'Elitist': angry book pirates hit back after author campaign sinks website

[Brian G Turner]

How 'da heck can Educational spending be way up, but Reading so far down??

Tuition fees and student loans.

 

[Dave]

Yes, as others have said, that chart is about personal spending not actual cost. So, Education may or may not be more expensive, but less of the cost is covered by grants and bursaries, and little is free anymore. Similarly, you need to pay far more into a pension and will still get less back.

Just a point about the coffee though. I realise that it has become a stupid meme about "Millennials" that they would be able to afford housing if they only didn't buy expensive coffees and smashed avocado, but those coffee shops are exceptionally expensive. Anyone buying several of those a day, and sandwiches, could be saving thousands of pounds annually. As a student, and in my first job, I had instant coffee and made sandwiches at home. Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea. A cup o' cold tea.

It is also strange that in real terms, the price of a CD has come down - they have always been about £10 but with inflation £10 in 1985 should be £29 today - while the price of a paperback has risen much faster, even if the number of pages has seemed to grow too.

 

[RJM Corbet]

She's not wrong. I didn't want to be the one bleating but when I hear people saying things like "It just costs a cup of coffee", I smile, because I have an argument with myself everytime I consider buying a £1 sausage roll from Tesco because I can't really afford it.

There's a reason that these days my reading is almost solely from libraries, kindle sales, second hand bookshops and beta copies. I've brought two brand new paperbacks for myself this year. I used to buy... gods, I don't really know much I used to buy if we're honest. Being a student was great...

Well, one day you may look back on these lean times as good times, when things get better. Which they will. Hang in there. Meantime, thank God for charity shops for books and clothes.

PS: better sausage roll for 90p from Griggs, or four for price of three: £2.70, lol ...

 

[The Big Peat]

Well, one day you may look back on these lean times as good times, when things get better. Which they will. Hang in there. Meantime, thank God for charity shops for books and clothes.

PS: better sausage roll for 90p from Griggs, or four for price of three: £2.70, lol ...

Greggs' sausage rolls are some of the most disgusting things I've ever eaten. Coarse flavourless pastry, and sausage with all the texture of a rotten grape and a nasty chemical taste.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Greggs' sausage rolls are some of the most disgusting things I've ever eaten. Coarse flavourless pastry, and sausage with all the texture of a rotten grape and a nasty chemical taste.

Wow! That's a strong reaction! I like them. Different strokes, lol.

 

[Vertigo]

Just a point about the coffee though. I realise that it has become a stupid meme about "Millennials" that they would be able to afford housing if they only didn't buy expensive coffees and smashed avocado, but those coffee shops are exceptionally expensive. Anyone buying several of those a day, and sandwiches, could be saving thousands of pounds annually. As a student, and in my first job, I had instant coffee and made sandwiches at home. Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea. A cup o' cold tea.

I have a lodger who is always buying Costa coffees, not to sit and drink with friends but to drink on the 30 minute drive home. Personally I figure I can wait 30 minutes, and he has a huge fancy coffee machine at home that does everything but fly to the moon. Then when he's shopping he always buys branded or if own brand then it's 'finest' or equivalent. Then he moans at me that he can't afford to buy a house. And I'm like, well d'oh!

 

[Ursa major]

Either way, it's a policy at chrons (unofficially at least) that we never promote sites that offer pirated books, and I know we've removed posts in the past that provided such links (even posted by regular members).

Quite right too.

 

[Nozzle Velocity]

As I understand it in the USA it is illegal to remove the DRM...

This was a result of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), signed into law in 1998. This was a tricky bit of maneuvering on the part of Hollywood lobbyists. The Fair Use doctrine in American law allows you to make copies of movies, music, etc. for your own personal use. The studios didn't want to challenge that, so they finessed the issue by making it illegal to remove encryption. In other words, the act of making a few personal copies is not illegal, but you've already broken the law by cracking DRM. The studios will fight large scale piracy, but they're reluctant to prosecute average consumers who do this because the Fair Use doctrine still stands. I know, it's weird.

