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CommentThursday, December 13, 2007

Kindle DRM Down the Tubes

Copy protection cracked on Amazon's e-book reader

Yet another DRM goes down the tubes, this time it is for the kindle, while the reviews have been mixed, most folks who got their hands on the kindle like it, but as usual wish that it could do more than it was originally designed to do.

While some have said to hold off, and others have asked for more features, the one feature that no one asked for, and most likely do not want is the DRM system. The first forays into cracking it have been reported this morning by Engadget.

We knew the Kindle's DRM would be cracked the minute we heard about it, and it looks like the first chink in the armor is here courtesy of Igor Skochinsky: he's discovered the algorithm the Kindle uses to turn regular Mobipocket books into Amazon's proprietary .azw format. The hack involves replacing a Mobipocket file's PID with one generated from your Kindle's serial number, and then setting a Kindle-specific flag that allows it to be opened. Source: Engadget
The hack only works for Mobi Pocket e-books, but it is a start in how the Kindle DRM system works, and what the chinks in the armor are with the system. In what has become normal, once one way is shown on how to get around the lock, more people will see and work with the example, quickly defeating the whole system.

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News Tags: comments, Engadget, Kindle, DRM
About the author:
Dan Morrill runs Techwag, a site all about his views on social media, education, technology, and some of the more interesting things that happen on the internet. He works at CityU of Seattle as the Program Director for the Computer Science, Information Systems and Information Security educational programs.

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