While everyone salivates around the iPhone part of the ruling, one specific needed detail was indeed missing from the list – circumventing eBook DRM to convert the text to a format for another device.

Here’s an example:

You own a DRM protected eBook that you bought for your Sony Reader. You later purchase a Kindle. Kindle cannot read the EPUB format that your book is in, but you want to read the ebook on your Kindle. Can you circumvent the DRM in order to convert the ebook to MOBI format? Most license agreements at present say “no.” Amazon’s agreement specifically states that all you own is the right to read the content on the Kindle. You don’t own the book itself.

This is quite unlike a hardback book where you own the physical copy of the book. You bought it and you can do what you want with it. You can give it away, you can sell it, you can even burn it. What you can’t do is photocopy it and redistribute the content.

Ebook licensing ideally should duplicate this model. But at minimum, it needs to allow for law-abiding citizens to be able to crack the DRM in order to read content we purchased on some other device.

A step up from this would include the ability to deal with content from the library. Here’s an example:

My library offers ebooks as PDF, EPUB, and MOBI. But sometimes there are books that are in only one format (let’s say EPUB). I want to read that on my Kindle, but I can’t without circumventing the DRM and converting it to MOBI format, which clearly violates the EULA. But I only want to read it on a different device. I’m not going to strip the DRM and host it on some bit-torrent site or otherwise redistribute it. I just want to read it on an incompatible device.

I am waiting for the Library of Congress to rule on these issues as well, but I won’t hold my breath. It seems that they are more concerned with the iPhone than they are with people who just want to read. In fact, when this story was announced, I could only find one article out of 478 on news.google.com that actually detailed the ebook component of the decision. The vast majority (read: all the others that I searched) only talked about the iPhone, even though ebook text-to-speech circumvention was also part of the decision.

When all e-books are blocked from screen readers or e-reader read aloud functions, and no digital edition is available with such accessibility features.

– from DMCA revised: unlocking, jailbreaking phones, e-book text-to-speech, deemed fair use

Here is the text of the statement: Statement of the Librarian of Congress Relating to Section 1201 Rulemaking

Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts ofpublic domain books. The project tries to make these as free as possible, in long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any computer. As of December 2009, Project Gutenberg claimed over 32,000 items in its collection.

If you have a lot of classics in your “To Be Read” file, you can bet the text if available from Project Gutenberg since most of these books are older and have passed into the public domain.  Project Gutenberg is careful to verify the status of its ebooks according to U.S. copyright law. Material is added to the Project Gutenberg archive only after it has received a copyright clearance, and records of these clearances are saved for future reference. Unlike some other digital library projects, Project Gutenberg does not claim new copyright on titles it publishes. Instead, it encourages their free reproduction and distribution.  Most books in the Project Gutenberg collection are distributed as public domain under U.S. copyright law.

Although still considered experimental by PG, most of the books are now available already formatted in EPUB and MOBI formats.  That means you Sony, Nook, and Kindle users can read these on your device with no messy conversions required.

PG indexes all of their books and for data-hounds, this information is downloadable and searchable.  Further, you can download ISO files (CD images) containing all books on PG, or categorized by genre (like Sci-Fi).

If you are really ambitious, you can read most of the Harvard Classics (Five Foot Shelf) on PG.

I highly recommend reading some of the articles listed on the PG About Page.

The iPad, not being a specialized device, appeals to a broader audience; but serious readers still prefer e-ink to backlight.  So that makes the mainstream direct competition the Sony Readers and the Nook.  I like Sony’s devices (I own an earlier PRS-500) and the Nook as well, but I much prefer my Kindle.  I only wish that it had open support for the EPUB format, which would open up a world of content beyond Amazon.

To me, this closed system is not only counter-intuitive, but also out of character for Amazon.  They gained market share from Apple in the MP3 market by offering DRM-free music that was not restricted to iTunes and the iPod.  Why they don’t do the same for ebooks is beyond me.

So if you have a Kindle (or are thinking of getting one), you need to know how to get EPUB formatted books onto your device.  I am not going to tell you how to hack DRM so you can steal books and share them amoungst your friends.  What I will do, however, is to give some insight on how to change the format of content you have access to in order to read it on your device.

First, you need to get a copy of Calibre.  (Incidently, Calibre is a good tool to have anyway.  It is a great program to catalog a large collection of ebooks and you can use it to transfer ebooks to your various devices and to also convert to various formats.)  The Calibre site is http://calibre-ebook.com/.

Calibre can be used to convert different formats to other formats, both in the program and via command-line.  The EPUB to MOBI conversion works very well and I have used it on EPUB books from a variety of sources.

There are many public domain books available from Google Books that can be downloaded as EPUB.  I have had mixed success converting these to MOBI for my Kindle, but I have found that as Google continues to work with their technology, the conversions have improved.