn't mutally exclusive to democracy.

The US, is both a republic and a representative democracy.

Re:Familiar

[susano_otter]

Interesting. Personally, I can't make a reasonable connection between my argument and a justification of slavery. Of course, this may be a side effect of my anti-slavery bias. Certainly slaves are co-opted against their will, which seems different from voluntary communities which put the communal good ahead of the individual good. And forcing someone to do your labor is different from kicking out uncooperative individuals to fend for themselves. In a sense, my scenario emphasizes individual freedoms, by giving each member of the community a choice to cooperate or not. Slavery denies those freedoms by making cooperation mandatory. I must admit that the distinction is blurry, though.

I'm not sure how this leads to the need for two Testaments in the Bible, though. I always thought the Christian faith pivoted around the coming of Jesus Christ, who (among other things) claimed to be abolishing the old ways and replacing them with new ways. The convention is to read the Old Testament as the story of the old ways, and the New Testament as the story of the new ways. The separation of the scriptures on this basis seems sufficient and complete to me, without bringing the issue of slavery into it at all. But I could be wrong, and anyway would like to hear your argument.

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[jafuser]

Even if we assume that the U.S. wants to be the cop of the world, which is also false.

Not the whole world, true. But at least the sections of the world where one or more large politically-generous U.S. corporations have a vested interest.

Re:Familiar

[JohnFluxx]

I wasn't setting up a strawman argument, nor was I justifying slavery.

You were talking about how at different times society needs to act differently. Taking the bible for an example. Imagine you need to control your population - one that is very superstitous, fearful, in very bad conditions, some hungry etc. One way you might try to deal with this is to try to control with fear - hence the Old Testament.
But as your society develops you no longer need such a strong tone, and you need to adapt and appeal to people's morrals, etc. Hence the New Testament. You basically agreed with this (or am I agreeing with you) in your reply, but at some point we seem to have lost track what exactly we are arguing.

My argument is simply that at different times in society we need different ways of treating people.

We have no need for slavery at the moment - there is plenty of food etc to go around. But you can certaintly imagine a situation at another time where the people in charge feel it is necessary - for example if resources are _very_ tight, and a lot of manual labour is needed which you can't pay for and not enough people would do voluntarily.
As for my point of bringing in slavery - well it seemed controversial and evil enough issue to throw and say it may be needed at certain times to ensure a good reply - which it did :)

Re:Familiar

[susano_otter]

Well played.

If there's anything I've learned from Civilization, it's that different times call for different solutions.

I still can't justify slavery on those grounds, though (as I suspect you know and agree with). If heavy labor is needed to provide for the survival necessities (shelter, food, &c.), then rational communities will voluntarily do the work. Forcing someone else to do the work of ensuring your own survival doesn't seem like a justfiable disregard of their liberties to me.

And if your survival is assured, and you need heavy labor to produce luxury items, then either pay a competitive wage on the open market, or do without. A society that would collapse without slave labor probably should.

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[JohnFluxx]

I was trying to stay out of philosophy, but here you go:

If you could go back in time and stop all slavery (right back to the egyption and before) but it caused the human race to die out (contrived I know, but what the hell) would you do it?

What comes first, rights of a person or rights of a society. Can you justify slavery on the basis of saving the whole society and making life better for the generations afterwards?

I am of course, just being difficult. I look evil trying to setup situations to justify slavery.

Re:Familiar

[susano_otter]

I don't think you're all that evil, so long as you don't think I'm trying to force you into a philosophical discussion :)

But here we are, so might as well get on with it!

I think individual rights are ultimately more important than the "rights" of a society. In fact, when I put it like that, it seems doubtful that societies have rights in the same sense that individuals do.

However, I also think that an individual's rights are best tempered with a willingness to sometimes sacrifice those rights for the good of others. Individuals who insist on their rights at any cost seem... wrong.

Would I abolish slavery, even if it meant the annihilation of the human race? Yes, assuming an absolute moral code. My moral obligation is to help those I can. I'm not the master of what will be, or what could be--I'm only the master of my own actions, ethics, and moral choices. Confronted with a slavery I could end, I'd be wrong not to end it. The present generation is real, and their suffering is real. The future generation does not exist, and their happiness is completely fictional.

All this assumes free will, of course. If everything is predestined, and I know that the future outcome of my decision has already occurred--for better or worse--then I will simply make whatever decision was preordained for me to make. Since I perceive myself as having free will, then I would exercise that will to make the best moral choices I can. Again, my moral responsibility is to those that exist, not to those that hypoethically could exist (or not).

The Name

[richie2000]

I guess it won't be long before free software activists and feminists around the world will join in the battle cry: Free clit!

Seriously, Microsoft will go after him, just like Adobe tried with Dmitri.

Re:The Name

[Cruciform]

"The CLIT is real! The female orgasm, that's the myth."

Re:The Name

[0x0d0a]

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).

Re:The Name

[Rogerborg]

Runs fine using wine. I dunno if it works, but it runs. Better if we had the source though, given that the author describes himself as "lazy" in the usage. ;-)

Re:The Name

[piranha(jpl)]

Parent:

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

Article:

Convert Lit or "Clit.exe" is a command line utility that can downgrade the DRM5 security to DRM1. From there, the formerly encrypted Lit book can be converted to HTML, text, or any other format.

You mean to suggest there's a Microsoft Reader port to Linux?

