Is It Possible to “Rip” eBooks?
Amazon today released a Mac version of its Kindle application. It’s clearly a beta, as they say (well, they don’t say it outright, but if you check the Info screen and splash screen, it says “Beta” in small letters). I fired it up on my MacBook Air, and read some on it, and, while it needs a bunch of features, it’s a step forward.
But that made me think about something. Back in the day, when there was DRM on most digital music files sold, there was something called the “analogue hole” which allowed people to “rip” protected music. You’d simply have to play it on your computer and record it, with software designed to record sound from specific applications, or burn it to a CD then rip the CD. I wondered if there could be an analogue hole for ebooks.
Here’s how it would work. Someone would create a script that takes a screen shot of the current page, using large fonts so it is as clean as possible, then moves ahead to the next page, then takes another screen shot, and so on. After a while – say a half-second a page, so 120 pages per minute; ie, fast – the entire book would be captured in graphic files. One could then, perhaps, use an OCR program to “scan” those graphic files, converting the images to text.
Now I don’t use OCR, and haven’t in a long time, so I’m not sure whether it would be possible to “feed” a large number of files into an OCR program in this manner. But if it’s possible, it seems almost elementary that someone will use this to “rip” ebooks, effectively stripping the DRM.
It’s obvious to anyone who’s watched DRM play out that ebook DRM will be cracked, and quickly. And even if it’s not, this analogue hole would allow anyone with a bit of scripting know-how to accomplish the same thing. I don’t know what’s going to happen when people can easily download pirated ebooks. This already exists, but in limited numbers; when lots of people have real ebook readers, I’d be willing to bet that such piracy will become very common.
I hope publishers have a plan B. Because the music industry sure didn’t.
Posted: 3/18/2010 by kirk | Filed under: Books, iPod & iTunes | 8 Comments »
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Kirk, the music industry certainly didn’t have a plan B. But they were given a lifeline of sorts by the iTunes Music Store (now the iTunes Store). But that lifeline worked for the most part because prices were cheap enough that many folks figured it was acceptable and were willing to pay a small price rather than pirate. But I’m not seeing eBook prices going down. If anything, the iPad model seems to encourage higher prices, at least at this time. That would make it much less palatable to me and many others. At prices about $10, I’d rather take it out from the library if possible (sadly, many books I want to read aren’t available in the entire PA library system!). Even Kos indicated on his blog his desire to not see price elevations and he’s an author himself.
Since my eyes hit middle-age, I prefer to listen to books and most audio books are difficult to get. I would use Audible if they were DRM free, but I am already in double digits on the number of Macs I’ve owned and almost to double digits if I addup all of the iPods and iPhones.
Ask your librarian about getting into Worldcat, which will let you get books, CD’s, and DVD’s from other libraries in the US. They do not seem to have reciprocal agreements with Britiain, Australia, and New Zealand, which is too bad
as some things are only available overseas.
Not to be completely contrary but I bet there is a 13 year old in Norway or LA who can break the DRM as soon as they try. That’s way faster than scanning and a run through OCR.
I think you’re tilting at windmills.
Living in the sticks of France, all the English books at our local library, were donated by me. So David, I’m sorry I can’t feel your pain about your local library (or your local gas prices) Granted the opening prices are not what we would like to see, but as all of the new ibusiness models evolve, it seems that
creative people are coming up with legal ways of obtaining “content” at more reasonable prices. Spotify is a perfect example of better than ITunes (free and legal), but artists still get their royalties.
As with the person above, Britain is in Worldcat and the EU, maybe you could get books that way,
I guess you read “A Year in Provence” too many times, N’est-ce pas. Beware “Le Mistral”. Bonne Courage!
I don’t want to rip E-books, but I want a good way to read PDF’s, text files, Slideshows, and Word Docs while away from my office without using a heavy laptop or jail-breaking my iPhone. The iPad or a Kindle would be worth the price for me if I could do this, especially if I could access a .Mac account and read files uploaded from my office.
Of course this would need to be affordable.
Goodreader works well on my iPhone for allowing me to read PDFs, Word docs, etc.
I’m very interested in reading PDFs on my soon-to-be-shipped iPad. But I’m guessing that Apple will provide a solution for that, though there will be third-party tools that may have better features.