Breaking DRM

[elcreative]

You may have misinterpreted the post relating to searching across books... none of the eReaders allow this... the Kindle search is only on the metadata for all books, that's basically author, title, type etc not content of book, search on book is only for currently open book... this is like all readers for content...

Originally Posted by maurices5000

Thanks for this information WallCraft! I really like the Sony features except the size and price but if i can't search across books that's a killer. But the touch and highlight seems amazing. I'll have ot look into this a little more.

Do you know if there is a limit to the note size?

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by elcreative

You may have misinterpreted the post relating to searching across books... none of the eReaders allow this... the Kindle search is only on the metadata for all books, that's basically author, title, type etc not content of book, search on book is only for currently open book... this is like all readers for content...

The Kindle's search is across all content for ebooks, except for PDFs where it is across the metadata only. That is why the Kindle slows down when lots of ebooks are added - each one is indexed at that point. Indexing metadata would take no time at all. From the K3 manual:

Searching All Your Content
You can alternatively search all the reading material that you have stored on Kindle, including books, newspapers, magazines, and other items. You enter your search term or phrase and Kindle searches in the body of the text, in the metadata (for example, the title or author), and in your "My Clippings" file. For PDFs, Kindle searches for the term in the metadata only (author's name and file name). Additionally, Kindle also keeps and searches the metadata for the content you have stored on Amazon.

[elcreative]

OK, you got me, just missed a crucial sentence, that's why everyone can contribute to the forum...

Originally Posted by wallcraft

The Kindle's search is across all content for ebooks, except for PDFs where it is across the metadata only. That is why the Kindle slows down when lots of ebooks are added - each one is indexed at that point. Indexing metadata would take no time at all. From the K3 manual:

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by elcreative

just missed a crucial sentence

It isn't surprising that this is not well known among those not using Kindle readers. What the Kindle's are doing is unique among ebook readers, although a similar capability is available for PCs (for DRM-free documents). I don't know if Adobe has prevented their licensees from implementing this, or if they have all decided it would not be a major selling point. Probably the latter, since this isn't essential for most people, but if you need it you really need it.

[starrlamia]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The latest tools also work on Topaz files. The Calibre plug-in produces a zip file of the HTML and images,. The stand-alone versions produce the HTML zip and also a book of SVG page images in another zip file.

The HTML zip can be converted by Calibre to other formats, but includes any OCR errors. The SVG images are essentially images of the original book pages, and can be used to correct the OCR (manually!) if you want to spend the time.

both of these are good to know thanks guys!!

ive found highlighting and note taking very easy on the Sony, you do have to get the technique right but it isnt hard at all.

[maurices5000]

So is Topaz a difficult things to deal with or not?

I really want to be able to search my whole library. But there are lots of things I don't like about the Kindle. I guess i need to buy both and try them out.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by maurices5000

So is Topaz a difficult things to deal with or not?

I really want to be able to search my whole library. But there are lots of things I don't like about the Kindle. I guess i need to buy both and try them out.

Topaz is difficult because it's an image based format, with only an automated OCR performed and saved. The dedrm/conversion tools now available give access to the OCRed text, but obviously it will have OCR errors in it.

I avoid Topaz whenever possible, but if you're after a particular book, it's likely that if it's in Topaz format on Amazon, Amazon will be the only ebook store that has that book. (Since it's a format used by Amazon when converting quickly and automatically from a printed book.)

[icewyche]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'm feeling in a nit-picky mood, so I'll mention that none of the current ebook DRM removal tools actually break the ebook drm. They all require the decryption key to be able to decode the ebook.

Of course, one way or another, the person buying a drmed ebook must be given the decryption key, so that's not usually a problem.

How does one find the decryption key? I'm not sure I'd know it if I saw it.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by icewyche

How does one find the decryption key? I'm not sure I'd know it if I saw it.

Luckily, full instructions are available from people who've spent time working it out for most ebook DRM schemes.

Apple's Fairplay for ePub is the only major DRM scheme for ebooks that still can't be removed, I think.

[maurices5000]

Thanks guys for the information.

Here is a question I'm wondering. If I place notes and highlights in my books after reading them and I then convert them to another formatt, WILL MY NOTES AND HIGHLIGHTS still be there?!!!

My point is that if i do all this work of getting everything to work as I want it but later find that the competition has a better ebook with all the functions I want, i don't want to lose all my notes and highlights when i switch. Thus, I'd like to do all the work then convert the book to the different format afterwards so that this information is always preserved and i dont have to start from scratch!

Thanks!

[maurices5000]

One other question, once the DRM is broken is it easy to share the book with others? I'm asking because i have a large library of physical copies of books. I have several friends that are planning on buying eReaders within the next year. I was hoping that we could buy the ebooks and give them to each other so we don't have to re-buy every book. I don't consider this stealing or cheating as long as we have physical copies. Plus, I actually have several physical copies of some of my books.

Some of these people want full price or more for the ebook than for the physical copy. I can't believe they aren't offering them to us at a larger discount if we already have a physical copy.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by maurices5000

One other question, once the DRM is broken is it easy to share the book with others?

Once DRM is removed from a book it becomes just a file that you can send to anybody else in the same way you would any other file (that's true of DRM infested files as well btw, they just wouldn't be able to do anything with them).

[maurices5000]

Thanks and what about notes and highlight?

[viviena]

Originally Posted by maurices5000

Here is a question I'm wondering. If I place notes and highlights in my books after reading them and I then convert them to another formatt, WILL MY NOTES AND HIGHLIGHTS still be there?!!!

I don't have much experience with this, but I believe you can export notes and probably highlights using the Sony Reader software. Somebody else will have to chip in with more detail about how well it works, however.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by maurices5000

Here is a question I'm wondering. If I place notes and highlights in my books after reading them and I then convert them to another formatt, WILL MY NOTES AND HIGHLIGHTS still be there?!!!

The notes will still exist, in a separate file, but they won't be associated with the ebook. When you read the original ebook (on a device from the same vendor as you made the notes on) you can bring up the notes while you are reading. If you convert the ebook, the link between the notes and the ebook is lost. This is because there is no standard format for saved notes. The same will be true of highlights, and in that case the highlight itself might be lost (depending on how it was saved) because the new ebook isn't exactly the same as the old. The text is probably the same, but the layout control (e.g. HTML tags) will be different.