Re:The Name

[Jason Earl]

Linux folks can read eBooks right now. Heck, I have read over 60 of them in the past year alone, and I have a real problem with a program that unencrypts Microsoft's eBooks. The reason for this is simple. The last thing I want to do is increase sales of Microsoft eBooks. Right now the eBook industry is finally coming to the conclusion that encryption doesn't do anything but hurt its profits. There are plenty of places where I can get unencrypted eBooks, and I would just as soon send the publishers the message that the best way to sell their eBooks is to release them in a wide variety of unencrypted formats. If you don't believe me check out Baen, or most books at Fictionwise.

This software is the worst possible reflection on the eBook community. Not only does it make us all seem like thieves, but the pornographic element makes us look like degenerates as well.

Re:The Name

[MrResistor]

Adobe is equally evil, just not as big.

Re:The Name

[0x0d0a]

[confused] You're right, but the moment I saw this article, I looked specifically for source. I even remember seeing the binary there.

I guess I could have somehow missed it, or the page was revised (the packages were at least, because the README contains a reference to this story).

Oh, well. Life is good. :-)

What's in a name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heheheh... You have to admit... the names they came up for their programs have a much more memorable, ummm.... ring to them than, say, DeCSS.

(Insert joke about "rolling off the tongue" here)

The DMCS takedown

[Lonath]

Betting pool. I predict that the DMCA takedown notice will occur 34 hours from the first posting of this story on ./

Re:The DMCS takedown

[spectral]

I just wonder if Microsoft might not use this as a way to attack slashdot. /. is linking to a story that infringes on their IP. If they can't get the guy in question (though I'm sure if they tried hard enough, either Microsoft or the US government could get the guy out of the UK), then they might as well stop the major places from linking to it. And how convenient that it's a site they're probably not all too fond of anyway.

Re:The DMCS takedown

[micromoog]

I just wonder if Microsoft might not use this as a way to attack slashdot.

If Microsoft gave a crap about Slashdot, that might apply.

Re:The DMCS takedown

[Lonath]

I thought Dmitry Sklyarov lived in the .ru, not US so why would an american law matter?

I guess he's ok if the UK never passes a law like the DMCA and never agrees to extradite people over the US DMCA and he never goes to any nation that will agree to extradite him for such a "crime".

But the set of "safe" locations can only shrink over time. :) Not good.

Copying e-books

[tsa]

e-Books are one of the last remnants of the Internet hype. People already discovered that you can easily copy the contents of the e-book displayer window. There was a story on /. about a company or a person that wrote a program to automagically copy a whole e-book that way. I can imagine that MS will sue this guy but that will only be one more example of the stupidity of the DMCA.

Re:Copying e-books

[Mac Degger]

In theory, yes. I tried it on a .lit copy of the Necronomicon I had gotten (got the deadtree version too, but I didn't want to lug it along), but it effectively crashed trying to copy/paste 1200 pages to notepad to transfer to my IIIc.

Re:Watch his site get slashdotted in real time!

[tsa]

I never knew there were so many unknown OS's.

Obligatory Jay and Silent Bob Quote

[ender81b]

Obligatory quote(s) from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Jay: I am the CLIT Commander! I AM THE CLIT CAMANDER!! WHEREVER YOU SEE A CLIT YOULL SEE THIS FACE! I am master of the CLIT!

Willenholly: We don't want to rub the C.L.I.T. the wrong way!
Willenholly: The C.L.I.T. is an offshoot of the L.A.B.I.A.
Reg Hartner: Oh, you mean the Liberate Apes Before Imprisoning Apes movement?

That's great...

[jez9999]

... because I just finished on a program I've been making. Transform Watermark, or "Twat.exe", will allow you to unencode watermarked e-books in addition to this!

Code can be downloaded here

[itsnotme]

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

Re:Code can be downloaded here

[JimDabell]

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

Thanks, I had real trouble finding it for a minute there.

Re:Code can be downloaded here

[blibbleblobble]

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

Lycos, of course, being famous for their efforts to defend free speech on hosted websites.

Anyone have a list of mirrors?

Re:Code can be downloaded here

[ncc74656]

Unfortunately, the download is not code, but a binary.

Hmm...what, then, is this?

Clit source - The source code for clit and associated library. This should compile cleanly on linux and BSD, and should be easily portable. The source code is released under the GPL.

OTOH, both links (source and binary) are currently 404...

Sites starting to get lagged..

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I doubt this site will make it till morning, so just incase..

Microsoft Reader format CRACKED!
Date: Monday, December 30 @ 22:19:50 EST
Topic: Breaking News!

Frustrated by the tight security and lack of interoperability of Microsoft Reader eBooks, a programmer named Dan Jackson obtained the source code for a command-line program called Convert Lit and made it available to the public. Convert Lit or "Clit.exe" is a command line utility that can downgrade the DRM5 security to DRM1. From there, the formerly encrypted Lit book can be converted to HTML, text, or any other format.

In a blatently open move, Mr. Jackson announced via his website a willingness to improve upon the original code of his program (that is reportedly less than 1 month old), in addition to providing more capabilities to the program itself. "I wish to provide an all-in-one solution for the recovery of data in the MS Reader .lit file format. If there is interest, I am also open to creating a .dll to make it possible for others to implement a LIT conversion utility from their ebook applications."

Other Internet hackers have already captured this code and provided a Windows 9x front-end that illiminates the need to know and understand command-line functions. This addition is called cuntlits.exe and contains nude buttons and offensive language.

Pocket PC Addict obtained independent verification that these utilities do in fact remove the encryption and security from Microsoft Reader books.

It remains to be seen what kind of impact an already hesitant eBook market. By removing the security of the Reader books, formerly encrypted eBooks can be traded and downloaded free of charge on the Internet.

Re:where to get ebooks?

