Yingwu

Bookshop.org is apparently tackling Amazon in order to bring more profit to authors. Sounds great, right? Well, the issue is that the ebooks they sell are only available to be read in their app. They're not even available for downloading as LCP-protected ePubs able to be read in another LCP-supported reader. He really tries to avoid the questions asked by the journalist on the topic of DRM. Ironic how he then talks about allowing customers to own the eBook, while at the same time only allowing them to lease a license through his own store. See the following quotes:

What’s interesting about the music industry is that it got digitized first through Napster, which had no business model, and everyone was stealing everything. Then the iPod, and there was a fight over [digital rights management]. And Steve Jobs famously won the DRM fight with the iPod. And they said, “Just publish MP3s, DRM is never going to work,” and the music labels capitulated.

Then we moved to Spotify and we brought DRM back. Now, everybody has a streaming service that streams DRM music. So it goes. With video, broadly, DRM just won from the beginning. Everything was always DRM from the start. Books could go either way. A book is a PDF. I get a lot of galleys from authors who come on Decoder, and I just get PDFs with watermarks. And I’m like, “Why don’t books just work like this?”

But the publishers obviously want DRM. The Kindle file format is DRM to hell and back, and no one else can even read it. There are other formats, but you’re at the most Decoder question of all: you’re in a format war with a very late ‘90s DRM problem embedded in the heart of it. How do you think about that problem? Is it that we need a new format? Is it that the publishers need to give up on DRM because the people want to pay regardless of the existence of piracy? What is the shape of that conversation in 2025?

I have a slightly more nuanced view. I think that if you go out into the internet, about 80 percent of readers don’t notice or care. And 20 percent of them are adamantly and virulently against DRM. And then publishers, of course, are terrified of the Napster days happening to their industry. They don’t want it to all be piracy because the recording industry saw 80 percent of their revenue disappear when music went digital, and they’ve brought it back now with Spotify and streaming, and so now they’ve recovered. But it was a big blow. Publishers obviously don’t want that to happen.

I think that if there’s a system that allows people to own their books, ebooks, so they’re not leasing them but they actually own them. They don’t have to worry about a device taking them away from them or retailers taking their books away or making changes to their books after they’ve purchased them, which we’ve seen with ebooks. So they should own them, they should have control of the content and they should be portable. They should be able to put them on whatever device they want. I think that there should be a way to do that and still keep authors paid. Because completely removing every restriction and just being like, “Okay, we’re going to release the new Harry Potter book as a PDF and hope that people pay for it.” I think that they would suffer a massive loss of revenue.

And I particularly am concerned about authors even more than I care about publishing companies. Authors should get paid for their work. Artists should get paid for their work. Period. And so there should be a system for artists to be paid for the work of writing books and that needs to be preserved. But DRM was implemented based on Amazon’s designs and publishers working with Amazon to prevent piracy. And that happened in 2005, 2006, 2007. It’s been a long time. There’s new technologies out there. We can find a way to create portable, flexible ebooks that are owned that still make sure that the publishers and authors get paid.

That’s, I guess, my Holy Grail, and that’s not going to happen right away. But in five or 10 years, I would love to have the kind of clout that Steve Jobs had in saying, “This has to end or this has to change.” The thing is, before you get that kind of clout you actually have to have some customers. You have to have some readers so that the market will listen to you.

So what kind of files are you selling today?

They are almost all DRM protected using LCP DRM, which is a new standard, which is a great standard. But that’s because major publishers require it. And then we have a small selection of DRM-free ebooks that people will be able to buy and download and use on whatever device they want. And we’re going to be growing that DRM-free selection so that we end up with hopefully a catalog that is diverse and has maybe half DRM-free and half publisher-supported DRM.

Cross-posted from "Calibre subreddit succumbs to (probable) pressure and removes a thread discussing a fully legal way of bypassing an e-book DRM solution (LCP) created by a particularly litigious organization" by @[email protected] in [email protected]

Sorry for the long title. Some context to this: Readium LCP is a DRM-solution created and delivered by the non-profit foundation EDRLab (I guess we've learned by now that non-profit doesn't equal good), based in France.

EDRLab is an international, non-profit development laboratory working on the deployment of an open, interoperable and accessible digital publishing ecosystem worldwide.

In recent years they've gained a large market share in the EU first and foremost, providing both regular e-book shops in many EU countries and libraries with this DRM (if you're interested in some more technical information regarding this DRM solution, I'd recommend reading Terence's previous blog post). What's particular to this solution is that they've historically been very litigious about any attempts to DeDRM it. The most famous plugin for DeDRMing books in Calibre (mainly Adobe DRM) has been the NoDRM plugin, and they did release a DeDRM solution to LCP v1.0 but they were threatened with legal action with a DMCA takedown request (read more on Github).

