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

[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.

Re:Familiar

[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

[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.

Re:Familiar

[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

[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

[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]

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.

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

[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. ;-)

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 ./

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.

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

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.

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 ...

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.

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:where to get ebooks?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Online Books Page

Over 10,000 online books free to the public.

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.

"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?

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!

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

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.

Wrong Again...

[DickScratcher]

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

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:ports

[joto]

don't forget Klit and WinClit

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

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.

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.

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??

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."

Free Dan Jackson!

[Eric Damron]

Just practicing...

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....