new form of drm. dpp

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Yes, I'm positive. The basic idea behind DRM is unworkable from a cryptography standpoint. "yet" is the important word in your statement above. Any of them can be broken, it's just a matter of time/effort.

And since every Topaz book can be downloaded from trhe dark in a Scanned&Proofed form, it's simply not worth it.
When p-books will be out market, the DRM will be broken.
Or the books will be retyped in a word processor by some crew of young "pirates"...

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

You only "share" it with people you trust because people might not give back the key to you (aka "move it to their own private store from the "shared store"). At least, that's how I read it...

I thought the way it was proposed was that as long as the key was in the shared store, then everybody had access to the content at the same time (multiple people/devices can access it). However, any one of those people have the ability to move the key to their private store, and cut off everyone else.

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

The issue isn't finding a friendly programming genius, but finding one with access to Kindle Topaz files--because the average geek who'd love to play crypto games with ebooks can't even buy Topaz books, can't view them to figure out where the holes are.

Topaz and LRX are likely to remain uncracked because Topaz doesn't have a large enough market share to attract the interest, and LRX is being retired.

I know enough people with Kindles who would be willing to buy the files - and I myself would be willing to fund the endeavor. No, in my case it's that I don't happen to know anyone who's got the skills to even try to tackle the problem, and the established geniuses out there think like you do, that there's not enough of a market for it - which I still disagree with.

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by Format C:

And since every Topaz book can be downloaded from trhe dark in a Scanned&Proofed form, it's simply not worth it.
When p-books will be out market, the DRM will be broken.
Or the books will be retyped in a word processor by some crew of young "pirates"...

No, they can't. I can make you a list of those titles that I want to read that are only available in Topaz format, and you can TRY to find them on the darknet. But I'll bet you anything you care to wager (up to and including my EZ Reader) that you can't find them.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

I know enough people with Kindles who would be willing to buy the files - and I myself would be willing to fund the endeavor. No, in my case it's that I don't happen to know anyone who's got the skills to even try to tackle the problem, and the established geniuses out there think like you do, that there's not enough of a market for it - which I still disagree with.

Find someone who cracked one of the other DRM formats (Mobi, Kindle, Adobe, etc) and offer to send them a Topaz file if they would be interested in working on it.

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Find someone who cracked one of the other DRM formats (Mobi, Kindle, Adobe, etc) and offer to send them a Topaz file if they would be interested in working on it.

I did think of that, but the most famous of the bunch has publicly said a bunch of times that he's not interested; and the other one I know of has disappeared off the face of the earth. Good thought, though

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

I know enough people with Kindles who would be willing to buy the files - and I myself would be willing to fund the endeavor. No, in my case it's that I don't happen to know anyone who's got the skills to even try to tackle the problem, and the established geniuses out there think like you do, that there's not enough of a market for it - which I still disagree with.

Can't sell the books, can't even sell the ability to work on the hacks; nobody's willing to publicly contract to try to break DRM because psychotic laws are involved. The "market" here is a matter of attaboys and karma points and semi-public acclaim; there's no way to offer anyone those rewards.

And as mentioned upthread, many (I think "all" is an exaggeration) Topaz books are available on the torrent & darknet sites, scanned & proofed; why bother figuring out how to crack the DRM when the book's already available as a free download?

There aren't enough books that are uniquely available as Topaz to attract DRM-cracking interest. Convince Amazon to release the Harry Potter books in Topaz, and that may change.

It's also possible that the "crack" to Topaz is basically "convert to PDF, and re-do the OCR." Extracting the text might be pointless because it might be as bad as the auto-OCR'd epubs that Google offers. If the pages are scanned at low resolution (or converted to lo-res as part of the process), converting from Topaz may be pointless.

And the average hacker may not want to be associated with Topaz at all, may consider it such a bad filetype that they don't want to encourage it by helping to remove the DRM.

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

And as mentioned upthread, many (I think "all" is an exaggeration) Topaz books are available on the torrent & darknet sites, scanned & proofed; why bother figuring out how to crack the DRM when the book's already available as a free download?

There aren't enough books that are uniquely available as Topaz to attract DRM-cracking interest. Convince Amazon to release the Harry Potter books in Topaz, and that may change.

.

Because they ARE NOT available as free downloads. Darknet, Blackmarket, whatever..they are not out there.

Stephen Lawhead's King Raven trilogy
Donna Andrew's last three (might be more) titles (and I LOVE Donna Andrews, even though emails both to her and her publisher about Kindle only have gone unanswered).
Joanne Fluke's titles 1 and 5 of her series.

I could go on and on.

I'll grant you the titles may not have a wide interest, and that is probably the problem. However, to someone who wants to be able to read the books on the device I own, which is not a Kindle, (and would MUCH prefer to be able to purchase them legitimately rather than compromise my computer's security on the Darknet), this is EXTREMELY frustrating. I don't want to deprive anyone of getting paid for their work, I just want to be able to READ THE DARN BOOKS!!! Both Griffonwing and I have contacted the publisher in the case of Stephen Lawhead. They assured us that those titles will be released in other than Kindle format and outlets, but so far we've seen nothing. As I mentioned above, emails (and even calls) to the publishers in the cases of Donna Andrews and Joanne Fluke have either gone unanswered, or no one knew what I was talking about. I am constantly amazed at how little some authors know about where their books are available , what formats they're available in (or not), and sometimes whether they even have the rights to a certain product (as in audio or ebook rights).

As for not enough interest, I believe that's the lion's share of the problem right there, but it doesn't ease my frustration in the slightest. That's why if I knew someone good at cracking who just wanted a nice project, I'd have already turned it over to them, unfortunately, I don't happen to know such a person. Maybe I should start hanging out at the local community college...

In my case - I have no interest in redistributing a "liberated" .tpz file, should such a thing ever come about. And I'd still have to actually buy the book to be able to liberate it in the first place, so no one gets cheated, no one gets stolen from - everyone gets paid, and I get to read the book on what I already own. I am not seeing a downside to this. However, evidently this is too much to ask. And for the record....yes, I'm mad about it.

ETA: The reason I put that I disagree with "not enough interest" in my previous post, is because I can't believe that I'm the ONLY one with an ebook reading device that isn't a Kindle who wants these titles. My taste is, admittedly, off the beaten track, but it's not THAT far off.