Sorry for the long title. Some context to this: Readium LCP is a DRM-solution created and delivered by the non-profit foundation EDRLab (I guess we’ve learned by now that non-profit doesn’t equal good), based in France.

EDRLab is an international, non-profit development laboratory working on the deployment of an open, interoperable and accessible digital publishing ecosystem worldwide.

In recent years they’ve gained a large market share in the EU first and foremost, providing both regular e-book shops in many EU countries and libraries with this DRM (if you’re interested in some more technical information regarding this DRM solution, I’d recommend reading Terence’s previous blog post). What’s particular to this solution is that they’ve historically been very litigious about any attempts to DeDRM it. The most famous plugin for DeDRMing books in Calibre (mainly Adobe DRM) has been the NoDRM plugin, and they did release a DeDRM solution to LCP v1.0 but they were threatened with legal action with a DMCA takedown request (read more on Github).

In recent days, Terence Eden posted a fully legal solution on his blog on how to bypass their DRM. This was also posted to the /r/Calibre subreddit, see the following image: I also made a thread on Lemmy here.

Nonetheless, after around a day the thread was removed on the Calibre subreddit. The only rule I could find that maybe could be applied to this (if it was illegal, and if Terence did this with any other material that wasn’t his own) is the rule against piracy. But it feels weird.

This subreddit has previously allowed, and still allow, discussions around the NoDRM plugin and how to DeDRM the Adobe DRM. What makes this fully legal solution of bypassing LCP any different? It can probably be deduced that the EDRLab foundation contacted the subreddits moderators, or reddit admins, and “threatened” them in order to have it taken down. Or guilt tripped them as they also did towards Terence. Aside from their previous DMCA takedown request to the NoDRM people, just look at their arrogant correspondence towards Terence (more in his blog post). Threatening him on no legal basis as well as somehow blaming their failure on developing accessibility tools to him posting about this solution:

“We were planning to now focus on new accessibility features on our open-source Thorium Reader, better access to annotations for blind users and an advanced reading mode for dyslexic people. Too bad; disturbances around LCP will force us to focus on a new round of security measures, ensuring the technology stays useful for ebook lending (stop reading after some time) and as a protection against oversharing.”

These are some of the reasons why I think a federated web will be necessary moving forth. I really dislike DRM, but also these methods that DRM organizations use in order to control the conversation. Thanks for reading and engaging with my small fixation on DRM and especially LCP :)