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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."
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 --
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
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...
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?
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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.
...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.
Slashdot may take care of that before they need to.
Think of it this way: KFC's 11 secret herbs and spices aren't patented. If I have good enough tastebuds and can figure out what they are, it's not illegal for me to tell people what they are. Why would it be? It's the same thing.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
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
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.
why do you think you have the god given right to circumvent the copyright protection somebody places on their work?
Because I can. I'm not going to limit myself to some arbitrary level of stupidity just because you say it's "protected". Obviously if I can crack it, then it's not done well enough, is it? If it's that important, it shouldn't be on the 'net, and copies should be tracable to the original purchaser.
If someone puts a digital copy of something out into the world, it's fair game. Sorry, but that's life - if I'm not acquiring a copy illegally, I'll do what I want with it thanks. If I figure out a decryption scheme, yay for me, and what difference is it to you? I wasn't going to pay for what ever it was so you didn't lose a sale. You still have the original, it's not like I broke into a safe and stole your painting. Jeez, if you want to stop people using infomormation that you are selling or providing online, either get better protection or provide your customers with the tools to access it without resorting to a DIY approach.
And here's your list of valid uses...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
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.
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.
http://www.greenmac.com/eagle/ISSUES/ISSUE23-9/07J uryNullification.html>
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)