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Apple iBooks Copy Protection Cracked for First Time
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Copy protection of digital content is necessary.
But it must not mess with the experience of those who paid for the content.
But it must not mess with the experience of those who paid for the content.
Apple had iTunes sales of $1.7Bn in Q1 2012. Profit was likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
That's a lot, but it hardly means anything (financially) to a company that as a whole did $46Bn in sales in that quarter.
It's more complicated than that. In fact, it's not always the publishers who are insisting on DRM, but the distributors/retailers.
For instance, when I upload my books to Apple (and Amazon, for that matter), there is a check-box that allows me to choose where the book will be sold with or without DRM.
I always select "No DRM."
I don't quite know why this is offered as an option, since the books get DRM'd by Apple and Amazon anyway. But the option is there, so perhaps someday they will offer both types — DRMd and non-DRMd.
But you're still stuck with their reader. Since I only have an iOS device and a Mac (and I don't really read much books on the mac, I much prefer to use my iphone honestly because I can hold it in my hand and it just feels right), I go with what i like best on my iphone.
I like that Amazon has more selection and can be cheaper, but I just really like the ibooks reader better. Enough that since most to all the books I'm interested in seem to be available on both I just pay the little extra to have them on iBooks (and since I don't have a kindle and am picking on what reader I like best on my phone it doesn't matter that it can be used on more). And anyways, the point is still correct, Amazon may have a wider selection of devices you can use but you're still stuck with what they provide you and if they go under or decide they are not interested or for some reason decide you violated some rule and block you off or you want to go to another type reader, you lose the books you buy with them if you don't have access to what they decide to provide you.
I honestly wish that they would go with you buy the book in a standard format (epub seems a good one) and you buy the reader of your choice to read that book with rather than be stuck in whatever ecosystem you decide to go with if you want to buy a book from that store. I hate being limited to the reader that store wants to provide if I want to buy from them. It's ridiculous.
J.K. Rowlings is planning on putting a digital watermark on her books to protect against piracy and selling them on her own website and you choose what reader you want to use. Sure, pirates can remove that watermark, but as this thread shows, pirates can remove DRM too! And doing the watermark method doesn't punish us who want to buy the books legally!!! I totally wish J K Rowlings much success in her endeaver. I also find it funny cause she went from being totally anti-ebooks (basically being stupid about it, saying she didn't want to go there cause too easy for thieves... which thieves already put her books on ebook format so anyone who wanted an ebook from her had to steal it) to going to a method I really think has a lot of foresight on doing it a good way.
Excellent points especially those refering to the movie and music industries. If metallica and a bunch of do nothing music execs wanted to own 3-4 estates each one with swimming pools, Jacuzzi's, personal gyms, broads and drugs for 2-3 tunes listenable on average per album, tough *****, those days are gone, they better get out on the street and play music to earn a living. If hollywood thinks they can keep printing money in the ranges of profit of $100,000,000 for one stupid generic movie after the other, tough *****, they should make whatever profit they can in theaters.
Writers though are more vulnerable and should be protected more, plus they can't make a living using their craft in some other way (playing music, in movie theatres) but with the product they sell. Having said that a model where most people self publish in an app store paradigm with much lower pricing yet higher volumes is ideal.
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Wow J.K. Rowlings wants to make even more money? She's richer than the queen of England or something by now. Kinda hard to stomach young minds are being exposed to authors motivated so much by greed...
Because you have broken the license agreement. You agree to use the content in a certain environment. Just because you pay to see a movie at the cinema does not give you the right to 'liberate' it to watch anywhere.
I personally don't agree with DRM material, from a business perspective. But don't pretend that unDRMing material that you have purchased is acceptable - you know that you are breaking the sales contract that you have entered into. If you don't like the contract - don't enter into it.
Wow J.K. Rowlings wants to make even more money? She's richer than the queen of England or something by now. Kinda hard to stomach young minds are being exposed to authors motivated so much by greed...
Wow, you bypassed my whole point
. The point was she was going to a system that still at least helped protect against piracy that still allowed people to choose what reader they wanted to use and used a standard format.And why is her being richer than the queen of england make her greedy? It makes her successful. I guess you're saying she now should just pass out her books for free because once you make so much money you shouldn't try to make anymore?
Pretty easy
1. Download Requiem onto your pc/Mac
2. Unzip the executable
3. Click on the program file and it finds your iTunes library and does it pretty much automatically
4. It places the old ,DRM files into the trash
Now go use your music, movies and books.
Btw the reason I did it was so that I can watch movies I bought from apple on my home theater via a DNLA server running on my Mac at the othe end of the house so I don't need to buy Apple TV.
