Cracking E-Book DRM

The other day I mentioned ConvertLit, a program designed to rip DRM-protected Microsoft Reader format e-books into HTML. Then from HTML, you can usually convert the e-book to pretty much any other format.

This week I got around to testing ConvertLit and was very pleased with the results. First, I went online and bought two novels that are only available in DRMed form. I payed $4/each for DRMed MS Reader versions of the books.

The next step was to download and activate Microsoft Reader. That was actually the most difficult part, as Microsoft’s instructions for activating Reader are confusing and require using IE and installing an ActiveX controller. That was a real pain-in-the-ass.

Once I had MS Reader installed, however, ConvertLit made pretty quick work of ripping the novels to HTML and graphics files. From there, I used Mobipocket Creator to convert the books to the format I prefer to read on my PDA.

Along with being able to read the book in the format I prefer, its nice to have an HTML version on my HD that I can print or index and search at my convenience (PDAs are nice for reading books, but not for managing or doing complex searches on them).