A rather naughty penguin...?

[carpetmojo]

Todays Independent, alas....

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...g-6267847.html

Not good news....

[JoeD]

E-books for lending are designed so that they vanish from e-book readers (like the Kindle) after a fixed period, but it is possible for hackers to break the coding and thereby hold on to an e-book indefinitely.

Those who game the system will just download from dodgy sites anyway. This just ensures that authors will not receive the royalties they deserve when people use such sites. It's a silly move really.

They'll never find a way to allow you to read a book without there also been a way to strip the drm if you so wish. It's just not possible to give you the key to read the content without giving you the key to read the content.

[J. Strnad]

The piracy line is just that...a line. Penguin is befuddled by all of this ebook stuff and afraid for their profit margins and making all the wrong moves to take them into the new publishing paradigm. They are the very definition of the "publishing company dinosaur," unable to evolve, too big to maneuver and too fat to keep fed.

IMHO.

[Apache]

And hackers are a very small minority of people who read ebooks anyway. They would make more money even with the hackers than they are making now.
Some bookstores used to steal paperbacks without the covers too. That did not stop the publishers from selling paperback books. It was to small a minority to affect their bottom line.
Apache

[Ken Maltby]

It should be pointed out (For those who didn't read the article) that this is only about
Penguin's ebooks provided to libraries, not to the much larger number available for sale.

Luck;
Ken

[SmokeAndMirrors]

You know what's really sad?

A couple weeks ago, when I sent in my letter to the Library of Congress open submission about DRM, this is one thing I mentioned: that unless DRM is done away with for paid content all together, publishers will start pulling their books from libraries due to poor security. Ultimately, this threatens the viability of libraries as a business, and that is incredibly worrying - access to information to everyone is a cornerstone of a developed society.

I've never been less pleased to be right.

And the funny thing about it is, it's their fault libraries can't secure their content. They are so intent on making the content people pay for as limited as lending through invasive DRM that people who want to actually protect their purchased content are forced to strip it. Because of that, DRM-stripping tools are rampant, rendering DRM useless for its one legitimate purpose: lending.

[ProfCrash]

This ignores the fact that some people were doing this so that they could put their books on the Kindle.

[The Terminator]

You do realize that half the people on MR are what that article defines as "Hackers" I DeDRM all the books that I buy, and I think library books are exactly the same.

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by The Terminator

You do realize that half the people on MR are what that article defines as "Hackers" I DeDRM all the books that I buy, and I think library books are exactly the same.

Well that brings to mind one of my common quotes from back in the day on active duty.

"What kind of f****** bar did I walk into?"

The usual rejoinder was "Same one as last night!"

Live and never learn.

[BeccaPrice]

Originally Posted by JoeD

They'll never find a way to allow you to read a book without there also been a way to strip the drm if you so wish. It's just not possible to give you the key to read the content without giving you the key to read the content.

except I don't believe that Apple's Fairplay DRM has been broken, has it?

not that I'd buy books from Apple anyway.

[Abtacha]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

except I don't believe that Apple's Fairplay DRM has been broken, has it?

That's probably more because there's no need/demand to. It's simply easier to buy a book with one of the already cracked DRMs than waste the time cracking the Apple one.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by Abtacha

That's probably more because there's no need/demand to. It's simply easier to buy a book with one of the already cracked DRMs than waste the time cracking the Apple one.

Yep. Apple screwed themselves with their Agency pricing scheme. By letting publishers set prices and requiring prices to be equal across all stores, they removed any incentive to buy from the iBooks store. There are no (worthwhile) exclusives to iBooks, so nobody has bothered to put in the time to crack the DRM.

That said, it's theoretically possible. Fairplay for books should be similar to Fairplay for music and videos, and the Requiem project has pretty consistently broken music/video Fairplay. If there was enough demand I'm sure they could extend to ebook cracking as well.

[Hellmark]

There just hasn't been the demand, due to the limited install base. iBooks is one of the least used ebook retailers, and requires you to own an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch). Why waste the effort, when so few people would want it. Most people I know who use their iOS device for reading, use the Kindle app, or stanza, etc.

[FizzyWater]

Frickin' Penguin. I had 4 ebooks on the Wait List at the library since 11/11 with a release date of 12/6. Went to see where I was in line - all gone. Guess which publisher they were...

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

except I don't believe that Apple's Fairplay DRM has been broken, has it?

not that I'd buy books from Apple anyway.

I don't think the book varient has, but music (before it was drm free) and films has.

As the poster above mentioned though, there's not really much demand, however it's just not possible to provide a way to decrypt content to view it without also exposing the decryption key, so if the format becomes popular enough or someone just gets a bee in their bonnet, it'll be cracked.

The slight exception to that is in the sense of hardware where they can hide the key in custom chips to avoid passing the key over the bus where it may be intercepted. However, that just relies on people having an easier time cracking software than hardware, stripping back silicon has been done by some (see bunnies xbox hack), it's just more involved/costly to do and also more costly for the device makers.

In response to the post about it been library ebooks only, not sure who it was aimed at, or if it was just a general note, but I was aware of it and stick by my original post.