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'Winston Smith' Speaks Out On MS Reader Convertor
David H. Rothman writes "'Winston Smith,' an unemployed American high school dropout self-named after 1984's hero, told my TeleRead.org site why he and buddies turned out Convert Lit to crack the Microsoft Reader e-book format. Winston makes clear he is pro-fair use and anti-piracy. Alas, new DMCAish legal restrictions in the United Kingdom will force the Dan Jackson Software site to shut off the Convert Lit downloading later this month. Just as in the States, free speech and fair use apparently matter less in the UK these days than they used to. According to Dan Jackson, Winston 'is indeed the real author of Convert LIT.' Meanwhile, if you're in a country without DMCAish thuggery and can host Dan at a new location, email him ASAP."
On Freenet.
What's the point in hacking a format nobody's using anyway?
As far as I know, your home-free is you host in Canada.
Hosting is cheap too!
Stop downloads of it later this month? They may as well just leave it up, because by then there will be about a million different sites available to download it from. Especially now that the Slashdotters know about it, people will host it just to spite Microsoft.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
They spend time cracking ebooks, which I will never read, instead of creating a universal porn site user/password hack. I want my naughty teenage lesbians, I just don't want to pay for it!!!
Cracking it is like breaking open the bank fault so the criminals can steal something that's not theirs.
I love how you dorks think everything in 1984 is coming true. Get a fucking clue.
AC has always badmouthed the US as no longer "the land of the free" and made other off-the-cuff remarks, also saying that he'll be leaving his country if such laws were passed. Yet, suddenly, he's become very quiet. Does he have any plans of following through, or does he just make idle threats? I find it sad someone so prominent in this community would be all talk and no walk.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Winston Smith is not the hero of 1984. Big Brother is the hero of 1984. Big Brother has always been the hero of 1984.
Uhm, after posting his [unobscured] email address on the Slashdot Frontpage, I tend to think that we might want to find the guy a new email addy first...
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Do people just sit around and go, "Bob, I feel like taking away peoples rights today."
But the real bad guy is companies like microsoft that act on the laws.
-Seriv
When hacks are outlawed, only revolutionaries will hack.
Exactly. This is cracking open a bank vault with hardly anything in it. It's still a vault, and the cops are gonna come after anybody who breaks into it.
If you wanna do a Rosa Parks-like stand of civil disobedience, go ahead, but also pack your bags for the slammer. The fact is, civil disobedience means breaking the law and paying the price, the theory being that if enough people do it it'll get attention and hopefully cause the law to be changed, or at least cause the local officials a headache trying to arrest 10,000 people when the local police department only has enough cells for 3. Somehow, a small number of hackers breaking a non-used scheme isn't quite the same effect...
You're better off pointing out the DRM schemes that can be hacked with a single key. That's a much better test case than this...
Normally, this would be a great use for Freenet. It's too bad the network is fucked to hell right now.
Hostin' some file called "clit15.zip" on ya PC might get y'all some mo' problems tho ;)
I wasnt even aware of this new law until i read the post! I havnt seen a single bit of media attention here apart from one tiny register article. Even dimitry skylarov got attention here.I just hope they will make this more public before the 31st when it goes into effect and i hope that everyone does their absolute best to spread every bit of DRM circumnavigation around as much as they can while its still legal and screw over as many companies as possible.
Its things like this that make me want to bitch-slap the queen and get her to do something about it.. even if its just erm.. making the beafeters run around. We need a leader who takes no crap from the EU and the US and we need to nuke someone now, i dont care who, just as long as i dont have to live in a country where i will be arrested for wearing a decss t-shirt. And isnt this violating the human rights/free speech laws?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Hmm..what are his credentials that he knows so much about copyright law, fair use, and the US legal system?
Sounds like this guy just hangs out on indmedia and kuro5hin too much. time for him to get out of his parents' basement and smell the fresh air.