In recent days, Terence Eden posted a fully legal solution on his blog on how to bypass their DRM. This was also posted to the /r/Calibre subreddit, see the following image: I also made a thread on Lemmy here.

Nonetheless, after around a day the thread was removed on the Calibre subreddit. The only rule I could find that maybe could be applied to this (if it was illegal, and if Terence did this with any other material that wasn't his own) is the rule against piracy. But it feels weird.

This subreddit has previously allowed, and still allow, discussions around the NoDRM plugin and how to DeDRM the Adobe DRM. What makes this fully legal solution of bypassing LCP any different? It can probably be deduced that the EDRLab foundation contacted the subreddits moderators, or reddit admins, and "threatened" them in order to have it taken down. Or guilt tripped them as they also did towards Terence. Aside from their previous DMCA takedown request to the NoDRM people, just look at their arrogant correspondence towards Terence (more in his blog post). Threatening him on no legal basis as well as somehow blaming their failure on developing accessibility tools to him posting about this solution:

"We were planning to now focus on new accessibility features on our open-source Thorium Reader, better access to annotations for blind users and an advanced reading mode for dyslexic people. Too bad; disturbances around LCP will force us to focus on a new round of security measures, ensuring the technology stays useful for ebook lending (stop reading after some time) and as a protection against oversharing."

These are some of the reasons why I think a federated web will be necessary moving forth. I really dislike DRM, but also these methods that DRM organizations use in order to control the conversation. Thanks for reading and engaging with my small fixation on DRM and especially LCP :)

This is a mirror from a reddit post. Archiving here for future reference. Credit goes to TexasNiteowl. I can't answer any questions regarding this.

Archive link to reddit post

2025 Guide for freeing books from Amazon

(from Feb. 27, 2025 after the download & transfer option was removed)

Some books may simply not work. There are publishers out there that have hardened DRM, which includes some textbooks particularly. I have no idea if comics/manga/graphic novels will work. But the following information will work for many ‘regular’ books.

Identifying your Options

• If you have a physical e-Ink kindle (not a Fire tablet) that is 3rd generation through 11th generation, you have 2 options: Wifi Delivery OR Kindle for PC.

• If you have a physical e-Ink kindle (not a Fire tablet) from the 2024 releases, there is some confusion or uncertainty as to whether Wifi Delivery will work based on whether Calibre can recognize your device and navigate the folder structure. You can try Wifi Delivery and if unsuccessful you can use Kindle for PC. I have been told a Colorsoft did work. I have been told a basic did work. But I do not have any 2024 model to test myself. I've seen reference this might be more of an issue on macs due to number of mtp connections that can be open? But I'm no expert.

• If you only have a Fire tablet, your only option is to use Kindle for PC.

• If you have NO physical kindle, your only option is to use Kindle for PC.

Wifi Delivery

This method involves sending your purchased books to your kindle device and then connecting your kindle to your computer by USB and importing the books from your kindle into Calibre.

• What is needed for this to work:
  • A kindle that can connect to wifi and receive books sent/delivered by Amazon.
  • Calibre (currently 7.26)
  • DeDRM plugin (currently 10.0.9)
  • The serial number of the kindle being used. The serial number must be added to the DeDRM plugin customization.
  • KFX Input plugin (currently 2.22.0)
• Steps:
  • From your Amazon content library, send/deliver the books to your kindle
  • Make sure the books have been received on your device
  • Open Calibre and then connect your kindle to your computer
  • A “Device” button should appear in the menu row of Calibre
  • Click on that Device button; the view should now change to show you the books that are on your kindle
  • Select the books that you wish to import (or select all if you want)
  • Right click on the books and choose “Add to Library”
  • Calibre will now send the books from your device to your library and will attempt to DeDRM them
  • When the job is done, click the “Library” button to switch back to your library
  • Verify that dedrm was successful (2 options)
    • Option 1: Select the books that you imported and convert them to another format such as epub. If conversion is successful, dedrm worked.
    • Option 2: View the formats present in Calibre. In general, “kfx” formats worked and “kfx-zip” likely did not work. HOWEVER, if you have a very old device (K3/K4/K5/PW1), they deliver files in azw and azw3 formats instead of kfx. For those files, either double click on the book to open it or convert them to another format such as epub.

Recommendation: limit the number of books you do at one time; I have seen reports of books failing if dedrm gets overwhelmed with too many books at one time. (In fact, I had 6 books fail when I did a large batch of books but when I retried those 6 books alone, they worked fine.)

