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DeDRMing
August 29th, 2022
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Written on my laptop
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Both L and I have ebook readers since almost forever. Differently
from many, though, we are both still using our very first ereader:
mine is a 12 years old Kindle, hers is a 9 years old Kobo N905C. And
while I have always used my Kindle trying to avoid DRM at all costs,
she has often read library ebooks which always came with one kind of
restriction or another.
This is the story of our latest 24-hours fight against DRM, using
different approaches: hers is on the "let us try to be compliant"
side, while I usually lean more towards "I want to burn this whole,
fucking, broken world" :-)
----
The problem: L had just lent an ebook from the library's website. She
explicitly specified she owns a Kobo, so she was given a link to an
ACSM file to open in Adobe Digital Editions. After the actual ebook
was imported into ADE's library with her Adobe ID, she verified she
could actually open it and see its contents, then transferred it to
her Kobo. When she tried to open it on the Kobo, though, she was told
the file was DRM-ed and she did not have the authorization to open it
from the device.
The experiments we did together: we removed the bad book from the
Kobo; we deauthorized and then re-authorized both ADE and the device;
we downloaded another book from the library to do more tests; we both
disconnected and reconnected the Kobo for a zillion times. We then
started looking on the Web to see if others had the same issue: the
answer is YES, plenty of people got stuck for one reason or another,
and not all of them eventually succeeded in getting readable ebooks
on their readers.
----
At that point our paths split. I'd say that happened in part to
parallelize our efforts, but also so we could independently pursue
our, well, rather diverging approaches.
L started following forums, tutorials, videos from libraries and
individuals who were as frustrated as her to find the books they were
rightfully entitled to read were not accessible on their devices.
At the same time I, already feeling entitled (in her stead!) to make
those ebooks readable on her device, started to look for deDRMed
versions of those books, software to remove the DRM lock, and so on.
After delving into our own rabbit holes, we regrouped to find that
both of us had succeded. L found that the most recent version of ADE
had issues with Kobo (or *her* Kobo, or whatever), so she managed to
bring a DRM-ed version of the book she lent on the device by running
an older version. On my side, I discovered that you can deDRM a book
imported into ADE by using DeDRM Tools, a Calibre plugin that
completely removes DRM when you import the book into Calibre, so
that afterwards you can upload it to any device without any more
constraints.
--- Technical details section ---
In L's case, the solution is complicated by the fact that Adobe does
not provide URLs for earlier versions of ADE, so you have to find the
right one shared on forums or play with the official URL and change
the file version, hoping they have kept the naming consistent across
versions. For reference, the working version was:
https://adedownload.adobe.com/pub/adobe/digitaleditions/ADE_3.0_Installer.dmg
In my case, there were so many problems along the way that I thought
about writing this post just for the sake of not forgetting how I got
to the final solution. Here's what worked for me:
- I installed ADE from the official Adobe link (version was 4.5.11):
https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions/download.html
- I provided L's ID and downloaded the ACSM file into the ADE library
- I installed Calibre 5, because DeDRM did not work with 6.x. Quite
differently from ADE, Calibre provides easy links to get previous
versions and I got https://download.calibre-ebook.com/5.44.0/
- I downloaded the latest DeDRM tools (7.2.1) from the following URL:
https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools/releases
Once the tools file is unpacked, you can install the DeDRM plugin
from the Preferences>Plugins section in Calibre (just choose "Load
Plugin from File and provide the DeDRM plugin zip filename)
- In ADE, I right-clicked on the book you have imported and chose to
see it in Finder. From there I just dragged and dropped it into
Calibre's window to import it in my library.
Note that once the file is in Calibre, it is de-DRMed!
- At this point, I could send the file to the device. Note that the
version 5.* of Calibre had some problems syncing with Kobo (some
issues dealing with Kobo's latest library format), but I could use
Calibre 6 to transfer the epub as it was de-DRMed once and for all.
----
As I wrote before, we both succeeded regardless of our different
approaches. At the same time though, neither of us really felt
accomplished or even satisfied by our solutions.
We have both been left with the feeling that one's right to read the
ebooks they lend from the library is limited by software updates,
namely Adobe choosing to keep older versions of ADE available (albeit
behind a non-public URL), and their devices being able to continue
syncing with new programs and supporting new versions of DRM locks.
Alternative solutions such as DeDRM, while preferable, have their own
limits (e.g. you still need crappy ADE to be installed, or you have
to use an older version of Calibre) and are, in many countries,
illegal even if you have all the rights to read those ebooks you are
trying to unlock.
The real take-home message here is that DRM is bad, as it tampers
with the users' rights while trying to create a synthetic scarcity
of digital resources. And while this scarcity *might* provide some
value to the whole publishing industry (a thing I am quite skeptic
about), at the same time it makes the users' experience so bad that
they eventually either resort to commercial, out-of-the-box solutions
such as Kindle Store or look for illegal alternatives. And guess
what, not everyone wants to spend dozens of dollars on a file they
can easily get for free somewhere else.
In all of this, libraries are doing (as always!) an incredible job,
as they put a lot of efforts both into providing legal solutions to
sharing knowledge for free *and*, at the same time, helping their own
users as much as they can. What I am most afraid of is that, by not
relying on their digital services, we do not provide a reason for
them to be provided in the first place, and this is inherently bad.
I honestly have not followed much how libraries tackle DRM issues and
how to contribute to their efforts, but I think it is definitely an
interesting space and I would like to learn more about this.