1. Download Requiem onto your pc/Mac
2. Unzip the executable
3. Click on the program file and it finds your iTunes library and does it pretty much automatically
4. It places the old ,DRM files into the trash
Now go use your music, movies and books.
Btw the reason I did it was so that I can watch movies I bought from apple on my home theater via a DNLA server running on my Mac at the othe end of the house so I don't need to buy Apple TV.
Very true. Just like we have to sit through "Do not pirate this movie" notices before we can enjoy something we paid for, whilst illegal copies cut out the crap and let you get straight to enjoying the film. It's just nonsense.
I prefer reading books on my Kindle, but we have several Apple computers, an iPad and two iPhones in the house. I often work away and don't take my Kindle but use my iPad for reading instead as it covers other bases too. I never buy from iBooks, because it would mean I can't enjoy them on my preferred reading device when I'm back at home. That's just lost sales from Apple because, as a rather lazy individual, I'd probably use iBooks rather than Amazon if it wasn't for that fact, purely for the convenience.
I don't know if the problem is so much with Apple, as with their suppliers who aren't technically literate and don't understand that attempting to protect digital files is a self-defeating mechanism, but insist on it as part of their contract nonetheless. Amazon don't seem to have the same problem, so maybe not. But since Apple persuaded the labels to drop DRM on iTunes, I've bought incomparably more from the iTunes store than I did when it was a closed shop, because I feel secure in knowing that I can use those files on pretty much any device for the foreseeable future. I'm just baffled that a lesson wasn't learned from that exercise.
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Wow, you bypassed my whole point
And why is her being richer than the queen of england make her greedy? It makes her successful. I guess you're saying she now should just pass out her books for free because once you make so much money you shouldn't try to make anymore?
I did kinda bypass your point, sorry.
For her to want to ensure that she makes even more money when she's as filthy rich as one can be, especially so in a time of worldwide financial crises, makes her greedy, not the amount she has amassed so far. I would think that a children's author should demonstrate more quality of character, which very apparently she is lacking. And yes after a point she should be giving her books away for free or just not drm-ing her books... it's insulting that 4/5ths of world's children are living in utter poverty and despair and a children's author wants to hoard even more money by finding every way possible that a bunch of kids don't steal her prized ramblings. But that's just how I look at it.
In reality, and fortunately, it really doesn't matter what you think of the terms, restrictions, rights, whatnot that I supposedly agreed to when I purchased an eBook from Amazon and stripped its DRM. In fact, it really wouldn't even matter if I waltzed into the police station 2 blocks down from my house and confessed.
As you point out yourself, DRM is to protect against the illegal distribution of intellectual property. If I strip a DRM so I can read an eBook on Stanza instead of the Kindle app, without any intent to distribute such copyrighted material, I am breaking no law. Nor will I ever, ever be held responsible by Amazon for breach of contract. In fact, since Amazon makes it so easy to do and have done nothing to rectify this situation, my interpretation is that they really don't care. Furthermore, even if such a law existed, what jury of my peers would ever find me guilty?
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I take it you haven't been downloading many books on Law.
And whether a jury of your "peers" would find against you is not the point, and certainly doesn't make you "right". The agreement is clear, as is your acceptance of it's terms at the time of purchase. But I certainly don't question your inability or unwillingness to abide by an agreement, or of like minded peers to sympathize in your failure to keep said agreement.
So you are ok with a school buying one copy of your eBook and simply copying it for all of its students for the next 5 years?
Where does he say that? He merely thinks on balance DRM is bad business, and he's right.
The Music Industry went 100 years without DRM and is perfectly fine.
DRM means you cannot use a product you want on a device you own, efforts to remove DRM should be applauded. That is not the same thing as saying piracy is OK.
What if the media industry mandated you couldnt have certain software installed on your computer, or installed a rootkit in order to control DRM, or destroyed media files you have bought remotely without your permission, or stopped authenticating your media because they went out of business? Hyperbole you say? All those things have already happened...
Had never heard of Requim until this topic, but what a brilliant thing it is!
I don't pirate anything, but DRM certainly does encourage it. I have a ton of TV shows etc brought from the US iTunes store as the NZ store has stuff all, but because of DRM I can only play them through my AppleTV. This is fine as its a 1st Gen but its on its last legs, so when that dies and I have to get a 2nd Gen, because of the lack of storage unless I left my MBP on all the time I couldn't view them.
But with this, I can add my TV shows to my NAS which is on all the time and has rips of all my DVDs which I can play via my Sony BluRay Player. Super happy!
I don't pirate anything, but DRM certainly does encourage it. I have a ton of TV shows etc brought from the US iTunes store as the NZ store has stuff all, but because of DRM I can only play them through my AppleTV. This is fine as its a 1st Gen but its on its last legs, so when that dies and I have to get a 2nd Gen, because of the lack of storage unless I left my MBP on all the time I couldn't view them.
