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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.
There have been a set of python scripts around for more than a year and a half that allow you decrypt Kindle files to mobi. The challenge has always been in dealing with Topaz files and, unless I am missing something, they still haven't been cracked.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
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.
Better to have waited a couple of years more, till much more books had been published in the DRM'd format. Publishers were starting to warm to the Kindle, and now they will retrench like timid snails.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
.. from the forum that was linked into from Slashdot (well done for that btw kd)...
"Wow, you're a little scary! Well done." - I will use this the very next time one of my developer colleagues finally does a decent job.
"If Guy says you gun, you cannon. No arguments about!" - I will use this the next time one of my project manager "colleagues" puts his/her foot down about something technical that they don't know anything about.
"Already finished rope hook" - I will use this the next time I am telling a colleague that their code or document was so bad that instead of a review I had to re-write the whole thing.
The best quote of course is the new term "Open DRM" that one of the posters has coined. Genius! We should use that as a tag for all similar posts.
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 you want a pirated book it's easy enough to get a hold of, there are ebooks all over torrent sites and usenet. Even private ebook only trackers. And they are more likely to be in plain-text formats or epub making them better than the amazon equivalents.
For the most part, they loose money on each ebook sale.
Huh? Amazon often sells e-books for as much (or even more) than the price of a printed book. Seeing as there are no costs for storage and shipping, the profits should be larger than on printed books. From where do you get this idea that Amazon loses money on e-book sales?
... and then they built the supercollider.
You are, of course, aware that with the exception of the first quote, the quotes are simply mangled automatic-translations (from Hebrew) by Google-Translate? For example, you may be disappointed to find out that the (excellent) new term "Open DRM" was not even used in the original text. In fact, it was something along the lines of: " I come back and see that you already managed to crack open the DRM".
Wait, I've been using MobiDeDRM for a while with my Kindle's Mobi serial number to strip the DRM and leave me with Mobi files. How is this different, exactly?
This gets the Mobi serial number from the Kindle For PC application. Now you don't need to own a Kindle or iPhone to buy Kindle books.
You and the parent don't understand the difference between 'lose' and 'loose'.
Jonathanjk.com
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.
I've been walking around with DRM-free files for over a year. Anyway, after stripping of them of DRM, I changed the filenames, and added prefixes to the titles (my real goal) to "categorize" them, which is why I wanted to unDRM them in the first place--adding text prefixes to the titles to indicate category makes it easier to use a Kindle without folder capability.
If Amazon really wanted to, they could easily identify their own books on the Kindle regardless of what messing around you've done.
The obvious way would be to put in the occasional misprint - an extra space or punctuation mark would be the easiest, though the odd mis-spelled word would also work - and check for it in a firmware update later. IIRC there are cases of publishers doing exactly this to determine if works they publish were being infringed upon. Put in enough little things like this (and in a book you've got space for hundreds without anyone really noticing) and the only way to avoid it is to retype the whole thing.
Though I'm sure some enterprising fellow somewhere will reply to this with a five-line Perl script which takes a block of text, removes extraneous spaces, adds a few of its own, corrects existing mis-spellings and adds a few new ones and also messes with the punctuation, all of which without impacting the readability of the text.
Nonono.
Read that quote from GP again:
For the most part, they loose money on each ebook sale.
OK the grammar is a bit whacky but what he meant is of course that the profit margin is so huge that they end up with some money lying around loose because nobody knows what to do with all that spare change.
Somehow we have to invent a one-sentence explanation, that explains “loose” by linking to a Goatse pic, and “lose” as what happens to you, if you actually click that link. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The question is, why would anyone want to do that?
Because Amazon has a good storefront for buying eBooks of a known quality in a consistent format. You don't need to deal with 6 different formats, 27 different storefronts, and quality going as low as scans of the actual pages.
I don't like reading books in the PC
Some people don't mind it. More importantly, plenty of devices other than the Kindle or iPhone exist on which you might read eBooks... Netbooks, for instance (basically just PCs, but they finally hit a sweet spot between utility, weight, and battery life), or non-Amazon/Apple-approved smartphones.
I would rather buy a physical copy (to pay the author) and then download a digital copy from torrents or whatever than support DRM infested products.
I suspect most of us agree with you on that - However, the legality between the two differs radically. Stripping DRM for purposes of interoperability might count as a protected use (IANAL); downloading a torrent definitely does not. Also, keep in mind that publishers have increasingly tried to play the "X different products" game, claiming that the dead-tree edition requires a separate purchase from the eBook which requires a separate purchase from the audiobook (even if digitally produced) - Geeks tend to scoff at that sort of thinking, but the courts sadly haven't caught on to it as nothing more than a shell-game yet.
With e-books you aren't "lending", you're merely making a copy...
There are a number of advantages:
1) Lots of content available in a small package. You can carry a library with you wherever you go, which is fantastic for travel (who wants to haul around multiple books in a carry-on?).
2) Easy to purchase new content quickly. Out of books? Buy another one and it's there and available in seconds.
3) No bookmarks. An e-reader remembers exactly where I was at any given time.
4) No need to hold a damn book open. Combined with 3, it's suddenly practical to read while standing on the bus, waiting in line at the grocery store with a basket in one hand, etc, not to mention enabling more comfortable reading positions at home (lying on one's side in bed, lying the book on your lap or propped up on your knees, etc). And it's a lot less fatiguing on the hands.
5) You can easily change font sizes (this is a killer feature for a kindle owner I know). Do you have poor vision? Are your eyes just tired? Crank up the point size and you're good to go.
Of course, there are plenty of disadvantages, not the least of which is the lack of that wonderful smell of paper, and the tactile sensations as you turn the page and handle the book, hence why I would never completely replace my paper library with a digital one. But the advantages mean that I typically split my time, switching between reading electronic and paper books.
This NY Times article says the same thing: "American publishers chafe over Amazon's pricing policy for the Kindle, under which it generally sells digital versions of best sellers at $9.99 - less than the wholesale price that Amazon pays for many of these books."
So does this article on Slate: "For a typical hardback that retails for $26--say, E.L. Doctorow's Homer & Langley--Amazon pays $13 and then sells it for $9.99 on the Kindle, taking a $3 loss on each sale." The same article also ran in Newsweek.
Here is an article at Publisher's Weekly: "That Amazon is currently treating the bulk of Kindle editions as loss leaders--items it either breaks even on or loses on to build market share in e-book sales and to fuel the growth of the Kindle--is one of the worrisome aspects of the current system."
Seems like a remarkable journalistic conspiracy by The New York Times, Slate, Newsweek, and Publisher's Weekly to cover up the truth. Or do you imagine that all these publications ran stories by all these reporters without making sure that the statements in them had sources?
When someone has pointed out that you've made a factual error, usually the best response isn't to get angry.
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