[HN Gopher] Libgourou: A Free Implementation of Adobe's Adept DR...
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       Libgourou: A Free Implementation of Adobe's Adept DRM on ePub/PDF
       Files
        
       Author : gorky1
       Score  : 80 points
       Date   : 2024-04-10 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (forge.soutade.fr)
 (TXT) w3m dump (forge.soutade.fr)
        
       | edent wrote:
       | I've used this several times to read books I've legally
       | purchased. An indispensable bit of software.
        
         | kstrauser wrote:
         | I adamantly believe that this is morally and ethically OK in
         | all situations. If you buy a copy of a book, it's your right to
         | read it on any device of yours you want, even ones that haven't
         | been manufactured yet. I bought a copy of Stephen King's "The
         | Stand" 30 years ago and it's still on a bookshelf here ready
         | for me to read at any time. If I'd bought an ebook copy of it
         | instead, I'm just as ethically permitted to read it however and
         | whenever I choose.
         | 
         | Before anyone bothers "correcting" me with nonsense about
         | buying a license instead of a copy, don't bother. As we speak,
         | the Amazon page for that book says "buy now", not "buy a
         | license now", or "license now". By any reasonable
         | interpretation of reality, I'd be buying a copy of it. That
         | doesn't mean it would be OK to share that copy outside my
         | household, any more than I could photocopy a physical version
         | and pass it around. It's impossible to convince me that it's
         | wrong to share a copy with my wife, any more than it'd be wrong
         | to lend her my physical copy after I'm done reading it.
        
           | WolfeReader wrote:
           | (Devil's advocate here)
           | 
           | When you made an Amazon account, and each time you purchase
           | one of their ebooks, you agree to their "Terms of Service",
           | which states that you won't do some of the things you want to
           | do with your ebook. Amazon wouldn't sell/license you the book
           | if you told them you were going to break the DRM and read it
           | on a Kobo.
           | 
           | In effect, you're lying to Amazon in order to use their
           | property in a way they specifically don't want you to.
           | 
           | (Devil's advocate done)
           | 
           | Can I ask you to consider buying your ebooks from a better
           | vendor? Kobo is a good choice; they state whether or not a
           | given book is DRM-free or not; if it's DRM-free, that's a
           | clear win - and even when they do include DRM, it's Adobe, so
           | you can load it on any e-reader (except Kindle (except if you
           | use KOReader)). Google Play Books are basically the same as
           | Kobo, but they don't state up-front if a book has DRM or not.
           | 
           | Also, it's pretty common for technical books and some fiction
           | presses to sell e-books directly on their site, and those
           | never have DRM in my experience.
           | 
           | On the other hand, supporting Amazon is supporting a company
           | who wants to promote DRM aggressively. And you can almost
           | always find the same books elsewhere.
        
             | VS1999 wrote:
             | Whenever someone invokes the "terms of service" I just get
             | annoyed. I live in the US where we have absolutely no
             | consumer rights and every company can put anything they
             | want in the ToS or EULA, and if it violates the law they
             | aren't punished (such as illegal warranty restrictions).
             | Most EULAs even have a clause that says something like "if
             | any part of this contract is illegal, ignore it and the
             | rest is still enforced". If companies can put anything they
             | want into it and aren't punished for breaking the law, it's
             | 100% up to consumers to ignore the ToS and ignore the EULA
             | as much as possible.
             | 
             | And if you're really paying for a limited license to use
             | their property, they should have to call it that. Amazon
             | calls it a "store" where you "buy" the books. They'd make a
             | lot less sales if the "buy now with 1 click" button said
             | "purchase a limited license to access this book for some
             | period of time".
        
