The goold old analog hole.
Comment on Amazon is making it impossible to remove the DRM from Kindle Books
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
This entire thing has been made needlessly complicated. Easy fix though.
- Get whatever ebook you want.
- Borrow some code from GitHub and teach a raspberry pi with a camera and a few servos to snap pictures of pages, turn the pages, snap again into a PDF.
- A script then parses all the images and OCRs them for the final PDF.
- You now own a backup of your DRM book, which you own forever. Pretty sure this is actually legal under DMCA since you are taking a backup of something you allegedly own. The encryption circumvention is irrelevant.
- now, break the law and throw the PDF on the internet to everyone. Go little bot! Go go go!
jabjoe@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
ysjet@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Oh you sweet summer child, judges will bend over backwards to slap people with multi-decade-to-life charges for ‘hacking,’ even if the ‘hacking’ is just the rightsholder accidentally presenting data to you.
tomkatt@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
To be fair, if you OCR the pages via camera, you haven’t actually circumvented DRM. That means it’s a completely legal backup, as the DRM on the original file was untouched and unaltered. This definitely does fall under fair use.
ysjet@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Theoretically, yes. Realistically, judges historically believe anything prosecutors tell them about hacking and circumvention.
There’s been people thrown in jail for the rest of their life for the crime of clicking a public URL that the company didn’t intend to be public.
0x0@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
Source?
The closest i’ve heard was a journalist being accused of hacking for the crime of choosing “view source” in the right-click menu of a web-browser.
svcg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
In general I agree, but I am going to have to ask you for a source on that last one.
dermanus@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
You didn’t circumvent it by breaking the encryption, but I’d say you still circumvented it.
duckofdeath87@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Just do it in a country with reasonable laws
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
They already ruled on this in favor of allowing you to back up what you already own. See video games, DVDs and CDs, video tapes, this is well established already.
ysjet@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
They actually walked that back using blu-rays as an excuse. If there’s any sort of DRM/encryption/etc, you’re completely unallowed to circumvent it, even for personal backup.