[joch1]

Guttenberg Project - All free and out of copyright

lit was cracked a long time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:lit was cracked a long time ago

[Unordained]

isn't that where microsoft moves from the secure-audio-channel system to a secure-video-channel, with the hope you won't be able to extract the video back out of the video card itself ... and instead have to take a video camera to the screen, the way you'd take a tape recorder to your audio-out?
yes, it's always accessible. but they'll hope to make it hard to copy -- for example, don't use functions that allow copy-pasting (just draw to a canvas, such that you have to do the screenshot thing) then modify the text so ocr software can't make it out (antialias a bit, change the colors randomly ... do what some sites are doing now to prevent scripts from creating accounts -- put broken text on even more broken backgrounds with filters applied so only the human eye can really tell what's there ...) this would at least prevent plain-text/html renderings of the original text, and force you to distribute images ... which won't work any better with text-to-speech or other plugin/filter/layers you might want between you and your book.
it's actually much easier for them to render text readable to the human eye but not to software than for them to make music that can be even remotely enjoyed whilst not being recordable ...

Re:lit was cracked a long time ago

[snake_dad]

That one supposedly only works with unprotected lit. I'm not 100% sure since I don't have a protected lit to test with.

Re:lit was cracked a long time ago

[DGolden]

Personally, I won't be bothering with eBooks until I have a 300DPI+ A4-sized display*, but anyway:

Of course "readable to the human eye" is not the same as "pleasantly readable to the human eye" - you could just buy a print book if the ebook becomes too annoyingly full of wobbly characters.

And also, researchers, spurred on by the challenge of descrambling those obfuscated text things, are already having some success. See

"Breaking gimpy: Researchers crack Security System Designed to prevent internet Robots"

* LCD Manufacturers: I want a high DPI screen, not a physically huge one. Why the hell can't I get a 15" 1600x1200 DESKTOP LCD Monitor???

Re:lit was cracked a long time ago

[ciscoeng]

And that's where Microsoft's Palladium will fit in.
If they can encrypt and authenticate the entire path from bootup to what appears on your screen, this will be much less common.

Re:lit was cracked a long time ago

[baptiste]

* LCD Manufacturers: I want a high DPI screen, not a physically huge one. Why the hell can't I get a 15" 1600x1200 DESKTOP LCD Monitor???

Isn't that the damned truth! I've had a Dell Inspiron for 3 years now that has 1600x1200 LCD screen that looks awesome! Why can't I get one on my desktop. 1280x1024 just doesn't cut it for an OS (*cough*Linux*cough*) with decent graphics in the desktop :) Only XP looks good at low resolutions :)

Burn karma Burn!

Re:lit was cracked a long time ago

[rw2]

His point was that they make them for laptops, why don't they package them for desktop use.

Personally, I prefer the 19" 1600x1200 display, but I understand the beef at least.

Or, you could just buy the laptop and use it as a display. It won't cost you much more than the lcd would have anyway! (FWIW, i'd buy toshiba, my dell 1600x1200 had to go back twice, but my tosh is running like a champ. YMMV)

Microsoft's response

[Alsee]

Microsoft has promptedly responded to this breach of DRM5 security. That have released their new DRM6 format which contains the DRM5 file with the addition of a "Broadcast Flag" bit. When this bit is set to 1 the DRM5 security may not be copied or extracted. When the bit is set to zero you may freely copy or extract the DRM5 data.

-

source code?

[Ashish Kulkarni]

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.

Re:source code?

[Mike1024]

Hey,

I doubt that the source code has been made available to "Dan Jackson".

Unless one goes to the webpage of Dan Jackson Software and download:

Clit source - The source code for clit and associated library. This should compile cleanly on linux and BSD, and should be easily portable. The source code is released under the GPL.

Michael

Re:source code?

[Ashish Kulkarni]

well, it wasnt there when I posted the comment... thanks, anyway.

mod parent up

[phr1]

It gives another way to read lit files.

Very Mature

[z_gringo]

from the article:

Other Internet hackers have already captured this code and provided a Windows 9x front-end that illiminates the need to know and understand command-line functions. This addition is called cuntlits.exe and contains nude buttons and offensive language.

I have no problem with nudity or offensive language, but all in proper context. The above paragraph just makes the whole thing sound like a stupid joke.

Re:Very Mature

[more]

Perhaps it is their way in protecting themselves against legal action from Microsoft. How can Microsoft publicly attack something called clit or cuntlits? That would hit the news and would be remembered for a long time.

Re:Very Mature

[Jugalator]

and contains nude buttons

Regardless how hard I'm trying, I can't figure out how a "nude button" would look like? Hmm... A button with no text inside? A button without a frame?

Re:Very Mature

[z_gringo]

Wow! ha! I must admit, that is a very good point. I doubt that the creators had that in mind, but it is indeed true..

I say, +5 funny....

Re:Very Mature

[outsider007]

Regardless how hard I'm trying, I can't figure out how a "nude button" would look like?

when I read that I figured that nude was just the color.

Re:Very Mature

[outsider007]

well where I come from its more of an off-white.

Re:Very Mature

[Thing 1]

How can Microsoft publicly attack something called clit or cuntlits?

Microsoft themselves made the mistake of releasing offendingly-named software. I'm not making this up: they created the Critical Update Notification Tool.

It was later renamed to the Critical Update Notification Utility (or CUNU). But the quick among us were already laughing. ;-)

Re:where to get ebooks?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Online Books Page

Over 10,000 online books free to the public.

Moot application?

[psyconaut]

I mean.....does anyone actually *read* eBooks? Where on earth do you buy them in the first place?

-psy

Re:Moot application?

[eclectro]

The arguement can be made that due to the extensive DRM incorporated and incompatible file formats among readers that eBooks are just not as convenient as a regular book.