Note: K3/K4/K5/PW1 will download the files in azw/azw3 formats. K6/PW2 and newer, including Voyage and Oasis, will download in kfx format. One difference to be noted is that kfx files are “optimized” for the device and so for b&w eInk displays, any color covers or color illustrations are changed to be b&w. Exception is likely the Colorsoft (but I don’t have one and can’t verify).

Kindle for PC

This method involves downloading your books to your computer using the Kindle for PC software and then importing the books into Calibre.

Note: Kindle for MAC will not work! If you only own a Mac, you will need to run a Windows VM. I know one way to do this using Parallels but I don’t know if there are other methods, etc.

• What is needed for this to work:
  • Kindle for PC v2.4.0. Newer versions will NOT work. (Note: K4PC v1.17 will still download books published before Jan. 2023 to the best of my knowledge. But for more recent books 1.17 will not work. See other notes about 1.17 below.)
  • Calibre (currently 7.26)
  • DeDRM plugin (currently 10.0.9)
  • KFX Input plugin (currently 2.22.0)

Installing K4PC

The most important things about installing K4PC is that the version must be 2.4.0 or older and auto-updates must be turned off. During my install of K4PC 2.4.0, immediately after install and before registering/logging into Amazon, I was able to access the menus and change the settings to uncheck the auto updates option. Other people have not been able to do this successfully. Some instructions advise disabling your internet access while installing K4PC until after you are able to change the auto update setting. One other method is to use a batch file to create a file that in theory blocks the update folder from being created. Here are links to discussion about these methods:

See this thread for more information about Calibre installation and/or removal of other versions and reinstallation: https://www.reddit.com/r/Calibre/comments/1c2ryfz/comment/lhtaln2/

See this thread at mobileread for information about the batch file to prevent updates: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=283371

Using K4PC and importing to Calibre

I am presenting two methods here because of the way that books are identified in K4PC. In short, when the books are downloaded into K4PC and placed on your computer, they are not easily identifiable in your “My Kindle Content” library folder. They use Amazon’s ASIN identification string instead of an identifiable title. This is no big deal on an initial import of a large number of books when you can import from multiple folders, but can be an issue if you are trying to locate and import one single book.

• Scenario 1: Downloading an individual book (ie. made a new purchase and adding just one book to my existing library)
  • Open K4PC and confirm it did not update and is still on v2.4.0
  • Initiate the download of the desired book
  • When the download is complete, you may close K4PC
  • Option 1: Drag and Drop file from a file folder
    • Go to your K4PC library location (default is C:\Users\*username*\documents\My Kindle Content)
    • Sort the folders by date with most recent first
    • Go into the most recent folder and drag the .azw file into Calibre
    • Calibre will add the book and attempt to dedrm it
    • Check the format shown for the book: in general a “KFX” format indicates success and “KFX-ZIP” indicates failure; alternately, convert the book to epub or another format – if the convert completes, drm removal was successful
  • Option 2: Add the book from inside Calibre
    • Open Calibre and click the Add Books button
    • In the “Select Books” window go to the most recent folder in your My Kindle Content location (C:\Users\*username*\documents\My Kindle Content) and select the *filename*_ebok.azw file
    • Calibre will add the book and attempt to dedrm it
    • Check the format shown for the book: in general a “KFX” format indicates success and “KFX-ZIP” indicates failure; alternately, convert the book to epub or another format – if the convert completes, drm removal was successful
• Scenario 2: Initial download of all purchases (ie. a lot of books!)
  • Open K4PC and confirm it did not update and is still on v2.4.0
  • Initiate the download of the desired books (see note below about collections)
  • When the download is complete, you may close K4PC
  • Open Calibre
  • On the side of the “Add Books” button is a small expansion arrow, click that and choose “Control the adding of books”
  • In the new “Adding Books” window, click the middle tab “Adding Actions”
  • Click the “Rules to filter added files” next to “Control which files are added during bulk imports”
  • Click “Add rule”
  • You will add a total of 4 rules
    • Ignore the file, if the filename ends with: .voucher
    • Ignore the file, if the filename ends with: .phl
    • Ignore the file, if the filename ends with: .md
    • Ignore the file, if the filename ends with: .res
    • Click Apply
  • Click the arrow next to “Add books” again and choose “Add from folders and sub-folders”
  • On the “Multi-file books?” popup window, choose “yes”
  • Choose your K4PC library folder (ie. c:\users\username\documents\My Kindle Content)
  • Calibre will begin the import and add and dedrm the books
  • Check the format shown for the books: in general a “KFX” format indicates success and “KFX-ZIP” indicates failure; alternately, do a bulk convert process and convert the books to epub or another format – if the convert completes, drm removal was successful
  • If most books work, but a handful show kfx-zip, identify the ASIN (Amazon identifier = folder name) for those books and then remove them and re-add them individually. Occasionally dedrm might get slightly overwhelmed and blip. This did happen to me. Out of over 1400 books, 6 ended up as kfx-zip. But when I deleted them and then re-added them one at a time, they worked fine.