But with this, I can add my TV shows to my NAS which is on all the time and has rips of all my DVDs which I can play via my Sony BluRay Player. Super happy!
And the reality of this strategy is that he would be out of the eBook publishing business as soon as his bank account was empty, because he would sell 1 book for every 10,000 in circulation.
It's not a success strategy for eBook publishing.
Love it or hate it, it's the truth out there today, that people - even institutions - are ok with buy one then copy and distribute policies, unless they are regularly audited with penalties attached.
Ask Microsoft how much they spend to audit Office licenses in in the corporate world. You would have to do the same in every institute for education without DRM.
As an author, I support DRM and how it protects my work from illegal distribution. You want to read a book on multiple devices? Lobby the device makers to support a common format with ownership of a book tied to the purchaser and not the device.
I have no problem with you buying one copy of my book and loaning it to your friends, however only one of you can read it at a time. That's what a book loan means, not that you and 10,000 of your friends on the Internet all read it at the same time.
Why people devalue a book because it's distributed electronically is beyond my ability to comprehend. Stealing someone else's work seems to be sanctioned by society today, and it hurts more than just some big corporation with lots of cash.
So then everybody in the whole world should be locked into this ecosystem because of this?
Yay & Nay
To be honest I like that it was cracked & at the same time I don't. If you think about it, most of these writers spend half a decade to write a book. This isnt music we are talking about here. The vast majority of writers make next to nothing.
However, there are only TWO reason why I dont like ebooks in general...
1) it makes me nervous because digital content is easily corrupted compared to a hard copy. Whose to say that dictators who don't approve of a book change it by coercion.
**2) you can't lend a good book to a friend.
There should definitely be an option where you can send a good book to a friends iPad/iPhone. Maybe while it's in their possession you won't be allowed to read it, however since it is your purchase you should be able to "take" the book back from your friend...
To be honest I like that it was cracked & at the same time I don't. If you think about it, most of these writers spend half a decade to write a book. This isnt music we are talking about here. The vast majority of writers make next to nothing.
However, there are only TWO reason why I dont like ebooks in general...
1) it makes me nervous because digital content is easily corrupted compared to a hard copy. Whose to say that dictators who don't approve of a book change it by coercion.
**2) you can't lend a good book to a friend.
There should definitely be an option where you can send a good book to a friends iPad/iPhone. Maybe while it's in their possession you won't be allowed to read it, however since it is your purchase you should be able to "take" the book back from your friend...
Obviously you cannot back your claims up with proof, and are just making statements without evidence. You can get any music track, book, and most movies for free, illegally, right now. Are any of those industries out of business? no.
Furthermore to destroy your specific point about eBook publishing. Pragmatic Press (http://pragprog.com/press) are a highly successful publisher selling both hardcopy and eBooks and have been in business since 1999 all Without DRM. From their website :
"For instance, we sell a lot of eBooks in PDF format. But our books are not encumbered with DRM; we trust that our readers are not common thieves."
And this is exactly the point, every time one of your readers reads your books with DRM, you are treating them as a potential thief. It is a shame you have such a low opinion of your audience.
It does absolutely nothing of the sort, it's only purpose is to guarantee a full stack sale & distribution model for big business. There is not a single DRM system that has prevented illegal distribution. The only possible exception is always-on internet authentication with realtime validation of the sort Ubisoft uses with its games. This does not work for non-interactive media and only serves to delay crackers, and hurt legitimate users with poor internet connectivity.
As an author you should be more imaginative.
No. I fully hope that folks will do the right thing and buy my books if they are interested in reading them.
However, I have no problem with a customer (or school) purchasing my books and removing the DRM (that I didn't want in the first place) so my books can be displayed on more than one brand of e-reader hardware.
As far as I'm concerned, DRM is a lose-lose proposition: It hurts my customers, and it does nothing to help my sales.
It is a better experience on an iOS device but sometimes, it is just more convenient to be able to read a passage or two on a Mac. Suppose I'm working on a book report on my Mac and I need to look up a quick passage in a book, well, I don't want to pull out my iPad for that. I'd rather just open the book up on Mac and find it quickly.
Another thing, instruction books like Xcode are great to read on a Mac. You can have the book side by side while trying things out in Xcode. iBooks on a Mac has its uses, not the best way to read books but can at times be the most convenient way.
Breaking a clause of the sales contract is stealing? Really?
Even if that clause may be invalid in the country I live?
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In my country is perfectly legal strip DRM if is content you own and you don't distribute it.
And those clauses limiting that have been proven invalid here.
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Any thing to back this or is only your opinion?
Are going O'Reilly Media or Pragmatic Books out of business?