One thing can be said for sure. Consumers did not see enough value in eBooks to purchase them.

Not a surprise really, given the circumstances.

Re:Okay, great. But...

[Rogerborg]

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.

Lots of fair usages for this

[spiro_killglance]

and one important one is for search engines to
be able to index ebook files.

Re:Watch his site get slashdotted in real time!

[weave]

Those stats are clearly incorrect. Everyone knows IE has 95% market share, not 80.61% (current stat).

<voice>

So can we get the source...

[Karora]

He is soliciting suggestions for changes, but isn't giving out the source :-(

I know the change I would like is to make it run on non-Windows operating systems.

Re:Hmm...

[MonTemplar]

I love the smell of lawsuits in the morning! :)

It smells like... lots of money being burned real fast! :) :)

Re:so you're saying fud's too bullame?

[MonTemplar]

The one-handed Slashdot poster strikes again! :)

"I have no tolerance for bad journalism!"

[DrSkwid]

LOL

then one would expect that you would read the frucking article and know that the guy says he didn't write it !

"One of the people I met while MUD'ing suggested that since I live in the UK, I could act as an agent for programmers who wish to remain anonymous but still want to release their software. "

Plus no-one's not cracked a program, someone has cracked the file DRM level so that data files can be converted.

It gets better.

"The way the laws are now, it's safer for someone to rape a 5-year-old boy and admit it then to crack a program."

Pure hype. Do you read the Daily Mail by any chance?

Re:Gratuitous Jay and Silent Bob Reference:

[Mac Degger]

Seeing the parent modded as +1 insightfull is the funniest thing I've seen all day :)

No practical protection.

[coloth]

It's a disconnect between legal protection and practical protection. Illegal or unauthorized distribution has always been possible, whether through transcription, photography, photocopy, whatever. But in the end, those aren't very practical or threatening.

The sheer fluidity of the digital world makes almost anything practical. For instance, even if a security mechanism could be created by which a program or macro could not copy (either text or graphics) the contents of an ebook reader while scrolling through (erect a kind of region protection all the way through to the video card), it's not going to stop anyone.

What about a cam pointed at the monitor? Either from the same computer or another one? Or just videotape separately as the ebook scrolls by, then have some ocr software decode it.

I'm just having a hard time figuring out how ebooks will ever enjoy the same "practical" protection that wood books do.

Re:No practical protection.

[Planesdragon]

What about a cam pointed at the monitor? Either from the same computer or another one? Or just videotape separately as the ebook scrolls by, then have some ocr software decode it.

I'm just having a hard time figuring out how ebooks will ever enjoy the same "practical" protection that wood books do.

Er, if you need to take a visual of the text and then process it, the ebook DOES have the same "practical" protection that wood books do.

A sharp knife and a sheet-fed scanner will get you an electronic format of your book in no time flat.

This explains everything

[toastyman]

So THIS is what he has been doing since he "ascended to a higher spiritual plane"...

It does kinda make sense too, being able to translate all those languages so easily, I guess MS Reader isn't that much harder than Egyptian?

(alright, alright... Not funny, I know)

It is a good thing

[lfourrier]

Microsoft Reader is so badly designed* that having the ability to compose a solution out of small efficient programs (the unix way) permit the user to manage a library, format text, and read it in the most convenient way.
Of course, it doesn't help publishers to place restrictions on content, but we are speaking about reading ebooks, not preserving monopolies.

* installing MR on a computer with a 1024x480 display ends with one page of text about 300 pixels wide: completly unusable.

Maybe Microsoft released its own crack

[stephanruby]

Companies have been known to release cracks of their own products to foster widespread adoption. The CEO of Macromedia almost admitted doing as much in an interview.

Somehow, I doubt that Microsoft would have done such a thing, but you've got to admit, it's a sound business strategy. It gives a company all the benefits of having an open format, without making the commitment of an open format.

What a brave man!

[alfaiomega]

This guy has violated both DMCA and CIPA at the same time! Now, that's the spirit!

Re:What a brave man!

[zdzichu]

hmmm, "cipa" means "pussy" in polish. coincidence?

Re:What a brave man!

[alfaiomega]

hmmm, "cipa" means "pussy" in polish.

Wiem. ;)

To be built into Longhorn ...

[krygny]

A library that detects anything Microsoft doesn't like:

welsu_urass.dll

...---...

"How perfectly Goddam delightful it all is, to be sure." - Robert Crumb

US

[den_erpel]

I just hope this guy is not living in the US :(

Re:US

[den_erpel]

> Read the article! He is living in the UK.

I guess you mean "Read the article and all the links in the article" in a recursive fashion :) When having a second look at the article, it does not mention the programmer's nationality, only his homepage is on a UK URI.

> However, that is almost equivalent to linving in
> the US. The UK follows the US without thinking.
> Look at the Iraq situation. Everyone in the
> world except for the US and their blind
> followers sees how stupid it is to start a war
> against Iraq. But the UK promises support. Dumb
> dumb dumb.

This has nothing to do with DMCA or any of it's variants in different countries IMHO.

another MS acronym

[sarcast]

MS doesn't seem to have the best QA department when it comes to names. I remember for that the longest time, what is now called "Automatic Updates" used to be called the critical update notification tool. I'll leave it to the reader to figure out the acronym.

Re:another MS acronym

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Your sig is brilliant. :) LOL.

Wrong Again...

[DickScratcher]

The correct anatomical term is the 'chin-rest'.

Re:Wrong Again...

[Anonvmous Coward]

"The correct anatomical term is the 'chin-rest'."

Okay, I have nothing interesting to add to this conversation, so I'll just share a joke that this comment reminded me of.

