An Israeli hacker claims to have broken the copyright protection on Amazon's Kindle software for PCs, reports say. The hack will allow the ebooks to be transferred as pdf files to any other device. It is the latest in a series of Digital Rights Management (DRM) hacks, the most famous being the reverse engineering of iTunes.
DRM has long divided opinion between corporations and consumers who pay hundreds of dollars for tech devices and want the freedom to use them as they wish. Corporations regard DRM as a crucial tool to protect copyright-- but in reality it unfairly restricts consumers from using legally-purchased content on their choice of legally-purchased devices.
"DRM is not an effective way of preventing copying nor is it a good way of making sales. There isn't a customer out there saying 'what I need is an electronic book that does less," novelist and co-editor of the Boing Boing blog Cory Doctorow said when the Kindle was launched.
As soon as any new DRM system is introduced, hackers begin to try and break it. Most famously Jon Lech Johansen, known as DVD Jon, cracked the copy protection on DVDs in 1999. He went on to break the copyright protection on iTunes, which forced Apple to offer DRM-free music.
DVD Jon now runs a company with an application to take the pain out of moving different types of content between devices.
No comments:
Post a Comment