I wonder if it's worth putting effort into distributing an e-book cracking program when e-books are falling out of style. Amazon is getting out of the business and they may be setting a trend. The lack of a decent micropayment system is sounding the death knell for legitimate electronic distribution of content, protected or not. Meanwhile pirates are busy scanning and distributing their own copies which they don't bother placing content controls on.
The DMCA is good law in any nation. As far as the "thuggishness" comment goes, well I have to say I am saddened by this comment. It demonstrates a lack of respect for the law and the brave officers who enforce the law. The "jackbooted thug" and other comments make me sick and that sort of "speech" ought to be banned. We need zero tolerance policies toward DMCA violators, or any law breakers for that matter who are not in the ruling class. The law enforcement officers have every right to wear whatever kind of boots they want, use any weapons they want (including nuclear, chemical, and biological), and any tactics they want to enforce the law and to stop terrorists like this Winston Smith character. We need special camps for subjects who disobey.
Cause the person he's responding to is an ill informed jackass
As many have mentioned before me, FreeNET, in its days of glory, would've been perfect for something like this... However, as of late, among other services, it has fallen awry...
I personally think this is turning into a vicious cycle, much akin to the one found in the rotation of television broadcasting. In the late 80's, there were some quality shows on television... After the 5000th run-down of Power Rangers, or the 1000th joke about the purple Teletubbie, television is finally restoring some quality shows...
In the 1930's, life in the world was a trafic affair. That time it was because of financial issues. In the 1970's, life was well...we all know how life was in the 70's... Now, in the late 90's and early 2000's, we're experiencing the next cycle of hell on earth so to speak. Right now, we can still go down a lot further before the world realizes what is going on, and slowly begins its climb back to the days when waking up in the morning wasn't a burden.
However, as we are currently here now, we must deal with it as it comes.
I haven't RTFA yet, but if he bypassed some descryption algorithm designed by MicroSoft (No - I don't like them either - but thats not the point) then something should be done. However, the problem now lies in the extent of punishment which he would receive. In today's world, we've begun comparing "digital theft" as some like to call it, to armed robbery and murder. I know people who have been to jail for armed robbery, and many other violent crimes, who got off easier than someone caught hosting 1000 MP3s... It is a sad day when owning a copy of a song on your hard drive, or a copy of a book on your computer, becomes a crime punished to a greater extent than 'other' crimes...
Ahhh...the wonderful world we live in now.
"The Samurai who does not fear death becomes invincible."
It's kind of like this...
WHORE
...Palm's PalmReader format then. Took about a day to crack and I have only a tiny bit of experience with cracking (last thing I cracked before that was the version of Lotus 1-2-3 that insisted you had the original floppy - so we're talking mid-eighties or so.) I assume that the engineers who design these security systems know exactly what they are doing: pretending to make something secure so that they can con gullible companies into giving them a paycheck.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
All I can say is this thing helped me out of a jam a little while ago. The program is not polished by any means, but it does work.
Our company had a document (Employee Handbook) converted into MS Reader format. (Don't ask me why.) The original files were lost in a disk crash. (Don't talk to me about backups either.) Now the document needs editing. I could have re-typed it, but I'm lazy. A quick Google and I find this program with a potentionaly offensive name.
Hooray! I get to be lazy and violate the DMCA just to retreive a file owned and created by the company I work for. The incident only reinforced to everyone here the value of pdf files and that MS Reader is beyond worthless.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
but I the first time I tried to do a little offline, off computer reading I realized that there was no print function. I didn't want to copy the whole thing or print it out for distribution. All I wanted to do is print off a chapter so I could hop in the car and read a little during my 5 hour drive during a weekend visit.
The people making anti piracy software have to realize that you just can't force people to act in a simple fashion so that it's easier for them. They have to realize that they have to find real and intelligent solutions that work and still allow Joe Legal user fair and useful access to the content that's being provided.
After doing a small search for a conversion program (this was a while back now) and not finding one, I just ditched it and went another route.
