{"id":415,"date":"2009-07-04T10:39:03","date_gmt":"2009-07-04T01:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/04\/stripping-drm-from-ebooks\/"},"modified":"2009-07-04T10:39:03","modified_gmt":"2009-07-04T01:39:03","slug":"stripping-drm-from-ebooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/04\/stripping-drm-from-ebooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Stripping DRM from Ebooks"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found a good post on how to remove DRM from ebooks at
\nhttp:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/tag\/how-to-strip-mobi-and-prc-ebooks-of-encryption\/<\/a>.
\nThey have a link to some python scripts that can remove DRM from some forms of
\nebooks as long as you know the PID for the book that you bought.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis morning I purchased Brandon Sanderson’s<\/a> “The Well of Ascension”<\/a>, the
\nsecond book in the Mistborn series<\/a>. I found the first book during Tor.com’s
\nlaunch ebook giveaway, (you can get it too!<\/a>) and really enjoyed the book. I
\nwanted to read the rest. (Apparently, I might not be the only one.<\/a>) So I
\nchecked online, and I could get the second book for about $14 from Fictionwise.
\nSounds great. The only problem is that the books they sell there have DRM, Digital Restrictions Management<\/a>. I am not able to read books that are encrypted
\nwith DRM on my preferred ebook reading platform: FBReader<\/a> on my OLPC with Ubuntu<\/a>
\ninstalled on it. So I decided to try to remove the DRM. That would restore my
\nrights as the owner of the book to archive it, so that I can read it in a month,
\nsix months, five years, or twenty years. As long as I ensure that I have the
\nregular unencrypted file and software to read it, I should be fine.\n<\/p>\n

\nIf I did nothing about the DRM I would only be able to read the book on the
\ncomputer that I used to download it. A 15″ notebook. It isn’t really all that
\nportable.\n<\/p>\n

\nI was able to strip the DRM as outlined in the link above<\/a>, but the resulting
\nmobipocket file came up empty when I tried to load it on FBReader. Bummer. So I
\ntried another approach. I took the unencrypted mobipocket file, and loaded it
\nup into the OSX Stanza ebook<\/a> reading software. Then I saved it again as an
\nePub file, a more open format. That did open ok in FBReader, and now I can read
\nthe book that I purchased on any hardware that I like.\n<\/p>\n

\nI am a bit disappointedthat I needed to pay $14 for the book. I would have
\npreferred $7 or so since I do not get a physical copy, but ebooks are actually
\nmore convenient for me. On Amazon.com the book<\/a> is actually $7.99 for a new,
\nphysical copy (or the Kindle copy, which I am not able to buy, but could use if
\nI could after stripping the DRM) that includes lots of costs for printing,
\nshipping to warehouses, distribution, whatever. Ebooks are a lot simpler when
\nit comes to distribution: you ship them over the internet, with perhaps some
\nup-front computation to encrypt the book using some sort of DRM scheme. Costs
\nwould be lower without the DRM. Customers would be happier because things are
\neasier to use. People who want to buy books probably are not the people that
\nare going to go and upload the files to the internet. People who just want to
\nget the book for free can already do that. I can’t see how DRM is really
\nhelping the industry, but that is the standard for books right now.\n<\/p>\n

\nThankfully, it is now possible to get non-DRM’d music files, from Amazon<\/a> or
\nApple’s iTunes store<\/a> (but you need to make sure the stuff is iTunes plus still I
\nthink?) Hopefully video will go the same way.\n<\/p>\n

\nI would really like to get a Kindle<\/a> but I won’t do that until I can get one that
\nworks in Japan. Until then I will make do with what I have. Even once I get a
\nKindle though, I would like to make sure that my books do not have DRM on them
\nso that I have control of my files, and what I can do with them is not dictated
\nby a third party (regardless of whether or not I think that the system is
\nreasonable enough, and non-intrusive enough to use.)\n<\/p>\n

\nBTW, you can use the MobiDeDRM if you get the Kindle PID (type ‘411’ from the
\nSetting menu, according to this<\/a> blog post.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found a good post on how to remove DRM from ebooks at http:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/tag\/how-to-strip-mobi-and-prc-ebooks-of-encryption\/. They have a link to some python scripts that can remove DRM from some forms of ebooks as long as you know the PID for the book that you bought. This morning I purchased Brandon Sanderson’s “The Well of Ascension”, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,15,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}