MobiPocket Shut Down!?

[Axelos]

Originally Posted by heb

Mobipocket support is a major part in me picking a reading device at the moment and this outage is seriously shaking my confidence in the platform!

I don't understand why they aren't giving out more information on their holding page.

I design IT infrastructure solutions for a large company and I can't understand how a core service has been down for almost a week. Many heads would be rolling where I work!

I'm totally agree with you! I also ran a IT Department for a large compay in Germany for more than 20 years. Regardless what kind of problems they are facing now -this behavior, related to their customers is not professional and not confidence-building respectively trustworthy.

[Aenea]

Originally Posted by Robert Marquard

All such DRM is basically an individual encryption for the device. So you have to download a brand new encoded ebook. The device specific unique PID is the key for the encryption.

It should not be too hard for an expert to write a tool for PalmOS or Linux to spy on the text while being rendered to the screen. Especially the iLiad with its Linux 2.4 and a Java application should be open to such attacks.

When you use the iRex supplied Mobipocket reader on a desktop system you can easily set the /proc/sysset/euid to that of your iLiad and move it to any computer/handheld supporting Java...

On the other hand, last night I just wanted to check out how easy or difficult it is to try to hack the java stuff and by de-compiling AWTGraphics.class and adding some stuff in the drawText() method it's quite easy to get all the text of a secure Mobipocket ebook... Better yet, I kinda have a working hack which converted a secure ebook to HTML using a hacked iLiad reader (you can actually intercept the Palm records (4K in size) and write them out as they are decoded...).

Maybe I will make it more usefull and/or without the need for actually opening a window, but for me it did what I wanted: it's definately possible...

If there's a need or interest I might publish a future version of it, and I can easily do that since I'm in the Netherlands

Cheer,

Aenea

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Aenea

When you use the iRex supplied Mobipocket reader on a desktop system you can easily set the /proc/sysset/euid to that of your iLiad and move it to any computer/handheld supporting Java...

On the other hand, last night I just wanted to check out how easy or difficult it is to try to hack the java stuff and by de-compiling AWTGraphics.class and adding some stuff in the drawText() method it's quite easy to get all the text of a secure Mobipocket ebook... Better yet, I kinda have a working hack which converted a secure ebook to HTML using a hacked iLiad reader (you can actually intercept the Palm records (4K in size) and write them out as they are decoded...).

Maybe I will make it more usefull and/or without the need for actually opening a window, but for me it did what I wanted: it's definately possible...

If there's a need or interest I might publish a future version of it, and I can easily do that since I'm in the Netherlands

Cheer,

Aenea

Do you think this will work on a Windows machine? I would be great to be able to always keep the same PID and also to be able to drop off the DRM as well.

[Aenea]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Do you think this will work on a Windows machine? I would be great to be able to always keep the same PID and also to be able to drop off the DRM as well.

Yup, am certain of it... If you follow the instructions of installing the iRex Java reader on a desktop it says you have to put your desktop machine's MAC address in ROOTDIR/proc/sysset/euid but if you just use the one from your iLiad it will work... (better to copy the file over from your iLiad, it's actully your WiFi MAC address with FFFF in the middle... So 01-02-03-04-05-06 becomes 010203FFFF040506 in the euid file...)

Aenea

[JSWolf]

I don't have an iLiad. But I can use the MAC of my computer and the PID of MobiReader.

[tazem]

I have been trying to log into Mobipocket.com for over a week now and all I get is their "Down for maintenance" screen.

Does anyone know when or if they are comming back? I like their reader software and have purchased ebooks from them.

[JSWolf]

BUMP!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Aenea

Yup, am certain of it... If you follow the instructions of installing the iRex Java reader on a desktop it says you have to put your desktop machine's MAC address in ROOTDIR/proc/sysset/euid but if you just use the one from your iLiad it will work... (better to copy the file over from your iLiad, it's actully your WiFi MAC address with FFFF in the middle... So 01-02-03-04-05-06 becomes 010203FFFF040506 in the euid file...)

Aenea

Can you translate the instructions on getting MobiPocket Java to run on Linux/OS X into how to do it for Windows? Thanks!

[Bombast]

Originally Posted by jkeranen

I don't think that anyone thinks that DRM is a good thing for the ebook buyer. The fact of the matter remains that most ebook publishers only sell content through DRM systems. If you play by the rules set by the publishers and by current law mobipocket is the DRM format with the widest compatibility. Even though .lit DRM is cracked wide open I think there is still some benefit in supporting a format that at least tries to have compatibility with a wide variety of devices.

Of course if mobipocket goes under permanently I will probably start working on a method to OCR screen captures so I can continue to read the books that I have purchased.

I've already downloaded Snag-it, and will use it the moment MP comes back - if it ever does (and I doubt it will.)

There's also the saudette hack, but again, it's dependent on the MP DRM server coming back before it will work.

http://www.saudette.net/projects/ind...et_Reader_Hack

I'm seriously new to all this, this is my first Mobipocket purchase. The only previous e-books I've bought were PDFs or word docs, and read on my laptop on long plane flights. But it looks to me like its cheaper and safer to buy the book used in hard copy and OCR it. Yes, it's a couple of hours of labor - but it doesn't get turned off because everyone in France takes August off.

And I seriously can't understand the economics of selling an e-book for 4 times the price of the same title in paperback. Hard copies that pay the author $1/copy in hardback and $.10 in paper at least have the excuse of multiple layers of distribution to support, shipping, printing, storage etc. An E-book has none of that. Where's the $22 going? It sure isn't to the author!

I think the authors would be better off selling E-books for $3-5 without the DRM. They'd make more per sale, there wouldn't be significant piracy if the price was low.

I'll stop ranting now.

[Aenea]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I don't have an iLiad. But I can use the MAC of my computer and the PID of MobiReader.

Well, the reader application calculates the PID from the MAC address, at least, it is that way on the iLiad. I will have to check if it's the same on the desktop Mobipocket reader. If not, it's probably possible to intercept a few more calls and always return a static PID the user provides...

[Aenea]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can you translate the instructions on getting MobiPocket Java to run on Linux/OS X into how to do it for Windows? Thanks!

Hmm, just had a quick look. The only problem is, is the mounting of the image file, that won't work on Windows unless you are running Cygwin. Will have to find a place to host the needed files I guess...
Okay, I will look into this more serious tomorrow, because right now I'm getting ready to go to bed, but you will here from me...

Aenea

[Robert Marquard]

Aenea, please refrain from revealing too much. It is not wise to piss off Mobipocket (when or if they come back).

[HarryT]

... plus the fact that publishing information on how to break a DRM system is a criminal offence in some countries. Please be careful.

[HarryT]

I see that there's also an announcement about the MobiPocket problems on the iRex (iLiad) web site:

Currently the Mobipocket website and all supporting services are down. This disruption is caused by a technical problem at Mobipocket's servers. Due to this disruption you may not be able to use certain functionality of the Mobipocket Viewer PC software and you may not be able to buy new books.

Sources within Mobipocket have indicated that they are currently working on a solution and expect to be back online on Wednesday August 22nd. This service disruption does not affect the books that are currently on your iLiad. You will be able to continue using these publications as normal.

[TadW]

Isn't Mobipocket a subsidiary of Amazon?

The breakdown is kinda ironic, if you consider that Amazon is also trying to make some bucks through selling its "highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure" to third parties.

From Amazon S3 FAQ:

Reliable: Store data durably, with 99.99% availability. There can be no single points of failure. All failures must be tolerated or repaired by the system without any downtime.