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Amazon Kindle Proprietary Format Broken
An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that the proprietary document format used by the Amazon online store and Amazon's Kindle has been successfully reverse engineered, allowing these DRM-protected documents to be converted into the open MOBI format. Users of alternative e-book readers rejoice." Here are the hacker's notes on the program he is calling "Unswindle," and here is the (translated) forum where the Kindle challenge was posed and answered.
I'd suggest converting every book you own really fucking quick. No telling how long it will take Amazon to make a similar format that will take another year or so to break. You can bet that once they do, they'll remotely switch everyone's ebooks over to that new format and then push a firmware upgrade to ensure compliance.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Just like with music, the publishers have to be convinced that DRM is worthless (as it actually is for the vast majority of text) so that we will eventually be able to buy non-DRMed ebooks.
This is just one tiny step on that path. The publishers haven't even gotten to the "if we sue them piracy will be controlled" stage yet. One wonders if they will understand its futility and skip it.
More like; "Amazon-dot-com and shareholders rejoice, as more people can now read your files, therefore you make more money from increased e-book sales."
You really think so? You figure the hackers were disgruntled Amazon shareholders working to increase their quarterly dividends? My perception is that this will result in increased piracy, i.e., distribution through non-authorized channels from whom the authors of the books are not compensated.
If DRM is not locked inside of a closed black metal box, with anti-tamper seals, then it can always be reverse engineered. Once Kindle readers became available on the PC I knew it would be a matter of time before the DRM format was broken and utilities made available. What did surprise me here was that much headway had already been made by the ones hacking the Kindle hardware/OS already. The DRM had long been defeated. The sad part is that the people that pay for all that DRM 'technology' (the people who buy the DRM'ed books) are never going to be able to easily use the great software such as Calibre, which could make managing all these devices so much easier, sans the DRM. The legal aspects with circumventing DRM will always prevent the ability to have a ubiquitous software platform capable of reading any format that happens to be available from any publisher. I for one would buy much more from any publisher who would publish 'real books' (i.e. not best sellers list only) in a format I can really use. One day they will realize that all the money was wasted on DRM technology, and was merely passing for modern day 'snake oil'. DRM is a loosing battle that need not be fought because it only takes one disgruntled geek to undo all the millions spent on that failed technology. DRM will never increase sales, as the market forces are still just a matter of supply and demand. There is no upside to DRM except for those selling the technology itself. Everyone else, including the content providers themselves, loose in the long run.
Not only that but also Jessie Vincent showed at oscon (his 5 minute speech starts at 2:13 on the video) How he already reversed engineered and installed ubuntu 9.04 on the Kindle. After watching his presentation and hearing about all the crap amazon actually does with these things, I am surprised anyone would still even consider buying one.
the THEY you are referring to are the uninformed masses. THEY have the buying power and THEY generally trust the large corporations more than they trust the informed among us, because there is a mentality of "If I saw it on TV (or amazon.com for that matter) it MUST be more trustworthy than the neighbourhood geek"
Sigh... we geeks really have to work on our marketing... we need an image consultant!
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
the THEY you are referring to are the uninformed masses. THEY have the buying power and THEY generally trust the large corporations more than they trust the informed among us, because there is a mentality of "If I saw it on TV (or amazon.com for that matter) it MUST be more trustworthy than the neighbourhood geek"
That is because the large corporation is in fact almost always is more trustworthy than the neighborhood geek. There is absolutely no way for an average joe to distinguish a geek who really knows their stuff from a geek who knows just enough to be dangerous, the latter being the category most of your neighborhood geeks will fall into.
As someone who has worked in end-user computer services for a number of years, it's pretty much a daily occurrence seeing whacked out stuff that the neighborhood geeks try to do, which either makes the problem worse or works around the problem but confuses the customer enough that they still can't use their computer for what they wanted anyway.
Most neighborhood geeks just don't understand that the average person does not use computers like we do and have no desire to learn how to. At least the large corporations making end-user products make a serious attempt at creating something usable for the masses. Some are obviously more successful than others, but in any case the neighborhood geek will typically only be interested in making something usable for themselves.