What do you get when you have nuts on your wall?

Walnuts.

What do you get when you have nuts on your chest?

Chestnuts.

What do you get when you have nuts on your chin?

I givmf Upfmmfm!

In vino veritas

[salimma]

There is always WINE... though having experienced the burden of running PPC Linux and telling people ' I can't use Wine, dammit!' I shall qualify it: only on x86.

Then again, using a non-free (but distributable) program to break a non-free format is not such a bad deal after all...

Re:very cool

[Nodatadj]

"Congratulations you have come first place in our boat giveaway. To collect your boat please come to Springfiel^wMicrosoft Campus, Redmond, WA"

Too Late - It's on Freenet!! :)

[Corrado]

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. :)

Greed

[theolein]

This simply points out the reason ebooks have, for the most part, failed miserably: Greed. The whole Software maker paranoia about controlling everything you do on a computer will always backfire in their faces. Not being able to do what you want, how you want with items that you spent your hard earned money on will always piss consumers off.

They will never accept it.

[miffo.swe]

Any form of media that goes via light or sound is impossible to protect. All you can do is play cat and mouse but in the end that is to expensive, both to the companes and the customers purchasing the products. I think most companies know this but they havent figured out how to stop widespread pirating.

One good start would be to NOT alienate customers and make it feel better to pay for the goods. That ofcourse means reasonable prices and good customer relationsships. Social protection is the only thing that helps fighting pirates in the long run.

Start working on getting better PR and treat people nicer. Work with tha customers in getting better products instead of fighting them all tooth and nail. Make it shameful to fool those nice media companies. Then pirates will exist but at a much much lower scale.

NOT SO FAST!

[mcgroarty]

Two very important things to consider about this program:

1) This program will only remove the protection when run from a machine that has license to convert the book. Somebody's got to buy the book first.

2) While the program removes the protection so that others can open it, it does not remove the purchaser information. If you share an unprotected file, you're pointing a finger at the purchaser.

I'm not sure how to feel about the program. Part of me would love to grab and sample more books. I buy a lot of ebooks and I've been burned on a good many which turned out to be pure and utter crap. Being able to sample would probably up my buying just like downloadable MP3s have. But, on the flip side, I don't know that everyone operates the same way.

Well, isn't that. . .

[kfg]

exactly what eBook protection is, a stupid joke?

I don't mean technically either, I mean in basic concept.

I don't know about you, but I'm simply not going to participate. If I feel the need of an eBook I'll go to Project Gutenberg. I havn't yet read all of Dumas or Dickens, the worst of which is better than any of the crap being shilled by Oprah. Twain, O Henry, GBS, Thoreau, Kipling, Swift, Sir Richard Burton, Melville, Hume, London, Conrad. . . Jesus, the list goes on for miles, all free for the taking, distributing, printing, even selling if you want.

I think it's somewhat ironic that one of the best uses of public domain eTexts is the ease with which specialty and art binders may now get source material.

So be radical. Screw MS and Adobe. Download the entire PG opus and freely *pass it on to your friends.* Print the son of a bitch and hand it out on the street corners.

Otherwise, if these people have their way, we'll have to start memorizing them and whispering them to our children quietly, in the dark, waiting for the "story police" to come and bust us.

KFG

Re:where to get ebooks?

[zeugma-amp]

Sure! Try Baen.com. Baen is a commercial site that has found the free distribution of e-books has improved it's bottom line in sales of its dead-tree versions.

They treat their (potential) customers like honest folk and deserve everyone's support IMO.

Re:ports

[joto]

don't forget Klit and WinClit

But remember, unless sufficiently drunk, stay away from gnome-clit.

Re:Okay, great. But...

[swillden]

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.

Not necessarily. I have a Rocket e-Book that I pretty much wore out. It still works, but the battery won't hold a charge and there are a bunch of pieces rattling around inside. So, I got a second Rocket a few weeks ago, registered it under my name, and got new copies of all of my purchased books.

Of course, it's still true that I can't lend my books without lending the reader, and that if GemStar ever goes out of business I'm pretty much out of luck. I'm okay with those things mainly because I can buy (license) the books for a discount (though I think the discount ought to be a little larger) and because reading e-Books is more convenient than reading paper.

Belgium is a liberal myth!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no country called Belgium in Europe. I live in the Netherlands, which according to the Belgium Conspiracy should be north of Belgium, but whenever I cross the border to the south, I end up in France immediatly.

Belgium is nothing more than a dangerous liberal myth, invented to boost morale of Europeans.

Re:Belgium is a liberal myth!

[SoftwareJanitor]

You are full of crap. The beer they serve at McDonald's in Belgium (Maes Pils) is much better than what they serve in France. That difference alone makes Belgium worthwhile. :-)

Okay... So what?

[erat]

I mean, is it really that vital to decrypt and reformat these files? What kinds of things are distributed in MS's proprietary format? Are they so special that this is an important contribution to the computing world?

I'm surrounded by folks who can't live without Windows either on their desktops or their PocketPCs. I can't think of any of them who have even mentioned MS Reader.

This may be yet another example of "because I can" engineering. It may be fun for the developer and it may make some anti-MS folks giggle a little, but I'm going to guess it'll be all but forgotten in a week.

Then, of course, we'll all be reminded of it (to the point of nausea) when MS tries to throw the developer in jail...

Re: what's so unfortunate about the name

[zmooc]

Hmm. Good point. But then why did one fail to mention the name of the program in the article? There must be another reason....

yes, here

[popeydotcom]

dotlit

I didn't have *rights* to open an eBook I bought!!

