Need info on DRM method
September 24th, 2013
Disclaimer: I did not write the programs mentioned in this post. I simply collect the information on the Internet, which can be found easily with Google search. I think DRM is bad, but piracy is not good either.
If you have an epub or PDF file with DRM protection, you may find it annoying because you are now allowed to read the file past a certain number of days, or you cannot print it to read on paper. It turns out that removing DRM from an epub or PDF file is not difficult. Some person (or persons) wrote three Python programs to do that. Using them is very easy. The original post (of the author, I suppose) is here.
* I assume you already have Adobe Digital Edition installed and your computer was already registered (so that you can read DRM’ed files).
* First, you need to have Python installed in your system. You also need a Python library called PyCrypto. The easiest way to install both Python and PyCrypto is to download and install the Enthought Python Distribution. If you use Linux or Mac, Python is often pre-installed.
* Second, you need to download the Python programs to remove DRM: ineptkey.pyw for retrieving the key, ineptepub.pyw to decrypt epub files, and ineptpdf.pyw to decrypt PDF files. All these programs can be found easily on the Internet. Just ask Google.
* Third, once you have downloaded ineptkey.pyw, run it and it will write the key to a file named adeptkey.der in the same folder. In case you don’t know how to run a Python program, just open the shell, change to the folder of the program you want to run, and type ‘python <name of the program file>’ followed by <ENTER>.
* Let’s say you have an epub file from which you want to remove the DRM protection. Run ineptepub.pyw, select the input file and give the name of the output file, then click ‘Decrypt’. For PDF files, use ineptpdf.pyw instead.
Some people claimed that ebooks without DRM look better than DRM’ed files. I think it doesn’t make sense. Probably it’s a bug of their reader software or devices.