DRM Stripping

[jumpuphigh]

Following various links for the piracy debates, I came across this blog entry.  It tells you how to combine some scripts with calibre to strip DRM off of your books purchased from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. etc.  It doesn't work for LIT books or iBooks with DRM.  I've installed it and used it and it is quite easy.

ETA: If you don't enter the correct information for the plug-ins, you will have to remove the books that still have DRM, fix the information for the plug-in and then, re-add them to calibre in order to remove the DRM. 

Comments

[elf]

LIT books can be de-drmd (and converted to HTML) with Convertlit; lit's DRM was possible the first commercial DRM to be cracked. Convertlit will run portably and is amazingly simple to use; no actual script skills required.

iBooks are still uncrackable; I tend to think this is because you can only read them on iThings, and you can't run scripts of your choice on those. They'll eventually be available on PCs because Apple will need that market share as soon as competitive tablets show up, just like Kindle gave out Kindle-for-PC as soon as the Nook hit the marketplace. After that, with books & key on a computer that allows real programming, someone will figure out where in the digital file the key is buried, and how to unlock the book.

[yourlibrarian]

Excellent. I have three books that I could not get onto my iTouch and this worked nicely. Thanks!

[jumpuphigh]

Glad to help. I had been waiting for someone to make it this easy for me. I knew someone would eventually and I'm glad it happened sooner rather than later.

[havocthecat]

You are AMAZING. I have about 1300 books on the Kindle on a shared account, and I'm SO TIRED of not having them in a universally accessible format (in case I end up buying a Sony eReader some day, for example).

[jumpuphigh]

Thanks. I think it is important that we get to have control over the books that we have purchased. You might have to dig around on the blog a bit for more detailed Kindle instructions. I remember seeing them somewhere, comments maybe?, but since I have never purchased an ebook from Amazon, I didn't note where those instructions were. There are ounly about a half-dozen blog entries total so it shouldn't be too hard to find.