Congrats! You have freed your purchased books! You may now use them on your Kobo or other device.

About Collections

When you are doing the initial download of multiple books, you may consider putting them in collections which will allow you to download multiple books without clicking on each and every book.

In your content library on the Amazon website, look at your book purchases. Each page has 25 books per page. Select all and add to a collection. Go to the next page and do the same. I would not make the collections too large, but I did collections of 150-200 books (ie. 6-8 pages of books). Then, when downloading in K4PC you can download an entire collection at once instead of having to click and download each book.

About K4PC 1.17

This very old version of K4PC will download books published before Jan. 2023 (and maybe a few after). 1.17 also downloads books in azw or azw3 format which is different from the kfx versions downloaded by 2.4.0. The azw/azw3 files downloaded by 1.17 are self-contained single file books. 2.4.0 KFX downloads are comprised of multiple files. Even though the 2.4.0 KFX downloads contain an azw file as one of the files, the file is not the same as the azw file that 1.17 might download. In short, even though they might have the same/similar extension, 1.17 azw files and 2.4.0 azw files do not work the same way.

Links:

• Calibre: https://calibre-ebook.com/download
• DeDRM: https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM/_tools
  • Note: If using the Wifi Delivery method, do not forget to add your serial number to the customization area of the plugin after installation.
  • Note: Do not download the stable 10.0.3 release; read the readme and download the 10.0.9 version
  • If you have continued failures with the 10.0.9 release, consider trying the alpha release which is also linked from the readme
• KFX Input: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=291290
  • Note: installation is done within Calibre (Preferences > Plugins); this link is to a thread maintained by the plugin author
• K4PC v2.4.0: https://kindleforpc.s3.amazonaws.com/70904/KindleForPC-installer-2.4.70904.exe

References:

• 2024 Guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/Calibre/comments/1c2ryfz/comment/lhtaln2/
  • Good tips on completely uninstalling a previous version of K4PC if necessary and other information too
• Dealing with Kindle ebooks in Calibre from MobileRead forums: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=361503

Note: KFX Input is updated to v2.22.0 on 07 March 2025. It says: Fix bug that prevented metadata from being shown in Device view for books in KFX format on Kindles do not use MTP (pre-2024 models).

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40758362

Welcome to join [email protected] if you're interested in discussing all topics DRM and DeDRMing!

Welcome to join [email protected] if you're interested in discussing all topics DRM and DeDRMing!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38033968

Apparently many libraries, including the ones in my country, are moving over to a system where you're not allowed to digitally download the epub file anymore. You're only allowed to borrow the book, and read it, in a closed ecosystem: an app. This per definition then excludes the majority of e-ink readers that don't run Android. This is due to Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on the accessibility requirements for products and services (Text with EEA relevance) (source) entering into force June 28 this year.

As the Adobe DRM solution hasn't been updated for years, it isn't capable of fulfilling all the requirements that this law lays out without endangering the DRM solution. Text-to-speech is one function that isn't fully supported by Adobe for example. This means that there are apparently two directions to go for full compliance, Readium DRM which is barely supported as well or a closed app ecosystem.

This is frustrating on so many levels, especially if I would like to borrow an ebook in my native language that isn't available elsewhere on the web, which is often the situation for books in my language (and I'm guessing most languages outside of English). The alternatives left is borrowing a physical copy, or buying it.

The enshittification of everything continues...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40191472

Finally there are some more methods to tackle LCP DRM, but the messages to the creator from Readium consortium is so frustrating. Just read this:

"We were planning to now focus on new accessibility features on our open-source Thorium Reader, better access to annotations for blind users and an advanced reading mode for dyslexic people. Too bad; disturbances around LCP will force us to focus on a new round of security measures, ensuring the technology stays useful for ebook lending (stop reading after some time) and as a protection against oversharing."

Also on Mastodon

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40330384

Cross-posted from "Quick and dirty way to rip an eBook from Android" by @[email protected] in [email protected]

Some of you might have followed my earlier posts about the LCP ePub DRM. Here's another one of Terence's blog posts that I thought was great.