[bookshare-discuss] Fw: [PM] Hackers break Amazon's Kindle DRM


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"If you go without playing the trumpet for one day, no one knows, two days, only you know, and more than three days without practicing, girl you better look out, because everyone will know!" Today, I find myself constantly saying those words, just to get myself going, to not give up, and it works. Since I learned to play the trumpet at the tender age of 10, I have spent so much passion and much diligence with that instrument that I will not give up on it. Sometimes my instrument puts me into awkward situations where I feel like they won't ever end, but the trumpet gives me a lot of hope with the majestic, crystal-clear sound it brings to my ears. 
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Chela Robles
E-Mail: cdrobles693@xxxxxxxxx
MSNWindowsLive Messenger: cdrobles693@xxxxxxxxxxx
Skype: jazzytrumpet
----- Original Message ----- From: "kb7uen gene" <kb7uen5893@xxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: "'The PAC Mate User List'" <pmlist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 4:11 AM
Subject: [PM] Hackers break Amazon's Kindle DRM



Hi Everyone,



Here is a news item that may pique the interest of some PMO users.  I am
posting this here for FYI only, not to encourage hacking.  As a result, I
wiped out the links which allow you to get the stuff you need to hack the
DRM in the Kindle for PC and the Kindle.  If people want these things they
will have to go looking on the web for it themselves. While I hate DRM with a passion, I'm not sure I understand the point in this. I mean, you can get 
pretty much everything that is in the Kindle store from Fictionwise and
other ebook stores on the web. What am I missing here? DRM only hurts the honest, paying customers, and not the people who would have media or content 
for free.



Gene



Hackers break Amazon's Kindle DRM



An Israeli hacker says he has broken copyright protections built in to
Amazon's Kindle for PC, a feat that allows ebooks stored on the application 
to work with other devices.

The hack began as an open challenge in this (translated) forum for
participants to come up with a way to make ebooks published in Amazon's
proprietary format display on competing readers. Eight days later, a user
going by the handle Labba had a working program that did just that.

The hack is the latest to show the futility of digital rights management
schemes, which more often than not inconvenience paying customers more than 
they prevent unauthorized copying.

Once upon a time, Apple laced its iTunes-purchased offerings with similar
DRM restrictions that evoked major headaches when trying to do something as 
simple as transferring songs to a new PC. When reverse engineering
specialist DVD Jon neutered the mechanism, that was the beginning of the end 
to the draconian regimen, which Apple called, ironically enough, Fairplay.

But most vendors don't bow so gracefully or quickly out of the
reverse-engineering arms race. Witness, well, Apple, which regularly issues 
iPhone updates to thwart users who have the audacity to jailbreak the
devices they own. Texas Instruments has also been known to take action
against customers who reverse engineer calculators.

Amazon representatives have yet to indicate how they plan to respond.
Queries put to a spokesman on Tuesday weren't immediately returned.
According to a translated writeup of the Kindle hack here, Amazon engineers went to considerable lengths to prevent their DRM from being tampered with. 
The Kindle for PC uses a separate session key to encrypt and decrypt each
book "and they seem to have done a reasonable job on the obfuscation," the
author says.

The crack comes courtesy of a piece of software titled unswindle, and it's
available here. Once installed, proprietary Amazon ebooks can be converted
into the open Mobi format. And from there, you can enjoy the content any way 
you like.

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  • » [bookshare-discuss] Fw: [PM] Hackers break Amazon's Kindle DRM - Chela Robles