'Winston Smith' Speaks Out On MS Reader Convertor

David H. Rothman writes "'Winston Smith,' an unemployed American high school dropout self-named after 1984's hero, told my TeleRead.org site why he and buddies turned out Convert Lit to crack the Microsoft Reader e-book format. Winston makes clear he is pro-fair use and anti-piracy. Alas, new DMCAish legal restrictions in the United Kingdom will force the Dan Jackson Software site to shut off the Convert Lit downloading later this month. Just as in the States, free speech and fair use apparently matter less in the UK these days than they used to. According to Dan Jackson, Winston 'is indeed the real author of Convert LIT.' Meanwhile, if you're in a country without DMCAish thuggery and can host Dan at a new location, email him ASAP."

Re:Where is Alan Cox in all of this?

[DAldredge]

That would be a shock to Alan Cox, since he lives in the UK.

He has also taken a year or so off to get an MBA and learn welsh.

Re:it does work

[Anonymous Coward]

get to be lazy and violate the DMCA just to retreive a file owned and created by the company I work for.

It is illegal to traffic in circumvention devices. It is not illegal to use them. Even if it were, the DMCA only applies if you do not have permission from the copyright holder.

Oh, where to start?

[Call Me Black Cloud]

If it wasn't so late I might be motivated to write more - there are so many things wrong with this picture I don't know where to begin.

You'll notice, when you follow the link, that you're really getting submitter David H. Rothman's weblog, where he states, "Winston in effect provides some great insights into why "Microsoft" is a hated name among millions and why e-books sales for the whole bloody industry are a pathetic $10-million or so a year--a fraction of Tom Clancy's annual income."

Rothman has what's known as "target fixation" - he's so focused on the target (MS and DRM) that he'll fly his plane into the ground. Of course revenues are so little - no one wants to read books on a screen! Even in a convenient easy-to-carry PDA with super-font-res technology [microsoft.com].

If you read all the material relating to "Winston", you'll find Rothman seems to hold him up as a sort of hero of the cause, whose insights we should all read and heed. If you read Winston's writings, you'll find he's rambling, immature, and ill-informed. He does have one real insight: "Lack of a college degree is a true impediment to getting hired."

I don't know how this stuff ends up on the front page of Slashdot. A link to a guy's weblog...timothy strikes again.

Re:so tell me what a valid use for this is....

[BiggerIsBetter]

why do you think you have the god given right to circumvent the copyright protection somebody places on their work?

Because I can. I'm not going to limit myself to some arbitrary level of stupidity just because you say it's "protected". Obviously if I can crack it, then it's not done well enough, is it? If it's that important, it shouldn't be on the 'net, and copies should be tracable to the original purchaser.

If someone puts a digital copy of something out into the world, it's fair game. Sorry, but that's life - if I'm not acquiring a copy illegally, I'll do what I want with it thanks. If I figure out a decryption scheme, yay for me, and what difference is it to you? I wasn't going to pay for what ever it was so you didn't lose a sale. You still have the original, it's not like I broke into a safe and stole your painting. Jeez, if you want to stop people using infomormation that you are selling or providing online, either get better protection or provide your customers with the tools to access it without resorting to a DIY approach.

And here's your list of valid uses...

• Reader - see an earlier post re disk crash.
• DeCSS - watching DVDs on my Linux box.
• SD protection - using SD cards on my Linux PDA.
• PDF encryption - um, reading PDFs???

Re:Here's A Suggestion

[mwilliamson]

An important sidenote to ideas like civil disobedience is the idea of jury nullification. Normally today, and judges want people to believe this, a jury rules on questions of fact and a judge rules on questions of law. This does not have to be the case, and there is historical precident of the jury basing their verdict on a question of law rather than a question of fact. If a jury rules based on what it believes to be an unfair law, then the court's decision nullifies that law.

http://www.greenmac.com/eagle/ISSUES/ISSUE23-9/07J uryNullification.html> [greenmac.com]

Use the archived copy

[MikeBabcock]

If you can't get to a website for one reason or another, don't forget to check web.archive.org.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030118042411/http:/ /m embers.lycos.co.uk/hostintheshell/ is the most recent link to the above site, and the .tar.bz2 source download link seems to work as well. Make sure to replace that date with a '*' to see other possible copies from other dates.