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Is there any way to remove DRM from DAISY ebooks?

Ebooks Asked on September 26, 2021

DAISY is a digital ebook format designed for blind and disabled people. There are two kinds of DAISY books, “open” books which can be freely read by anyone, and “protected” books which have DRM and can only be read if you have a device equipped with a key.

My question is, is there any way to remove/decrypt DRM from DAISY ebooks, if you don’t have the key? There are methods for removing/decrypting DRM from PDF and EPUB files, so there may be similar methods here.

EDiT: If it helps, here is the DAISY ebook I’m interested in downloading. I’d like to read this book on a computer if possible.

EDIT 2: I found the same book as a PDF with DRM, and managed to decrypt the DRM on that. So now my question is moot. But let me leave it up so other people who encounter DAISY ebooks can get help.

One Answer

I have no idea on how to solve the general problem of DRM removal. Depending on where you live, it may actually be very much against the law.

Furthermore, as I said in a comment, DAISY books come in different formats, independently of DRM, depending on whether they contain speech, text to be speech synthesized or both. I think the most common standard is DAISY 2.02, which (from what I understand) contains only speech, but I am no expert on DAISY which I never heard of before.

I would expect that the type of DRM used is dependent on the standard, and may also depend on the publisher, or on the brand of the reader. Thus there may be no universal answer to your question.

For a specific book, it may be useful to know the standard used, and probably the kind of reader, or the kind of DRM.

Now, you tell in a comment, which you should (probably) integrate to your question to better focus it, that you are interested in the book at https://archive.org/download/asdrivenleaf00stei/asdrivenleaf00stei_daisy.zip

I still do not know how to remove the DRM technically, and, if I knew, answering you could get me into significant trouble. The archive.org site is a wonderful site (I mean that), which by its very purpose is probably not too friendly to DRM, but there is nothing they can do when a book is still under copyright custody.

To know more , I unzipped the file, which I hope you did too. This gives you a bunch of files, including a file README_encrypted.txt which says it uses a key from the National Library Service, and point to the files http://openlibrary.org/help/faq/accessing#what-is-daisy and https://nlsbard.loc.gov/ for more explanation.

They explain that the program (for modern books, hence under copyright) is reserved to residents of the USA and American citizens living overseas. I am not quite sure how they do that legally, though they clearly enforce that with the DRM key.

Some countries do have laws that make a copyright exception to the benefit of disabled people within the country. I am not sure whether that is the case in the USA, but it would be the simplest explanation. However it does not explain giving access to American citizens in other countries, since international treaties give the USA jurisdiction on copyright only within the USA.

Now if your country of residence has a similar law (free access for disabled people) then it is possible that the National Library Service would accept to give you a key to be used from your country, since that would not raise any copyright infringement issue (though they might want to have an official agreement between countries). Maybe you can try to discuss that with the people at [email protected], or the people at NLS. And you shold check the copyright law in your own country regarding exceptions for disabled people.

This is just my best understanding, and all the suggestions I can give to solve your problem, and I am not a lawyer.

Answered by babou on September 26, 2021

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