If you can read it, you can copy it
by Volker Weber
Last Thursday, I had, as managing director of AudioBooksFor Free.Com, a top-level meeting with WHSmith Online management, the big bookseller.
Among other things, I expressed my very strong belief that so-called "copyright-protected" formats are impossible in principle [...] I was immediately challenged by one of WHSmith's directors "to break" Microsoft Reader, which is the copy-protected format that WHSmith adopted for their e-books.
No one on my team has any experience with e-books. None have any knowledge of e-book formats or e-book encryption. Three hours later we sent WHSmith one of their top e-books now totally unprotected.
It took us just 30 minutes to work out how to do it without any hacking or programming. We did it using ordinary, widely available free tools.