This is on a Mac - are there any endian issues or anything else that would stop it working, despite compiling perfectly?
if not for piracy and copying copyrighted materials. and dont give me the "for educational use/research bs" either. why do you think you have the god given right to circumvent the copyright protection somebody places on their work? the same applies to decss, sd protection circumvention, pdf encrytion crackers, etc...
Extremely sneaky, and extremely scary.
More than mere navel gazing.
We should definitely publicize this. The DRM seas are still a vast, unknown, and malevolent region to all but the most well-traveled seamen. We can't allow others to circumvent our efforts, or to use circumvention.
What's the point in hacking a format nobody's using anyway?
.
In case you don't know, there are quite
a lot of "nobodies" out there !
In this world of 6 BILLION PEOPLE, about
6 millions of them maybe counted as
SOMEBODIES
That still leaves us around 5.995 nobodies
that might be using the
format nobody's using anyway.
Quite a lot, aren't they ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Slashdot may take care of that before they need to.
I am the clit commander!
vampirical
Could not a system (relatively) easily be put in place which uses existing cell-phone networks to transmit the data, encrypted, into the e-books, and never store that data outside of encrypted volitile memory, with the only data ever "stored" in the e-book being a single user-id and private key for access to a database of licenses? All keys would of course be one-time use and hideously long- because it's fucking TEXT. It doesnt require a high-speed connection.
I know there is most likely some technical reason, so what is that reason? Why are the makers of these readers complaining, instead of actually creating a secure product (which, btw, does NOT require backups of anything other than the userID and private key, which have no reason to be made unavailable to the user)
Of course, storing data "encrypted" would be pointless, as the key would need to be stored somewhere as well, but if the key is for one-time-use, the ability to take the cover off, hack and solder your way into the memory chip, and sift through until you get what you want.. doesnt seem like a problem to me...
Please, I'm not trying to troll or anything, I'd just like my ignorance to be alleviated.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Damnit, they are stopping access to the only clit most of us on slashdot can get.
Winston Smith loves Big Brother. Maybe he should have been Guy Montag instead.
Stealing your neighbors TV or mugging a little old lady doesn't affect Rupert Murdoch or the like. Ripping a CD so you can listen to it on your iRiver, computer, as well as your CD player "cheats" them out of another $25.
For which crime do you think they'd like larger sentences?
Rick DeBay
In Alaska there is a State-sponsored scheme called "Made in Alaska", whereby people are supposed to be assured they are buying goods "Made in Alaska". (I think it's mostly aimed at tourists). But when you read the requirements to be certified, you'll see that you can have goods manufactured in China, as long as a vague amount of influence is applied (if anyone ever asks), and still stamp it "Made in Alaska". Just put the Made in Alaska sticker over the Hecho in Mexico sticker. I don't mean to create a cloud upon the honest merchants, especially seeing as the State buys buttons and other junk manufactured in China, junk to pass out to visitors, junk they could buy locally.
-cp-
If it wasn't so late I might be motivated to write more - there are so many things wrong with this picture I don't know where to begin.
You'll notice, when you follow the link, that you're really getting submitter David H. Rothman's weblog, where he states, "Winston in effect provides some great insights into why "Microsoft" is a hated name among millions and why e-books sales for the whole bloody industry are a pathetic $10-million or so a year--a fraction of Tom Clancy's annual income."
Rothman has what's known as "target fixation" - he's so focused on the target (MS and DRM) that he'll fly his plane into the ground. Of course revenues are so little - no one wants to read books on a screen! Even in a convenient easy-to-carry PDA with super-font-res technology.
If you read all the material relating to "Winston", you'll find Rothman seems to hold him up as a sort of hero of the cause, whose insights we should all read and heed. If you read Winston's writings, you'll find he's rambling, immature, and ill-informed. He does have one real insight: "Lack of a college degree is a true impediment to getting hired."
