apprenticeharper/dedrm_tools

This repository collects scripts and plugins that strip the digital rights management (DRM) protection from ebook files. DRM is the technology that ebook stores use to lock a purchased book to a particular reader or app. The scripts gathered here were originally written by a range of different authors over many years, and the repository was maintained for a long time by a person who goes by the handle Apprentice Harper, who took over from an earlier maintainer known as Apprentice Alf. The README is upfront that it is, in effect, a historical archive of these tools committed in roughly the date order in which they were created, with a couple of exceptions noted (the Requiem tools for Apple iBooks and Convert LIT for Microsoft .lit files are not included). The headline of the README is that the project is no longer maintained at this location. The author explains that they have not had time for the project in recent years and that someone using the handle noDRM has taken over maintenance and releases. New users are pointed at that fork rather than at this repository. There is a link in the README to a wiki page that documents the exact removal procedure. The tools are packaged as two plugins for calibre, a popular open-source ebook library manager. The DeDRM plugin handles books using Amazon DRM, Adobe Digital Editions DRM version 1, Barnes and Noble DRM, and some older formats. The Obok plugin handles DRM used on Kobo books. Version compatibility is spelled out: calibre 5.x and later need release 7.2.0 or newer of the tools, while calibre 4.x and earlier should use the 6.8.x line. A few practical notes appear in the README. For the newer Amazon KFX format, users need to also install a separate KFX Input plugin from inside calibre. The author warns that Amazon changes its KFX DRM scheme frequently, so a method that works today may not work next week. There is also a recommendation to use Adobe Digital Editions version 2.0.1 specifically, to avoid a newer Adobe DRM scheme that these tools cannot handle. Users are reminded that they have to unzip the downloaded release to get at the plugin file, and that the full repository archive cannot itself be loaded into calibre. The README closes with thanks to the developers who did the reverse-engineering work that made the original tools possible.