

Lego robot that strips DRM off Kindle books - steven2012
http://boingboing.net/2013/09/07/lego-robot-that-strips-drm-off.html

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mbrubeck
In a MetaFilter thread, one of the commenters pointed out that the story being
copied in the video is "Kiosk" by Bruce Sterling, a story about (among other
things) the government trying to hold back a social revolution triggered by 3D
printers:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20080115084153/http://www.sfsite....](http://web.archive.org/web/20080115084153/http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/bs01.htm)

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SeanLuke
> but unlike those DRM-circumvention tools, this setup does not violate the
> law.

A pretty bold claim.

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cdcarter
It SEEMS to exclusively exploit the analog hole, but I'm sure that if it went
to the right judge this would fall apart.

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andrewaylett
Do you think you'd get away with photocopying and scanning a paper book?

It probably doesn't violate laws against circumventing DRM, but using it is
still potentially copyright infringement.

What it does do that might be useful is legitimately strip DRM from files that
aren't protected by copyright or for purposes which are allowed by copyright,
where you might otherwise be in trouble for breaking DRM.

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jrockway
_Do you think you 'd get away with photocopying and scanning a paper book?_

For personal use? Absolutely.

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kleiba
Sending a copy to a web server is possibly not covered under personal use, but
that depends on the country I guess. But of course he could simply run the OCR
locally on his computer instead.

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sebastianavina
tomorrow announcment: Amazon restricts number of "next page" presses per hour.

also: now words will be written with captcas

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benologist
Summary of [http://allthingsd.com/20130906/how-a-man-in-austria-used-
leg...](http://allthingsd.com/20130906/how-a-man-in-austria-used-legos-to-
hack-amazons-kindle-e-book-security/)

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infocollector
This might be also of interest to ebook lovers:
[https://register.blib.us](https://register.blib.us) (A Privacy friendly
platform for accessing and searching your books from anywhere).

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theon144
I have a dillema. You are, beyond any shadow of doubt, spamming the hell out
of the service on HN.

On the other hand, the service does look pretty cool.

~~~
infocollector
Thanks for your comments. I apologize and will stop posting links on topics I
thought were relevant to Blib. We tried to submit Blib on "show hn", but that
did not fly
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6272213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6272213)).
Its hard to advertise/show/market/demo when one is on a shoe-string budget, or
a better way to put it is: We haven't learnt that art as coders.

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advisedwang
Pretty sure this is still circumventing an anti-piracy measure, so falls fowl
of DMCA.

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lambada
The person in question is in Austria, so as far as he's concerned a DMCA claim
isn't worth the paper it's written on.

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aspensmonster
That didn't stop the MPAA from marshalling itself and a legion similarly
aligned interests into a quite magnificent beast to behold in Sweden when they
finally got sick of The Pirate Bay. The DMCA might be an American piece of
legislation, but copyright treaties pretty much guarantee that all of the
western world is subject to U.S. Law.

~~~
lambada
Except for the fact that they worked the TPB case under Swedish Law. You could
(possibly) argue that they sponsored US-style legislation in Sweden, but to
claim that TPB went down for violating US Law is misleading.

It serves to erase the various subtle differences that exist in laws
throughout the world. For instance, the UK has no such thing as Fair Use - we
have a weaker concept of Fair Dealing. Under F.D. such things as making a copy
of a CD onto a Computer as an MP3 is illegal (though there are plans to
legalise that).

I've met several people who believed that such a thing was "Fair Use",
precisely because of the "All Copyright Law is US Law" mentality.

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aspensmonster
Thanks for the details! Indeed I hadn't realized that the Pirate Bay trial
convictions were based specifically on Swedish law. I figured that
international treaties had been involved somehow. Though of course, you've hit
the nail on the head: the laws are so similar, and with outcomes so similar,
that all copyright law might as well be emulating U.S. policy, even if there
are subtle differences in implementations.

~~~
lambada
International Treaties are... weird. Generally (very very generally), they are
agreements between governments to take certain actions, possibly with
penalties if such actions aren't taken.

The penalties would tend to be trade or economic sanctions from the other
signatories.

The actions to be taken usually involve creating national legislation that
implement this framework [See for example the UK's Human Rights Act
implementing the European Convention of Human Rights]. Broadly, once national
legislation has been created, then national courts can enforce it [Until the
HRA was created in the UK, UK Courts couldn't hear EConvHR cases as they can
only look at national law due to Parliamentary Sovereignty]. Think of it as
being similar to how US Federal Courts have jurisdiction over Federal Crimes,
and US State Courts have jurisdiction over State Crimes.

This means that an international treaty can be dead in the water despite being
signed, should the national government not be able to get the implementing
legislation passed - think of how ACTA was signed by the EU (and member
states), but rejected by EU Parliament (and some member states parliaments).

This is why it was newsworthy when the US President tried to claim that having
been signed by the US obliged the US to implement it via an executive order,
bypassing the democratic congress (and thus, in a way, weakening the concept
of national sovereignty).

But yes, copyright laws are broadly similar - mostly because the Berne
Convention is widely accepted and implemented on a national level (along with
organisations such as WIPO). An example of where the subtle changes come from
is because the BC specifies that exceptions can be made for "fair" use, but
doesn't explicitly define what "fair" use is. Another example is the "rule of
the shorter term" \- when a work is published abroad as well as at home, the
author only gets the shorter of the two protections, but not all signatories
have implemented this. Interestingly the US was relatively late in signing and
implementing the BC.

Disclaimer: I am not a copyright lawyer. I am not a lawyer in any way. But I
do have a keen interest in the law, and consider myself relatively well
informed in such areas.

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jessedhillon
This must be why none of the new Kindles have page forward/backward buttons,
despite their providing a decidedly superior experience to the awful touch UI.

Kidding (probably)

