Behind Your Business

Internet retailer Amazon.com had all the luck in getting its family of proprietary Kindle e-book readers into the hands of consumers while its rivals were faced with delays, but its luck may have turned. The Kindle's copyright protection has been hacked.

An Israeli hacker who goes by the name Labba says he has been able to break the Kindle's digital-rights management protection, allowing its electronic books to be viewed on non-Kindle devices.

A U.S. hacker has also reportedly created a program called Unswindle that converts books stored in the free Kindle for PC application into other formats.

DRM prevents making copies of DVDs and music downloaded from online stores, blocks users from recording TV programs, and much more. DRM is backed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In this case, DRM prevents Kindle users from copying the 390,000 books and 100 newspapers and magazines available through Amazon.

Hacking Help

Labba didn't work alone. The hacker recruited help on an Israeli web site, hacking.org, according to published reports.

Igor Skochinsky, a hardware hacker, had already provided clues to cracking Kindle's DRM. On his blog, Skochinsky said he has known for some time that Amazon's proprietary AZW files were actually Mobi files, and Amazon didn't share information that would allow people to buy encrypted Mobi books for Kindle.

"Well, I've discovered the algorithm used to generate the (Mobi) PID and was able to use it on Fictionwise, but there was another catch," he wrote. "AZW files have a flag set in the DRM info which is not present in books bought from other vendors. After fixing that, I could read the book on Kindle."

This is bad news for Amazon, which has dominated the e-reader market. Amazon not only pushed sales of Kindle, it has also offered free expedited shipments of the devices to get them into the...