Strip Kindle DRM?

DRM (Digital Rights Management) is the technical means that prevents you from copying (and sharing) DRM-protected content that you buy from places like Amazon (Kindle books and music), Apple iTunes, etc. 

DRM can be very annoying when you want to do something perfectly legal (with respect to copyright), but which the DRM prevents.  For example, I might buy an Kindle book that I'd like to turn into a PDF file so that I can read or print it on any device I own (not just those devices that happen to be able to host a Kindle reader).  DRM prevents me from doing that.

This article points the way to a method for removing the DRM from Kindle books.  I haven't tried it yet, but I'm definitely going to do so...

Fascinating Side-Effect of the Kindle...

One that I certainly wouldn't have foreseen: sales of bodice-rippers are soaring, and all the growth is in the Kindle editions.

Strange are the ways of the world...

Reading...

Several months ago I purchased a Kindle, and I've been using it ever since – I haven't read a single paper book since first picking up the device (though I do still read paper magazines and the occasional newspaper).  At this point I have read almost 40 books on my Kindle, and my style of using it has settled down.  I can make some observations based on experience:

I don't miss the paper format at all.  The convenience and portability of the Kindle far outweigh any aesthetic loss.

Having an entire library (over 300 books now) that I can carry around means that I now find myself much more easily jumping around from book-to-book, reading what suits my mood and mental state.

The dictionary and word look-up facility built into the Kindle has me now doing something I did decades ago, but stopped: looking up every word I don't know.  The only ways Amazon could make this feature any better would be to (a) speed it up (it now takes 10 seconds or so to look up a word) and to (b) switch to the O.E.D. as the dictionary (“antique” words are often not in the Merriam dictionary included, and I read enough older literature for this to be annoying).

The fact that I can download and read copyright-free books at no cost has me exploring all sorts of books that I'd probably never buy.  For example, I've just finished rereading Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift), which I last read in my twenties.  I've also reread all of Jules Vernes' works that were translated to English, and I'm starting on Charles Dickens (many of which I've never read). 

I'm also buying books that I might not have purchased on paper, because of the cost differential.  For example, I recently purchased Decision Points (George W. Bush), and read it.  I'm glad I did – I rather liked the book (something I didn't expect), and it clarified something for me: that the essential thing I liked about Bush as President had nothing to do with his competence, but rather his decency and humility.  In this respect, the contrast with the current President couldn't be more stark...

Kindle DX Update...

Questions, I get questions...  Now that I've had my Kindle DX for a couple weeks, what do I think of it?  Am I using it?

The more I use it, the more I love it.  And I'm using it a lot.  I've got just over 150 books loaded onto it now, and about 135 of those were free (mostly from Project Gutenberg).  I've read 3 books on it, and I'm nearly done with the fourth (Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe – last read when I was a kid, and much better even than my memory of it).  I no longer even think about how to use it; it's become as intuitive as turning the pages in a book.

Last night, just for fun, I tried the text-to-speech feature that's built into the Kindle DX.  I have heard computer-synthesized text many times, and had never been impressed with it, so my expectations were low – but I was pleasantly surprised by the Kindle's computerized reader.  The male voice was clear, the speech had (mostly) appropriate inflection and pauses (like a human speaker would make), and it was perfectly understandable.  I let it read an entire page of Robinson Crusoe, which included a dozen or so place names and other proper nouns that text-to-voice systems often screw up (because they're not in its internal dictionary).  Everything was pronounced either perfectly or very close to it.  I had no trouble whatsoever understanding the entire page.  I could imagine listening to a book on my commute with this thing...

Debbie has been resisting even looking at the Kindle.  Last night she borrowed it to check it out.  I'm gonna hazard a guess here: we're likely going to be a two-Kindle family someday soon...

Kindle DX, Latest Generation...

I've been thinking of buying a Kindle for quite some time now.  Earlier models all had some deficiency or other that stopped me, but when the new Kindle DX came out I knew the time had finally come.  I ordered it, and it arrived on Thursday afternoon.

Just 48 hours later, I am completely and totally addicted.

First thing I did was to find a few books I've been wanting and ordered them.  The most expensive one was 40% off of the printed book price; the cheapest was over 75% off.  Finding the books and ordering them was very easy to do right from the Kindle.  It has a built in 3G (cell phone) that it uses to contact Amazon for this purpose.  It worked perfectly the very first time, with no setup required.  Amazon has done a magnificent job making the Kindle's technology transparent to the user.  You don't have to know anything at all about how it works in order to use it – you just point and click, and stuff happens.

Then I started exploring a bit, and discovered that there are many free (or nearly so) works of literature available.  These are books on which the copyright has expired, and they're now in the public domain.  Most of these were typed in by volunteers (such as from the Gutenberg Project).  I downloaded some of these in just a few minutes, and now my Kindle has things like The Wizard of Oz, the complete works of Charles Dickens, and Pride and Prejudice.  Wow!

But it gets even better, I discovered.  You can directly download eBooks from Project Gutenberg and other such eBook libraries, all free.  About thirty seconds after I read this page, I had a copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea on my Kindle. 

This is just amazing – this little device, the size and weight of a modest book (though much, much thinner), holds about 3,500 books that I can take anywhere.  Never again will I run out of reading material on a flight!  Or anywhere else...