It took longer than I expected but the day has finally come: The Amazon Kindle has been hacked, its copyright protection scheme rendered inoperable. Application of the hack allows owners to transfer ebooks on their machine to any other device as a PDF file.
DRM has long divided opinion. While rights holders regard it as a crucial tool to protect copyright, consumers tend to hate it because it limits what can be done with content.
“DRM is not an effective way of preventing copying nor is it a good way of making sales. There isn’t a customer out there saying ‘what I need is an electronic book that does less,” novelist and co-editor of the Boing Boing blog Cory Doctorow told the BBC when the Kindle was launched.
As soon as a new DRM system is active, hackers begin to try and break it.