[bc90021]

I purchased an eBook that I downloaded from bn.com from one of my favourite authors. It was a Microsoft eBook, in .lit format. I didn't get a chance to read it right away, and about a week or so later when I went to open it, the MS reader software told me that I didn't have rights to open the book!

This was a book that I had *paid* for. I paid $8 for the book, and it was only available in this format, as the author (who lost a lot of credibilty in my view) only released the book in that format. Imagine, after paying for it, that I wasn't allowed to read it!! It has been on my girlfriend's computer now for six months, and I should now be able to read it, finally.

But what if this program hadn't come along? I would have had to call MS tech support to figure out why it was that their program was denying me the right to read a book I purchased. Can you imagine having to do that for every book you wait a week to read?

No, this is not a troll - it is a true story. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had this happen, either. And before you say "You should have read it right then and there..." - I had purchased physical books that I read first. Besides, I should be able to read it at my convenience - clearly something the format wouldn't let me do.

Microsoft counters with: G.S.P.O.T.

[hoggoth]

Microsoft, realizing that even the graphic display of e-books can be hacked and copied has released G-SPOT: the "Graphical System [for] Protection Of Text".

Security for books is a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

It is pointless to put lock in software for books anyway if the books are being released to the public. Books are just text (and maybe some pictures) and are easy to replicate. Ie, if I can read it I might as well type it in manually. It wouldnt cost much to do this in the third world. If it takes a week of work, it still would cost less than 5 dollars , for a few dollars more you could do spell checking and formatting too.

Contrast this with music where it is next to impossible to replicate the work

If you remember the whole thing abt US-europe copyright rules which happened in early 1900s where european books had no protection in the US and vice-versa, it might be actually possible to do this alsmost legally. Just send a mail to somebody in say Tanzania (Just rendomly picked a country in Africa, nothing else) with the relevant document and send him a check. he converts it and sends it to you. He proly breaks the rules, but figures US govt wont put effort in extraditing an ordinary citizen.

Re:Security for books is a joke

[swordgeek]

OK, your first point is very accurate, other than that it doesn't go far enough. Display a book, set up a digital camera, and run the output straight into a text recognition program. I bet you could script an entire book's text in an hour or so.

However...
" Contrast this with music where it is next to impossible to replicate the work"

Are you kidding? This is exactly equivalent, and in fact, easier in some ways. No matter how encrypted it is, at some point audio gets converted to sound. (electronic, and then acoustic). It's dead simple to tap into the signal going to the speakers, and redirect that to an ADC and then the storage format of your choice.

Lossy? Well marginally. Less lossy than MP3. Less lossy than cassette tape. Probably less lossy than reel-to-reel. More lossy than copying CDs directly.

Simple. As long as there's an unencrypted stream somewhere before our brain, it's easily breakable.

Re:Security for books is a joke

[RealAlaskan]

Just send a mail to somebody in say Tanzania (Just rendomly picked a country in Africa, nothing else) with the relevant document and send him a check. he converts it and sends it to you.

I can see it now:

DEAR SIR, I AM DR ABU OSAMA, OF TANZANIA. I HAVE ACCUMULATED US$435 MILLION BY TRANSCRIBING MICROSOFT E-BOOKS FOR YOUR FELLOW CITIZENS. uNFORTUNATELY, THE CORRUPT GOVERNMENT OF MY COUNTRY MAKES IT BOTH DIFFICULT AND NECESSARY TO MOVE THE MONEY TO THE US. PLEASE SEND ME YOUR BANK DETAILS, SO THAT i MAY WIRE THE MONEY TO YOUR ACCOUNT. ....

Capslock off...

Re:Security for books is a joke

[Frobnicator]

Contrast this with music

No matter how encrypted it is, at some point audio gets converted to sound

I think he was referring to the actual live audio, not RECORDINGS.

Re:Security for books is a joke

[swordgeek]

Really? If so then, he should be comparing live audio performances to book/poetry readings.

My comparison is effectively between the recorded word, and the recorded sound. Comparing to live audio is...irrelevant.

Re:bad name = bad press

[Corporate Drone]

Amen! How in the world can the opponents of DRM and the DMCA expect to be taken seriously, with names like these?

sure, they're funny...in an immature, "Porky's" kind of way.

in the meantime, your average Joe Sixpack, if he's sufficiently well informed to recognize the issues, sees this, and thinks, "just a bunch of immature geeks". unfortunately, the anti-DRM, anti-DMCA will get painted with the same brush...

A Few Corrections RE: Familiar

[jstockdale]

Actually that isn't quite true. Under the Athenian system of government, a lottery was drawn every few years where approximately 5000 of the citizens of Athens were selected to be the governing body. This governing body met regularly (and its members were paid to attend) so that they could pass legislation by popular consent. Although this true democracy does depend on the desire of the majority, its structure of representative governance holds a key difference. Such a system is, however, not what we think of as democracy today, as it is too much a pure implementation.

Additionally, the definitian of an Athenian citizen was not as altruistic as merly being loyal and able to fight for Athens, rather, to be a citizen elegible to take part in the governance of the city-state, one must have both of their parents be Athenian citizens.

The more accurate consideration when examining democracy of today would be to look to Rousseau or Locke, both philosophers of the 17th century. Under Rousseau's model, upon which much of the US system today was based, the body politic is ruled by the desire of the collective body not for individual gain but rather the good of the people as a whole. This is substantially different from mob rule in which each individual acts rashly for their own benifit.

Law prohibit

[oliverthered]

This would be true, except that most laws(if not all) prohibit activities, if the majority (or the vast >2/3's in most cases) believe that there is nothing wrong with xyz then it shouldn't be prohibited, are you saving society from it's self?