             | kstrauser wrote:
             | The devil doesn't need an advocate. You think he's running
             | low on lawyers?
             | 
             | But I agree with you about buying from Amazon. I haven't
             | bought an ebook from them in at least many years, perhaps
             | not ever that I remember. I've never owned a Kindle and I'm
             | not sure I could even load one of their books on my Kobo
             | (or the Nook I owned way back when). I buy most of my books
             | from Kobo's store, but also check out a lot from my library
             | via Libby. I recently bought a bundle of Cory Doctorow's
             | books from Tor (through Humble Bundle), and I downloaded
             | plenty from Standard Ebooks.
             | 
             | If there's a book I'd like to read that's _only_ available
             | from Amazon, I haven 't stumbled across it yet.
        
       | szundi wrote:
       | Is it stealing when someone buys a book legally and then
       | downloads it drm-free to save it for future use? (As should be
       | normal)
        
         | reaperducer wrote:
         | In the United States, possibly not because of _Sony vs.
         | Universal Studios._
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Uni...
         | .
         | 
         | In other countries, your mileage will most definitely vary.
         | 
         | (IAtotallyNAL)
        
         | imzadi wrote:
         | Apparently it IS illegal to bypass access controls but not copy
         | controls.
         | 
         | https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/circumventing-copyright-con...
        
           | Quarrel wrote:
           | This entirely depends on your local jurisdiction.
           | 
           | Even in the US, not all of this is settled law.
        
         | aidenn0 wrote:
         | Definitely not stealing. Maybe illegal, depending on your local
         | laws.
        
         | kstrauser wrote:
         | Stealing: absolutely not.
         | 
         | Legally OK: depends on jurisdiction, I imagine.
         | 
         | Morally OK: 100% of the time, as long as the ebook is identical
         | to the physical one other than its format. That is, if you
         | could scan and OCR the physical book and end up with the same
         | result as the ebook, yes. If the ebook comes with extra content
         | that you would not have access to without buying it in that
         | format, I would say that's not OK. (Table of contents and
         | indexes that link directly to a page rather than just listing
         | its page number don't count in my opinion. Those are just the
         | electronic equivalents of the paper indexing system.)
        
         | alwayslikethis wrote:
         | Is downloading ever copyright infringement? I was under the
         | impression that it is the uploading, i.e. distributing that is
         | illegal, not receiving the copy.
        
         | GaggiX wrote:
         | It wouldn't be stealing if you just pirated it, at least in
         | court.
        
       | milianw wrote:
       | I managed to read some books rented via the Berlin library system
       | (voebb onleihe) using this software, really great work!
        
       | brunoqc wrote:
       | Is it the same program that was removed from github because of a
       | DMCA claim?
        
         | mdaniel wrote:
         | apparently the answer is "yes and no," with yes
         | https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=libgourou+site%3Agithub.com...
         | and no because those are still in place. That said, I _think_ a
         | DMCA only catches forks, not  "git push" clones as a lot of
         | those appear to be
        
       | gorky1 wrote:
       | I'd say this doesn't bypass anything, it's just some kind of
       | virtual device? I'm using it to read legally purchased books on
       | unsupported hardware.
        
         | criddell wrote:
         | Would it be the same as using an emulator to play a Nintendo
         | game on your PC?
        
           | gorky1 wrote:
           | That would be totally illegal if Nintendo was making the
           | laws, but yes, pretty much.
        
       | sshine wrote:
       | I'm probably reading this wrong, but "gourou" (Gou Rou ) is dog
       | meat in Chinese.
        
         | WolfeReader wrote:
         | https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/gourou
         | 
         | Given that the hosting site is on a French domain, I'm guessing
         | this is the intended meaning.
        
         | sedivy94 wrote:
         | Isn't the pinyin for "Rou " typically "ro"?
        
           | strongly-typed wrote:
           | No, it's rou
        
       | RobotToaster wrote:
       | Is this for lcpl files like those "borrowed" from archive.org?
        
       | nfw2 wrote:
       | I've been trying to get access to Adobe's RMSDK for months, but
       | their email is just a brick wall. A dev I know who works at Adobe
       | said he can't find any internal docs for it either. Does anyone
       | know what's going on with it?
       | 
       | Anyway, this is a godsend, so thank you!
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-10 23:00 UTC)