eBooks + DRM = Fail
Yesterday I made the mistake of buying 2 e-books from a site called “PeachPit”. I chose the eBooks because in the past, having an electronic PDF that I can read on my desktop, Linux netbook and iPod Touch is way more convenient that having a physical book to carry around.
However it seems that PeachPit is not very honest when it comes to advertising the fact that their “PDF eBooks” have Adobe Digital Editions ADEPT DRM, and can only be view on “authorised” PCs and select other hardware (pretty much just the Sony eBook reader). Had I known that the eBooks had this DRM, I wouldn’t have paid for them in the first place; particularly considering I could buy the physical books (which can be resold when I’m done with them) for the same price on Amazon.com!
Fortunately the ADEPT DRM has been broken by an enterprising hacker by the name of I♥CABBAGES. I was able to liberate my purchases so that I can actually use it as intended. I’ve documented the process here, as it took me longer to get this done than the books were worth.
These steps assume that your’re running a Windows system, as that is what I♥CABBAGES’s removal scripts were written for.
- Download Python 2.6.4 – make sure to get the 32-bit Windows release, even if you’re running 64-bit Windows!
- Download PyCrypto – http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/modules.shtml#pycrypto
- Install both to C:\Python26
- Aquire a copy of “ineptkey.pyw“ and “ineptpdf.pyw“. These are the two DRM removal scripts.
- Install Adobe Digital Editions, authorise your PC and install your DRM’ed eBooks (if you haven’t done so already).
- Run the “ineptkey.pyw” file by double clicking on it (or run “python ineptkey.pyw” from command line). This will extract your Digital Editions key to be used to decrypt the books in the following step.
- Run the “ineptpdf.pyw” file by double clicking on it.
- Select your DRM’ed book – you’ll find them in your “My Documents\My Digital Editions” folder.
- Specify an output file, .e.g “my_drm_free_book.pdf“.
- Decrypt!
That’s all there is to it.
The year that was…
Posted by rn in General, Software Engineering on December 29th, 2009
Since I’ve been post-slack the last month or two, I thought I’d do a retrospective post on last year, with respect to code and this blog.
The last few months have been dominated with getting married, home maintenance and Christmas preparations, and so I’ve had little time for much else. I did manage to fit a much needed holiday in there though, and I’m hoping to hit 2010 with a renewed sense of energy.
That said, I did start the visural-wicket project not too long ago, and that is where much of my open-source energy has gone of late. The project is being developed in my spare time, largely to support the application I’m creating in my work time, but with a view of becoming a key dependency for open-review, an as yet unannounced project I started a while back, but then put on the back-burner for a number of reasons (time, design considerations, etc).
Once I’ve fleshed out a few more of the “must-have” components in visural-wicket, I will start to push for feedback and co-contributors, should the reception be positive.
I also open-sourced my visural-common code, which forced me to do a clean-up and clear-out of some stuff which had been hanging around in my source tree for far too long.
At work, things have really be head-down, bum-up and WORK for the month or two, so I haven’t had the time or inclination to post any little “techy tid-bits” on the blog as a result. What I am considering doing in a short while though, is to put together a Wicket training series as a series of blog articles, as I think that would be valuable for the community and an interesting exercise for myself.
Anyhow, I’m rambling, so here’s to a great 2010! 
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