I don't know how this stuff ends up on the front page of Slashdot. A link to a guy's weblog...timothy strikes again.
"Zero tolerance" is government code word for "being double-plus unreasonable."
Go back under your bridge.
Medids da same jokey 2.5 hours ago, sucka. Better recognize, else meshalls get shady n shit.
but I the first time I tried to do a little reading at night during a blackout I realized that the book wasn't backlit. I didn't want to illuminate the whole thing or project it on the wall. All I wanted to do was to do a little reading until the power came back on and I could visit Slashdot again.
The people making books have to realize that you just can't force people to act in a simple fashion so that it's easier for them. They have to realize that they have to find real and intelligent solutions that work and still allow Joe Legal user fair and useful access to the content that's being provided.
After doing a small search for a flashlight and not finding one because it was dark, I just ditched it and masturbated instead.
Is Sealand still an option?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
You know, there's quite a lot of irony posting as an Anonymous Coward double plus gooding Big Brother, when the whole point of Big Brother watching you was that you couldn't be anonymous....
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Winston makes clear he is pro-fair use and anti-piracy
Yeah, every cracker claims to be anti-piracy. Doesn't make it so.
Soon The Right to Read by Richard Stallman will be historical documentary instead of overexeggarated antiutopian future science fiction...
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Seems sourceforge is an obvious place to host that GPLed project of yours. The interoperability purpose of the software should be enough to avoid dmca related problems (plus the eff could give a hand :)
Due to ancient laws of the land, there is one place in the whole of the UK where you cannot be sued or prosecuted for any spoken word.
That place is Speakers Corner in Hyde Park.
Just gather up the source for DeCSS and any other cracking algorithm and security vulnerability and read it out loud to the 'audience'. You may need to invest in a megaphone or PA system to be heard above all the other people there (which nowadays includes Taliban sympathizers, Pro Saddam activists, IRA/PLO/Islamic Jihad fundraisers, BNP/Neo-Nazi recruiters, Triad/Mafia/Organised Crime reps).
You cannot be prosecuted for saying something there, political or otherwise.
The only problem is trying to get someone to listen.
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
Whoa ! Let's stay focussed here !
...
Inhabitants of the USA ore not allowed to give this guy any pointers as how to/where to move his site, as the law is a means to procect something, and circumventing a means to protect something would mean a violation of the DMCA
..and this nice piece of software won't change that.
While the Taiwan giant TSMC dominates the ASIC production business (though they do build some of their chips in fabs in Oregon), Taiwanese companies don't have a similar level of market penetration into the microprocessor space. Intel is by far the largest manufacturer of desktop microprocessors and the vast majority of its microprocessor fabs are located in the US (Arizona, California, and Oregon, with smaller concentrations in MA, NM, UT, and WA), though it does have some in Malaysia.
While Intel does have fabs in China and Israel, they don't manufacture microprocessors in them. They do ASICs (ethernet, etc), chipsets, and flash memory. The other microprocessor companies like IBM and AMD also manufacture many microprocessors in the US, though I don't know about their fab distribution as well as I know Intel's.
Last draft I saw of the UK implementation of the EU Directive had some interesting language about fair dealing. So I asked the person who wrote it. "Does this mean that if (a) DRM blocks fair dealing copies for, say, the blind and (b) the industry doesn't come up with a solution, that (c) you can demand that the Home Secretary ask Andrei to do you a crack?" Answer: big grin.
That's certainly the intention of the EU Directive. So if they've changed the UK version since then, eventually we can get it changed back...
If there is a court case here in the US, I think the first constitutional admendment would be very usefull.
stringent security settings on their own documents. It's certainly not Microsoft's fault for making them use the most restrictive security settings available to the program.
http://www.greenmac.com/eagle/ISSUES/ISSUE23-9/07J uryNullification.html>
This is a perfect use for P2P networks...fighting truly unjust laws rather than stealing songs. Get your illegal priorities straight, damnit. ;-)
he clearly didn't understand the message to which he was replying to. AC said that he would leave his country, the UK, if it instated DMCA like laws. Which the UK has. So what shock are you referring to?
