HISTORICAL, SEE UPDATE LINK: Quick notes on how to de-DRM Kindle books on Windows 10.

[reddragdiva]

The text below is obsolete. Instead, go to the 2021 edition!

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Here is how to de-DRM the books you damn well paid for. You can also convert them to ePubs if you like.

The Kindle software for PC doesn't work in WINE and I couldn't be bothered with the faff to set up DeDRM standalone, so I used arkady's old Windows 10 laptop that was sitting around spare.

You can install Windows 10 in a VM, e.g. VirtualBox! You don't need to authenticate it. Just download the ISO from Microsoft and authenticate at your leisure, or maybe never. I gave it 2GB RAM. Taylor Swift says set UAC to full.

WHAT YOU NEED:

• Kindle for PC
• Calibre
• DeDRM

STEPS TO SET THIS UP:

1. Rather than the old AZW format, Kindle now tries to download in its new KFX format by preference, so we have to nobble that — DeDRM has only just started on supporting it. Per this page, open a CMD window and run:

   ren %localappdata%\Amazon\Kindle\application\renderer-test.exe renderer-test.xxx

2. Open the DeDRM zip file. Inside that you will find a folder called "DeDRM_calibre_plugin" and inside that you will find a file called "DeDRM_plugin.zip". Get that second zip file (don't unzip it).

3. Open Calibre. Open "Preferences". Go to "Plugins". Click "Load plugin from file". Load the "DeDRM_plugin.zip" from the previous step. Close Calibre (so that it'll load the plugin next time it starts).

4. Open the Kindle app, log yourself in, download your books. (You need to log into the Kindle app to generate your DRM key that DeDRM then uses.)

   Go into Tools->Options->General and untick "Automatically install updates when they are available without asking me."

5. Open Calibre again, ready for the next step.

6. Open Windows Explorer. Under your username, you should have a folder "Documents\My Kindle Content". This should have several folders, each with an ebook in them. Go to the search box at top right, and search here for ".azw", which will conveniently list them all.

7. Select all the .azw files, and drag them to the Calibre window. This should load them all, readably.

8. If you want to convert to ePub: Select all the new books in Calibre. Right-click, select "Convert books->Bulk convert". Just use the defaults, you can do it again if you want to fiddle with stuff. If not: You can leave the de-DRMed books in .mobi or .azw format, as quite a lot of ebook readers are fine with these.

You now have a pile of .epub/.azw/.mobi files in various subfolders of "Documents\Calibre Library". You can search for ".epub" or whatever here if you want to select them all and drag them to some convenient place.

If you're on a Mac, try this page (and this one to fix the KFX problem). If you're on Linux, I don't know what to do while the Kindle app doesnt run in WINE.

Comments

[bens_dad]

The Kindle software for PC doesn't work in WINE and I couldn't be bothered with the faff to set up DeDRM standalone, so I used [personal profile] arkady's old Windows 10 laptop that was sitting around spare.

Calibre is available for Linux. Would that have been too much faff, or does it not work with KFX files ?
(If you are downloading via Kindle for PC I can see that doing the whole process on one machine would be a win.)

[reddragdiva]

Calibre is - I use it, it was an indispensable part of the production process for my own book - but the Kindle application isn't, and you need to log into the Kindle app so DeDRM can get your DRM key. So until the Kindle app works in Wine, this procedure isn't likely viable, annoyingly.

[theandrewhickey]

According to WineHQ, most versions of the Kindle software will run in WiNE. I know it used to, a few years ago, when I tried it once (I don't buy Amazon ebooks, so haven't tried it in a few years)

[reddragdiva]

I did in fact try the latest version, with no luck out the box ... perhaps there's some faff. Obviously, someone needs to write it up if they do!

[theandrewhickey]

Yeah, I find there's massive faff with everything WiNEy. I know for stripping Adobe DRM you have to use only version 1.72 of Adobe Digital Editions, and at one point a couple of years ago if you wanted to do it in Debian you had to uninstall WiNE, install the *MEPIS*-repository versions of WiNE, install PyCrypto in those versions, uninstall the MEPIS versions, install the Debian version again...
Similarly when trying to get iTunes to run in Debian, to buy an iTunes-only album, I had to use PlayOnLinux and 32-bit iTunes 10.1.1, as no other versions would work.