A libertarian would say this is different from saying that if the majority believe something is wrong then it should be prohibited.

I accasionally take drugs, and frequently forget that possession of drugs is prohibited, and yet, no-one has come to arrest me. Why?, because most people(everyone that's ever overheard/seen me), even though they may not believe that it's OK to take drugs, don't think that it's so wrong that I should be arrested. That is why the 'war on drugs' will never be won by the ummm..... who's fighting the war again.

Simmialrly, lots of people download MP3's or have 'pirated' software, I've never known anyone who would be that concerned about 'personal' use of pirated materal, even if that person only ever user pirated material. This is another war that will never be won.

Now if I were to walk down the street and hit someone with a baseball bat, the police would probably be called.

Quote of the Month

[Glock27]

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! --Benjamin Franklin

This is a time in which our democracy could possibly turn into something much uglier.

To which I can only add:

Give me liberty or give me death! --Patrick Henry

"Give me liberty, or give me death!"

[Glock27]

I should have posted this link:

Give me liberty, or give me death!

Check out the vocabulary and grammar. I hope we're educating comparable citizens in similar proportions today to what it was then, but somehow I doubt it...

Problem with Bono Act: Languages change.

[yerricde]

Download the entire PG opus

So what happens when the English language has changed so much that only scholars can read English texts of the period covered by Project Gutenberg (primarily 1700-1922)? In A.D. 2401, how will PG get the money to fund a public-domain translation of those works from 19th century English to 25th century English? At this rate, there probably won't be any new works available because of the Sonny Bono Act, the Chastity Bono Act, and who knows what she'll name her kids.

mirror of exe

[mraymer]

Tripod is slow... I mirrored it here. It's only 30K.

Let's get one thing straight...

[Dead_Smiley]

Let's get one thing straight once and for all. The United States is not a democacy. It is a Republic. In a democacy, everyone gets to vote. In the United States, everyone gets to vote for a representative to vote for them.

Argue all you will. Thoses are the facts.

Re:Let's get one thing straight...

[susano_otter]

I think more of us Americans would be worried about this so-called "coup" if we didn't have a coup every four years.

Re:Let's get one thing straight...

[cp99]

The United States is not a democacy. It is a Republic. In a democacy, everyone gets to vote. In the United States, everyone gets to vote for a representative to vote for them.

Wow, you've just described a representative democracy.

V. Probably illegal

[dackroyd]

From the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988:

(2) The person issuing the copies to the public has the same rights against a person who, knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies--

(a) makes, imports, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, or advertises for sale or hire, any device or means specifically designed or adapted to circumvent the form of copy-protection employed, or

(b) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection,

as a copyright owner has in respect of an infringement of copyright.

And seeing as the UK has no provision for fair use with regards to space shifting copyrighted material, then this guy could be pretty boned if he's sued.

What the program actually does (yes, I tried it)

[Reziac]

The program format-shifts .LIT files by UNPACKING them to a series of nicely formatted HTML files, complete with TOC and any images as JPGs. If you look at the .LIT with a hex viewer, you can see that the underlying structure is just compressed HTML -- there is even a readable listing of the original files used to make the .LIT file.

Does CLIT need to break any encryption to do this unpacking? I don't know about that -- anyone with technical info care to step in?

Point being -- the end result is just format shifting from .LIT to HMTL (everything in the .LIT is preserved, including all attributions). The real question should be, to what degree is this covered by "fair use"?? How does this differ from a format-shifted copy for personal use, frex from CD to audio cassette??

This just in: secure format cracked...

[salesgeek]

Why am I not surprised. The protect it, crack it cycle has been going on since Lotus dropped copy protection on 1-2-3. Funny part is that the vendor almost always looses.

Re:Well, isn't that. . .(Jesus?)

[gosand]

Twain, O Henry, GBS, Thoreau, Kipling, Swift, Sir Richard Burton, Melville, Hume, London, Conrad. . . Jesus, the list goes on for miles, all free for the taking, distributing, printing, even selling if you want.

Heh - could Jesus write a book so long that nobody could read it? :-)

FYI, here is a link to Project Gutenberg.

Anyone have a mirror?

[gmhowell]

Does anyone have a mirror? Can you shoot it to me via email? (address is good).

Why? My wife. You can buy books printed on Braille. For comparison, each title in LOTR costs about $100 US. Or, I can get her a reader which gets files off your PC. Problem? Not many titles available. But these files are just text. Now, there's many more eTitles available (sadly:) than Braille titles. But in the bastard format. I think this software will help get my wife more stuff to read.

Anyway, anyone with a mirror, please send me a link, or, preferably, the file.

Whoops, correct link

[gosand]

Aww, crap. I posted a mirror. The official site is http://gutenberg.net/ . Damn Google. :-)

Re:Familiar - Another redition

[jlrowe]

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb, voting on what to have for lunch.

Or as I have also heard, two men and a woman on a desert isle. You can guess what the two men vote for...

...does this matter?

[zenyu]

Ok, DeCSS is useful because DVD's make economic sense to own... They are expensive, but for some of my favorite movies it makes sense when I can view them because of DeCSS. But, e-Books are too expensive even if I can view them. If they cost a 1/4 what the paper version cost, I might buy some. But right now you don't even get a free copy of the e-Book when you buy the paper book. These things make no economic sense except maybe for the tiny market of illiterate and blind who want to put these things through reader software.

If they cost $2 to $5 they would make sense when you can't afford the paper version, or for reference books when you don't have access to the internet.