Just to reiterate the stuff in the post above, Alan is certainly not fond of such laws and has lobbied against other related laws in just the last month (or did you miss the Alan and Linus protest against software patents?).
:)
Heck, after reading the link it may be the case that the law refered to has not even been passed yet (it was put up before parliament on the 3rd and does not come into force until the 31st). For all we know it might be being lobbied against (not everything Alan says or does makes headline news y'know. For instance, I don't see The Register reporting how he was nearly skewered by a sharp piece of metal sticking out the back of someone's seat in a car a few weeks ago)...
Oh and I can confirm the SUCS stuff too
big corporations miss the big picture. Incompatible formats, locked in proprietary nonsense - these are the things that can kill good products.
.LIT's into that format is a bitch. Without this tool (and Skylarov's), the content that I wish to pay for is useless to me. Ironic, as the content is just the printed word.
I own a rocket book e-reader. Its great. Except for the fact that it can only use one propreitary format. Which, thankfully, after the company took a dive, they released the authoring tools for that format. Unfortunately, getting content like PDF's and
These companies all believe that DRM is some how a feature (isn't it great, our customers can only buy content from us!) and use the DMCA in this area to create a natural monopoly. But, of course, people don't like being bullyied around.
Here's a list of advice to any large corporation who considers DRM as a "feature".
Circuit City Divx.
E-Books.
Intuit's 2002 Tax Software
and historically,
Betamax.
Digital Compact Cassette
Not all the products were superior, but in every case, the public choose the format that was universally supported, as open as possible, and extensible. Did JVC get run out of business when everyone on earth used VHS? Did Philips lose all their money by publishing the CD specs?
Please.
Step One:
Make lobbying as illegal as bribing. Its the same thing after all.
Step Two:
NO politician or political party should recieve more than $150 or its equalivant from any one person. No politician or party should receive one penny from any corporation, large or small. If the people running the company feel so strongly about a candidate, they should all give him/her $150 each. Oh yeah, the most any person can give any year is $600. Pick four candidates. That's it.
Step Three:
Overturn the DMCA, as well as the "Patriot Act", the "Telecommunications Reform Act" all the deregulation of the energy industry - every law bought and paid for by Enron, Worldcom, ClearChannel, Murdoch, etc. Let's clean house. Let's take the country back and make the laws to protect people from corporations, not the other way around. You don't see average consumers dumping toxic waste and making Uncle Sam pay for it.
Step Four:
Representational Democracy is restored, usurping the plutocrats.
Let's take back the first world before the powers that be turn it into the fourth world.
If you can't get to a website for one reason or another, don't forget to check web.archive.org.
/ /m embers.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell/ is the most recent link to the above site, and the .tar.bz2 source download link seems to work as well. Make sure to replace that date with a '*' to see other possible copies from other dates.
http://web.archive.org/web/20030118042411/http:
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
If many people do what you did, then one might be able to make the case that trafficking in the tool isn't a violation, either.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"Just as in the States, free speech and fair use apparently matter less in the UK these days than they used to."
Actually the UK never had any fair use provision in our law. We have never had the right to make copies of our CD's for any reason whatsoever - it is illegal (under existing laws - not the new ones). It is also illegal to record a TV show, or a radio broadcast.
Exactly! I don't want to READ any e-book or anything infact. Co-incidentally I have not even RTFA.
I have a few books that I own in Mobipocket format and the reader is huge! I want to convert them so I can read them in my preferred reader (Plucker). Anyone know of a program to do this?
Mr. Competence
Those who open their minds too far often let their brains fall out.
Crack down on free speech, i hate stupid new laws about the internet and how the government is intervening at every possible place, bah.