Fucking proprietary software vendors thinking they're being clever...

[reddragdiva]

Piracy, The Better Choice(tm)

[damerell]

Ye scurvy dog!

[reddragdiva]

I PAY MY LICENCE YOU KNOW

[damerell]

I don't, you know! TVL sadly gave up a few years ago [1]; I quite enjoyed our series of minor contretemps.

While I don't require one (but I would say that) as far as I can make out people only get fined &c by unwisely telling the truth. There seems to have been little reason to suppose they actually Tempest-phreaked TV watchers, even before TVs stopped being giant CRTs.

[1] Oddly, I'm pretty sure I told them the implied right of access to the property was withdrawn, which appears to be some sort of freeman on the land nonsense, but perhaps it's in their list of reasons not to bother, so victory for the wrong reasons? :-/

[reddragdiva]

I'm the sort of person who feels guilty for not paying his taxes. So we don't have a physical telly, but Freda watches iPlayer all the time, and I don't really object in any way to paying for the BBC.

[damerell]

I'd be happy enough to pay it if I were obliged to, but I ain't; and since I ain't, I am not at all happy with TVL's bullying tactics...

[reddragdiva]

I have previously hypothesised that TVL is a Murdoch plot to discredit the BBC.

[damerell]

Ha ha only... suspiciously plausible.

[reddragdiva]

also, I really reeeeeeallllly want them to object to me using get-iplayer

[damerell]

Or not? I've done a bit more research and it turns out that freemen on the land like withdrawing the implied right of access as a counter-bailiff strategy, and this like all FMOTL stuff doesn't work because a bailiff has explicit instructions from a court to be there; but it is a real legal concept which can be used against TVL and suchlike, who don't have such instructions.

Even an article in the BBC's in-house magazine about a pensioner who got compensation from them for trespass (although how said pensioner showed actual damage is unclear) after withdrawing it.

[pndc]

Although most TV Detector vans are indeed empty props which are/were driven round conspicuously to scare people into paying up, this is not to say that *all* of them were empty.

TVs can be, and are, detected by the retransmission of the IF from the tuner back up the aerial. It's nothing to do with CRTs, and would be able to detect a modern flat-panel, or a VCR set to record something while you were out. I expect that the change from analogue to digital transmission has not changed the basic theory of operation, but if the detector also included an analogue demodulator to confirm the signal is TV-watching and not some other innocent use, that might be enough for Crapita to finally give up and just build an obnoxious database and threatening letter campaign instead.

(IF is "Intermediate Frequency". When building a wideband tuner such as is necessary to pick up the UHF TV signals from about 400-800MHz, you get a better receiver by building a fixed-frequency tuner and frequency-shifting the thing you're actually trying to receve to that frequency. Some leakage is inevitable, especially given manufacturers use the cheapest designs they can get away with.)

[damerell]

That's interesting (two new things I have learned) - I always thought they did it with Tempest but that's just because I knew about Tempest.

As such presumably cable TV watchers couldn't be snooped on anyway, although one wouldn't need to to establish they were watching TV...

[reddragdiva]

I use and recommend get-iplayer too. The iplayer app is shit, plain old MP4s are superior in every way.

[reddragdiva]

I find software these days more often works in Wine than not. But DRM vendors always try clever tricks that don't work reliably even on their base platform.

[pndc]

Life's too short to faff around with Wine or indeed broken Windows software in general, but if you must deal with the latter, it's a lot less bother to just virtualise Windows and avoid the former. For simple application software such as Kindle, it Just Works; for games that implicitly assume DMA access to a discrete graphics card, it gets a bit more Interesting. The time/money trade-off may make a purchase of VMWare be worthwhile rather than trying to get it working under KVM.

This also assumes that you have a convenient Windows licence, or are sufficiently morally ambiguous to use The Better Choice(TM) to fabricate one. Given stripping DRM is already a breach of copyright, I suspect this is not a problem.

[reddragdiva]

#include <nerd argument about whether DRM stripping is technically a *copyright* breach>

[reddragdiva]

See edit - I now do this using an unactivated copy of Windows 10, which works fine but has an "Activate Windows" watermark.