I can see why figuring out the Microsoft e-book encoding could make a good intellectual excercise, but he doesn't even publish the source code, much less explain how it works. Does this even deserve our attention as a hack? Perhaps he cheated and just caught the output of the e-book reader to the internet explorer component, not figuring out how to decode it at all.(I don't know if they use the internet explorer component, but they prolly do use some shared library you can wrap for the displaying of the HTML.)

Re:...does this matter?

[Frobnicator]

but he doesn't even publish the source code, much less explain how it works. Does this even deserve our attention as a hack?

Somebody forgot to read the article. The source is at: http://members.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell/openclit .tar.bz2 and claims to be GPL.

Re:...does this matter?

[zenyu]

Oops!

I did look at the web site, but thought the only download was an exe...so I didn't bother to get it.

It IS open source

[Fuzion]

I don't know which pages you guys are looking at but at this site http://members.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell/, at the very bottom there's a link to both the compiled executable and the source. And it says, "This should compile cleanly on linux and BSD, and should be easily portable. The source code is released under the GPL."

unfortunately named...

[Hubert_Shrump]

C:\> clit.exe

Bad command or file name.

Guess you're right.

Reason #2 *nix will never be mainstream.

[disc-chord]

Hax0rs make the stupidest names for their programs. (see also: Ogg Vorbis)

Re:I didn't have *rights* to open an eBook I bough

[ScooterBill]

Yeah, I had an eBook problem last year. Bought an eBook and then found out that it was only readable on MS Reader 2002 for the pocket PC. Well, Compaq(at the time) hadn't come up with the upgrade for the iPaq for this. So 6 months later I get the upgrade and am ready to go. Wrong! Apparently, if you don't download the eBook into your reader within a certain amount of time Amazon clears the link. Customer service finally got it to work but I could have read the book in the time I spent futzing with it.

You almost had me there.

[Hubert_Shrump]

...crap being shilled by Oprah. Twain, O Henry, GBS, Thoreau, Kipling...

What a difference a period makes.

I got to lay off the speedreading.

drink-driving

[oliverthered]

The problem with 'driving-driving' laws is that they don't target 'bad' drivers.

Ok,
you shouldn't drink and drive,
You shouldn't drive if you ...
can't see properly.
have a bad leg,
suffer from tremmors,
have a problem concentrating,
have bad migrains,
drink tooo much coffee
or are in a bad temper.

You ability to drive isn't just dependant on the amount of alcahol in your blood,

You'r far worse just after you've finished drinking (say a couiple of pints) then you will be in the morning if you drank so much you were still over the limit.

If I smoke a joint, for at least 90mins I'm a better driver, coke makes you 'perfect' in judgment but lacking in concentation....

Free Dan Jackson!

[Eric Damron]

Just practicing...

Re:Watch his site get slashdotted in real time!

[weave]

Where did you get 80.61%? It's closer to 96% on my site.

You missed the parent post because you're lame and browse at score 2. :-)

The 80% refers the the current stats of the Pocket PC web site the article pointed to. It's slowly dropping the precent of IE users on it, demonstrating once and for all that slashdotters browser choice doesn't match the browser choice the general public uses.

Re:where to get ebooks?

[jeffphil]

How 'bout:
B&N Free MS Reader eBooks

University of Virginia's eBook Library for the MS Reader

Re:Watch his site get slashdotted in real time!

[NineNine]

Ah, gotcha. Well, that's still a useless statistic... The site gets virtually no traffic (635K pageviews since Jan 2002!?!), and it definitely isn't representative of users in general.

Re:Familiar - Another redition

[Ig0r]

Toilet seat up!

Excellent - I've just bought an e-book.

[EnglishTim]

Due to this excellent program I have now just purchased an e-book that I had otherwise avoided because I could not view it on my Palm V. Now thanks to clit.exe and Plucker, I can.

Thanks to everyone involved!

I don't pretend to be the general case - but programs like this seem to encourage me to buy more copyrighted works - I bought a lot more CDs when Napster was still with us as well...

Source code is out

[Danj2k]

Okay, I've been getting lots of emails telling me the source and binary links on the site are 404, I know this, we were having some last minute trouble with the binary. Since so many people have asked for the source code, we've put it up anyway, but please be aware that you may have trouble compiling it under Windows. In case anybody forgot the site URL, it is http://members.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell/. Have at it.

Thanks a million for the link!

[telstar]

Now thousands of geeks can finally say they've come in contact with a clit. Ya gotta figure it's about as close as most will ever get....

Re:Gratuitous Jay and Silent Bob Reference:

[JohnFluxx]

Your posts always catch my eye because of your sig and that you do indeed always make spelling mistakes, even in one liners.

The source code is now available

[A.OS.L.S_Bozo]

The full source code was just posted to alt.binaries.e-book this afternoon.

Message-ID: <3e123716$0$1447$272ea4a1@news.execpc.com>

From: Dan Jackson Software <djs@jacko.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.e-book
Subject: [CLIT] Updated source code - openclit.tar.bz2 (0/1)
Reply-To: djs@jacko.demon.co.uk

Here's the updated source code that goes with the new clit.exe. This time it contains some instructions and stuff. Have fun.

I can verify that it compiles fine on

Slackware 8.1/LFS CVS (20021220) Hybrid
gcc 3.2.1
glibc 2.3.1

Here's a screenshot of it:http://ebook.ultraslack.net/screenshot.jpg
The news that the LIT format had been cracked was originally submitted to /. by
the author (incognito), myself, and others on 12/12/2002 when the author first
posted it to alt.binaries.e-book.

Of course, it didn't make the front page until somebody made a GUI front-end for it.

Anyone else not surprised?

I didn't think so.

Re:Gratuitous Jay and Silent Bob Reference:

[NeuroManson]

Just more proof that one should not drink and moderate.