Don't, just don't defy this
You say:
>Update (2003/10/07)
>The UK's implementation of the European Union
>Copyright Directive means that, starting from
>October 31st, it will no longer be legal to use
>or distribute Convert LIT in the UK.
The fact is that the copyright directive had an implementation deadline at the end of last year. The UK has just been 10 months late. However, legal precedence in the EU means that until a state has implemented the directive, then it is possible to enforce the directive through the principle of "direct effect".
This means that your material is already - and has been for some time - a copyright violation.
Alas, new DMCAish legal restrictions in the United Kingdom [...]
OK, I've just finished a brief scan of that.
Its rather a big document to receive less than a week's worth of debate before enactment, but I guess I only have my MP to blame for that.
One thing that concerns me substantially is that the phrase "effective technological measure" and a number of similar phrases are used in numerous places in these regulations, but are not defined anywhere. Nor, it would seem, are they defined in any other act of the UK parliament, at least as far back as 1987 (which is as far as HMSO's web copies go). Which means that this law can be readily twisted to mean whatever the first barrister to get his hands on it wants it to mean... yeuch.
Other issues - breaking an anti-circumvention measure is illegal whatever your purpose (unless its for cryptographic research). You could be perfectly entitled to get at the data, but because its protected you can do nothing about it.
It seems to me that UK law only prevents violations of copyright, not simply getting access to data by using non-standard methods. E.g. it seems to be legal here to play a DVD on a Linux PC, or to hack the X-box to run whatever you want. It would be illegal to make unauthorised copies of course. I am not a lawyer and of course might be confused about the meaning of the law. Perhaps someone qualified in UK law might give an opinion? This potentially affects much more than the ability to read an unwanted M$ file format. As I understand it, reverse engineering is legal in the UK, please correct me if I am wrong. It seems to me that the only offence would be in "knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies", if that is not so, e.g. if there is no provision to save a file, there would seemingly be no offence. There is also the phrase "...for commercial purposes any means the sole intended purpose of which is to ...", which seem sto suggest that if the program will mainly do other things, it should be quite legal. For example, a DVD player program could allow you legitimately to view what you have paid to view, but would be illegal if it was designed specifically to make a copy. But, if its principal purpose was to view copy-protected DVDs which the user has paid for(NOT illegal in the UK), and someone found a way of making it generate a copy (e.g. by running a screen grabber as a second process), the author of the program would not have done anything wrong. If the program was (as I guess it is in this case) a viewing program for document files, and it had the normal Windoze Copy function, then in conjunction with the clipboard and another application you could make page by page copies to any format you liked. That would still seem to be legal to have for your own use, as long as you don't make any more than a temporary copy for immediate viewing (e.g. so you can format it better if you are visually impaired.) It has never been suggested that having a copy of anything in RAM (or swap file) is illegal, the fact that it is not in the same format as the original is surely irrelevant.
But, if the application, as well as a Copy function, has a Save As..., then the program would be in a grey area legally, because it "could" be used to make copies, even if that was not its main purpose.
As someone once said, "the law is an ass", in this case created by a bunch of donkeys.
BTW I don't agree with illegal copying, but that is not the same as using a method of your choice to view a file, which IMHO is your right. After all, if you buy a book, you can read it anywhere, with or without artificial light, magnifying glass, scanner and voice synthesis (nominally for the blind, but you might want to do that when driving a car, for example), etc. Copyright law was intended to apply to books, it served that purpose very well, and would do so also for software if the politicians would not meddle and make very bad law to appease the entertainment industry. You buy one document, or film, or audio tape, or whatever, you can play it in any one place at a time, on any piece of equipment. That is how it should be. The US have ignored that principle under pressure from the entertainment industry, the UK seems to have made a half-hearted attempt to folow, have messed up and pleased no-one. Interestingly our Prime Minister's wife is even more vile than he is, and is a barrister, intent on becoming a judge. She is "supposedly" computer-literate, he is definitely not, and relies on her. With idiots like that at the top, no wonder we get bad law.