Comments on: Has Adobe ADEPT ePub DRM been cracked already?

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:26:27 +0000

JRR, DRM isn’t quite that useless, though it might often appear that way to the more technically inclined. There are a lot of advanced computer who know their way around their browsers, office suites, even CLIs, but who aren’t familiar with more complicated scripting or other “techy” computer skills. Some of them would certainly steal copyrighted material if it were an easy copy and paste, print off, or drag and drop. For the most part, it’s about letting the mostly honest people know where the line is. We had a similar goal when I taught at the local university. The cheaters *will* cheat; they’re rotten people, and they can only be eliminated by being caught and punished. But the average person—the “oh just this one time because of (whatever excuse)”—will stay honest when the line is clear.

Now, music DRM never made sense because CDs were digital, non-DRM, and the main way consumers got music. Books don’t have that problem. Right now, the only digital copies of books are DRMed books. It’s still imperfect, time-, & resource-consuming to produce nonDRMed books from other media. I would like to get rid of DRM on books, but I understand why the big publishers would be cautious.

By: JRR

JRR — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:37:39 +0000

Good to hear. I don’t buy DRM’d stuff unless/until the DRM is broken. I prefer to buy non-DRM’d sources but if a DRM copy is the only choice, I go for whatever format I can unprotect. I’m not going to share the book around, but I don’t like being limited to what devices I can use, and being generally treated like a criminal.
DRM doesn’t stop ANY illegal use, it just inconveniences legitimate users.

By: Marshall T. Vandegrift

Marshall T. Vandegrift — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:22:34 +0000

@Arthur Attwell — I’m not sure he does agree. He discusses in the comments how current crypto is effectively unbreakable and the “weak point” of key management is easily changed to fix breaks in the system. This (a) is rather flip given than AFAIK the only DRM system ever broken via weak crypto was CSS, and (b) suggests that Adobe is quite prepared to tweak their key management to break this break.

By: Arthur Attwell

Arthur Attwell — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:51:59 +0000

I’m sure Adobe has known all along how easily their DRM could be cracked. A while ago Adobe’s own Bill McCoy wrote in favour of DRM merely as copy deterrence of some sort (http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/11/an-industry-standard-digital-b.html). If his colleagues think the same way, then it’s likely it was never their intention to create something uncrackable.

By: Hadrien Gardeur

Hadrien Gardeur — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:40:14 +0000

“laissez-faire” instead of “laissaiz-faire”