Encryption is never failsafe because decryption devices are easy to get. You hold one in your hand every time you read an e-book, otherwise you wouldn't be able to read it. Movie studios thought they had the answer to piracy with DRM as part of the Blu-Ray protocol in conjunction with HDMI cables. But, like an e-reader, the Blu-Ray player decrypts the DRM in order to play the content. Hacking tools were in the wild within weeks.

 

[RJM Corbet]

This was a result of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), signed into law in 1998. This was a tricky bit of maneuvering on the part of Hollywood lobbyists. The Fair Use doctrine in American law allows you to make copies of movies, music, etc. for your own personal use. The studios didn't want to challenge that, so they finessed the issue by making it illegal to remove encryption. In other words, the act of making a few personal copies is not illegal, but you've already broken the law by cracking DRM. The studios will fight large scale piracy, but they're reluctant to prosecute average consumers who do this because the Fair Use doctrine still stands. I know, it's weird.

Encryption is never failsafe because decryption devices are easy to get. You hold one in your hand every time you read an e-book, otherwise you wouldn't be able to read it. Movie studios thought they had the answer to piracy with DRM as part of the Blu-Ray protocol in conjunction with HDMI cables. But, like an e-reader, the Blu-Ray player decrypts the DRM in order to play the content. Hacking tools were in the wild within weeks.

But is that where it ends? I am told that WhatsApp encryptment cannot be broken? Could the same level of unbreakable encryptment be found for DRM? Other questions aside.

If seems to be agreed there's not close to the same level of profit to pirates in hacking ebooks as there is in movies and music.

EDIT: Making it difficult, expensive and illegal to disable the DRM would probably effectively solve the major part of the problem of ebook piracy?

 

[RJM Corbet]

Problem is it would give the industry a knock. The same degree of fair usage needs to apply to ebooks as to paper books. People like to know they can read their ebook on another device, if they want to. Amazon and other ebook distributors are probably happy enough with things as they are.

 

[Dave]

I am told that WhatsApp encryptment cannot be broken?

I've heard that, but I doubt it is true. It may be very, very difficult, time-consuming and financially expensive, to the point that it isn't worth the effort, but I doubt that it is truly "impossible."

Modern encryption uses a key sent independently to the message (like your bank card and the PIN.) To read a message you need to intercept the key as well as the message itself. The message itself may be split into several parts and then reassembled. So, you also need to intercept all the parts. None of which applies to a DRM on a file you already have in your possession.

 

[RJM Corbet]

I've heard that, but I doubt it is true. It may be very, very difficult, time-consuming and financially expensive, to the point that it isn't worth the effort, but I doubt that it is truly "impossible."

Modern encryption uses a key sent independently to the message (like your bank card and the PIN.) To read a message you need to intercept the key as well as the message itself. The message itself may be split into several parts and then reassembled. So, you also need to intercept all the parts. None of which applies to a DRM on a file you already have in your possession.

Right. Thanks

 

[Nozzle Velocity]

Dave has it exactly. Unbreakable encryption is easy. Getting the key to the encryption method is what's...key.

It's my understanding that WhatsApp is solidly implemented with strong end-to-end encryption. Someone would have to really want to know about your conversations to get into that system, but there are concerns in the security community that it could be done.

Making it difficult, expensive and illegal to disable the DRM would probably effectively solve the major part of the problem of ebook piracy?

The problem is that once a book or movie is decoded and released in the wild, it's gone forever. No one else has to crack it again, they just make perfect copies of the one that got away.

 

[Vertigo]

I think the point with regard to WhatsApp is being missed here. With ebooks we have end to end encryption that is from publisher to ereader. The ereader is doing the decryption and when the ereader is on a computer the key it uses is available to anything else on the computer. However, outside that end to end link it would take years to crack the encryption. Ie the encryption is virtually unbreakable unless you have that key.

Where you are letting the WhatsApp claim confuse the issue is that, just like the ebook, the WhatsApp encryption is end to end from one user to the other. And the keys are held by the WhatsApp app on your phone (or whatever). So it is theoretically available to anything else on your phone but to anyone outside that end to end link it is virtually unbreakable just like the DRM encryption.

