CRACKING AN E-BOOK S COPY PROTECTION

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CRACKING AN E-BOOK'S COPY PROTECTION

Traditional paper and hardbound books can be cumbersome to copy, but electronic books can be copied as easily as MP3 files. To protect their electronic books, publishers have come up with copy-protection methods designed to discourage widespread illegal copying and encourage legitimate purchasing.

That's the fantasy anyway. The reality is that no one has settled on a standard-e-book file format that every computer can use. Even if it's possible to grab a copy of your favorite best-seller as an e-book, you might not be able to read it on your computer or operating system. Some publishers even hope that copy protection will force people into buying separate versions of the same e-book if they wish to read the e-book on different computers. But forcing people to buy different versions of the same e-book is like forcing people to buy two different copies of the same CD just so they can play one CD in their car stereo and the other in their home stereo.

Incompatible portable e-book readers, copy protection, and the lack of a standard file format are just some of the problems that discourage widespread e-book adoption. But perhaps the biggest obstacle to e-books' acceptance is the price. Publishers often try to sell e-books for the same price as the printed copy, and because buyers don't pay for paper, binding, or printing, they expect e-books to cost much less than the paper version. Just as people release a continuous stream of MP3 files of their favorite albums to protest the high cost of CDs, so do many people crack the e-book copy-protection methods to protest the high cost of e-books.

While copy-protection frustrates legitimate users, it does little to foil the real thieves. Many people have developed tools for removing the copy-protection from e-books, ostensibly to allow others to make backups of their files and to read them on different computers. Naturally, these same tools can be used to circumvent the copy protection and spread the unprotected version of the ebook all over the Internet.

It isn't very surprising that these copy-protection schemes can be cracked, but it is surprising how easily they can be cracked. Rather than use proven encryption algorithms, most companies develop their own copy-protection schemes that just wind up annoying legitimate users who can't copy their e-books or read them where they want. Hackers spot the flaws in an e-book's weak copy-protection scheme and, within hours, post notices of these copy-protection flaws to other thieves across the Internet.

In most cases, copy protection simply hurts consumers and gives Internet thieves another target to crack for fun or profit.

CRACKING ADOBE'S E-BOOK PROTECTION

A small Russian company called ElcomSoft (http://www.elcomsoft.com) drew the wrath of Adobe when it released Advanced eBook Processor, a Windows program that could remove both password encryption and usage restrictions from Adobe's secure e-book file format and turn the files into ordinary Acrobat PDF files. Invoking the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Adobe originally brought the Advanced eBook Processor's potential violation of the DMCA to the attention of the FBI, which later arrested ElcomSoft's 27-year-old Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov, at DEFCON, an annual hacker convention in Las Vegas.

While ElcomSoft didn't dispute the potential for its Advanced eBook Processor program to remove usage restrictions on e-book files, it did claim that removing such usage restrictions allowed people to read their legally purchased e-books on different computers, which is considered "fair use" under the law.

After intense public pressure, especially from the programmer community,-Adobe backed off. During cross-examination, Adobe even admitted that it had hired two companies to search the Internet, but neither company could find a single stolen e-book that had been cracked with ElcomSoft's program. A jury eventually acquitted ElcomSoft and Dmitry Sklyarov of all charges, but not before Dmitry had spent three weeks in a U.S. jail.

When asked to comment on the Advanced eBook Processor, Sklyarov replied, "It has legal applications; it could be used for many legal things, for good things. A weapon could be used for killing and for protecting myself, but in [the] United States [a] weapon is legal."

Perhaps most embarrassing for Adobe wasn't that the Advanced eBook Processor had cracked the copy-protection scheme, but that it had exposed how weak the copy-protection scheme had been in the first place. "If somebody produces bad stuff," Sklyarov said, "and someone proves that this stuff is real bad, nobody will like it."

Sklyarov's case highlighted the central problem with the DMCA. If someone-creates poor copy protection and another person exposes its flaws, is the person who reveals the faulty copy protection actually a criminal? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org) believes the answer is no and that "U.S. copyright law is flawed because it outlaws technologies instead of actions."

To learn more about the ElcomSoft case, visit the Free Dmitry Sklyarov site (http://www.freesklyarov.org) or read criticism about the DMCA from the Anti-DMCA site (http://www.anti-dmca.org).

CRACKING MICROSOFT'S READER PROTECTION

Following closely upon the heels of Sklyarov's exposure of Adobe's weak copy-protection method, independent programmer Dan Jackson soon attacked Microsoft's Reader format with a program called Convert LIT (http://www.convertlit.com).

Like the Advanced eBook Processor, Convert LIT can strip away any usage restrictions on any e-book trapped in the Microsoft Reader format, allowing the reader to make backup copies or read the e-book on different operating systems and computers.

If you are interested in peeking into the guts of the program, the Convert LIT site also provides full C source code so you can modify the program or just study how it strips away copy protection from Microsoft Reader files.

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