So the DRM encryption is unbreakable unless you have the key just like the WhatsApp encryption. However every user of DRM books has the key available to them, if they didn't they couldn't read the book. This may be quite difficult to get at through your ereader I guess (I've never looked at how ereader internal data is held or how easy it is to get at it) but if the registered device is something like Kindle for PC then the key must be stored somewhere on your PC either in the Registry or in a data file like an ini file. Once someone has figured out where that data is stored it is relatively trivial to write a plugin for something like Calibre that simply picks up the key and decrypts the ebook in exactly the same way as the ereader or kindle for pc does. Note the encryption has NOT been broken it has been decrypted using the key in the normal legitimate way just not by the normally legitimate piece of software.

The whole difficulty is figuring out a way that the legitimate software can store the key whilst not letting anyone else gain access to it. Which is sort of the IT security specialists' so far unattainable nirvana.

 

[Ursa major]

I've never looked at how ereader internal data is held or how easy it is to get at it

Given the existence of Kindle for PC, one would have thought that few people would try to locate an ebook's key on an actual Kindle -- I'm assuming, rightly or wrongly, that the file(s) involved are not the ones shown when one connects one's Kindle to a computer** -- but would, instead, do it on their PC.


** - Before I got hold of a suitable USB charger, I always used to charge my Kindle from a USB port on one of my my PCs.

 

[Vertigo]

Yes absolutely all the DRM plugins must be run on the same machine where Kindle for PC and/or Adobe Digital Editions, for AZW and ePub respectively, are installed. I don't think any of them attempt direct access to the eReader and why would they? As you say there is no need with the PC readers installed and anyone who is using Calibre will inevitably be managing their ebook on their computer so their registered device (or at least one of them; you can generally have several registered devices) will be their PC software.

 

[RJM Corbet]

... The problem is that once a book or movie is decoded and released in the wild, it's gone forever. No one else has to crack it again, they just make perfect copies of the one that got away.

Understood. But the point stands that because the profit/loss in ebook piracy is so small, compared to movies and music, that Amazon etc, probably know they could do more to make it harder, but the cost and effort just aren't worth it?

 

[Nozzle Velocity]

Understood. But the point stands that because the profit/loss in ebook piracy is so small, compared to movies and music, that Amazon etc, probably know they could do more to make it harder, but the cost and effort just aren't worth it?

The first thing that comes to my mind is removing the USB port on e-book readers and run everything through Wi-Fi. That would make it more difficult for hackers, but consumers would complain about losing an important feature. There's a maxim in the security world that says: Convenience is the enemy of security. USB ports are the bane of security minded IT pros the world over. Other than that, I'm not sure what could be done.

EDIT: This would have to mean viewing e-books on e-readers exclusively without Kindle for PC and other computer based readers. The PC is the real problem, not the reader.

 

[Vertigo]

The first thing that comes to my mind is removing the USB port on e-book readers and run everything through Wi-Fi. That would make it more difficult for hackers, but consumers would complain about losing an important feature. There's a maxim in the security world that says: Convenience is the enemy of security. USB ports are the bane of security minded IT pros the world over. Other than that, I'm not sure what could be done.

EDIT: This would have to mean viewing e-books on e-readers exclusively without Kindle for PC and other computer based readers. The PC is the real problem, not the reader.

And you'd have to remove it from phones as well. And then what do you know, you've got yourself an Apple where you can only add or modify stuff when Apples permits it.

As @Nozzle Velocity says, the problem is the PC. and not allowing you to store your ebooks on the PC would, I think, be unacceptable to many. I still can't believe how many people treat their ebook vendors as a safe place to store their expensive purchases (at least expensive when you are talking about multiple hundreds of books). All mine are on my own hard drives and well backed up.

And I agree with @Nozzle Velocity; I'm really not sure what more Amazon can do. And I'd also add the fact that it's not just Amazon but every other ebook seller has the same problem. I get a bit irritated by the way so many people now seem to see Amazon as the only ebook supplier and Kindle as the only ereader. An attitude that is in severe danger of becoming self fulling. To all our detriment. Also it's is not the ebook vendors that apply DRM it is the publisher. Amazon only do it themselves when they are wearing their publisher hat.

 

[Nozzle Velocity]

And then what do you know, you've got yourself an Apple where you can only add or modify stuff when Apples permits it.

Exactly. Remember when Apple used to talk about the Walled Garden? Curated apps? That's what Amazon would have to do.