[blindLaw] Internet Archive extensive collection of law books for blind & print disabled people

Sat Nov 12 01:28:38 UTC 2022

Oh my gush!! 
Sai this is so cool! 
I will definitely check it out! 
I found some interesting  books at the Internet Archive but thought they we’re just pictures of the books. 
I will definitely go through  the spelled out process you provided to have the PDFs! 

With much gratitude, 
Teresita Rios 
J.D. candidate Notre Dame Law School 

> On Nov 11, 2022, at 12:46 PM, Sai via BlindLaw <blindlaw at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> The Internet Archive has an extremely extensive collection of scanned
> books, which are available to blind & print disabled people for free (e.g.
> provable using a BARD or Bookshare account):
> https://archive.org/details/printdisabled
> 
> Surprisingly, this includes legal textbooks, treatises, academic books,
> reference books, study books, etc. etc. Not the latest editions, but they
> had at least a semi recent version of nearly everything I searched for.
> 
> For example, here's Black's Law Dictionary (abridged) 2015:
> https://archive.org/details/blackslawdiction0010edunse_r0f2
> 
> Here's one of my favourite books on US law — Eskridge, Frickey, & Garret's
> Legislation and Statutory Interpretation:
> https://archive.org/details/legislationstatu0000eskr
> 
> I also found nearly the entire suite of UK law treatises on my reading list
> (Blackstone's everything, Craies, Bennion, etc), as well as a full set of
> bar exam (SQE) prep books.
> 
> 
> Make sure to sort by published date when you do a search (or have sighted
> assistance to check the cover images); the titles might be identical for
> different editions, and the publication date is a pain to read for every
> entry otherwise (it is on the details page, near the top of the metadata
> block).
> 
> There are also some books that have the same title in the list, but are
> actually different books, like the "condensed" study versions, texts vs
> commentaries, etc., or like every book that has a super generic name like
> "administrative law". This is again very easy to tell apart from the cover
> image, and it should be in the details page metadata, but it's a pain. If
> you're doing it yourself, be sure to double check so you're not getting an
> older version than is available, and you know if you have multiple books
> with similar titles. Check the publication year and authors; that's usually
> good enough to tell them apart.
> 
> 
> I've not found a collection where you can browse all the law books in one
> place; you have to know what to search for.
> 
> 
> They provide most books as Adobe Digital Editions (i.e. encrypted PDFs with
> DRM).
> 
> That's rather a pain to use, and really limits your options for software
> and hardware you can read it from, so for your convenience, here's how to
> crack it:
> 
> 0. Make an Internet Archive account and register yourself with the print
> disabled access at https://archive.org/details/printdisabled
> 
> 1. Install Adobe Digital Editions. Log in to it using the same email
> account you used for Internet Archive signup.
> https://www.adobe.com/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html
> 
> 2. Install Calibre (free e-book reader software) https://calibre-ebook.com/
> 
> 3. Download and unzip DeDRM Tools
> https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools/releases/
> 
> 4. Open Calibre, go to preferences, plugins, load from file, and select
> "DeDRM_Plugin.zip" within the folder you just unzipped. Quit and restart
> Calibre.
> 
> 5. While logged in, search Internet Archive (using the same URL) to find a
> book you want. On the details page, the sidebar should have a link labelled
> "download Adobe PDF". Click and download. This is an .ACSM file, which is
> actually just a link to where Adobe Digital Editions will download the real
> thing, not the book itself.
> 
> 6. While logged in and online, open the Internet Archive provided .ACSM
> file using ADE. This will download the actual book onto your computer. It
> will still be encrypted, but at least it's on your computer, together with
> the decryption key. On Windows, it should be stored in your user folder
> under "Documents/My Digital Editions".
> 
> 7. Open the ADE PDF (which is still encrypted) in Calibre. Assuming you
> installed the DeDRM plug-in, this will decrypt it and copy it to Calibre's
> separate save directory. You can find that by right clicking the listing in
> Calibre and click "open containing folder".
> 
> 8. You now have a decrypted, OCRed PDF/A in Calibre's save folder. You can
> now just ignore the Adobe Digital Editions version; it's strictly worse.
> Instead, copy the Calibre version wherever youv want to read it.
> 
> 
> You should be able to use the decrypted PDF on any device and software you
> prefer. And it will be permanently available — not limited by the 14 day
> loan policy — because it's no longer using DRM to get permission to read
> every time you open it.
> 
> 
> Mind that the usual caveats about OCR quality apply. The scan quality is
> generally pretty good, so it's about as good as OCR can be expected, but
> it's not going to be as good as a native electronic version.
> 
> Very rarely, they may have BRF files, but only if they have it in
> unencrypted format. So far I've only found that once. So you should mostly
> expect to deal with PDFs.
> 
> They have encrypted EPUB available for some but not all books. The
> decryption process is the same. If available, the EPUB is much smaller, but
> it's still essentially an OCR extract (not natively electronic). My guess
> is that books with footnotes and the like — which means nearly all legal
> books — will be more of a pain to figure out in EPUB format than PDF. But
> try both and see what you prefer
> 
> Also, mind that some of these are very large books — e.g. a treatise might
> be a couple hundred to a couple thousand pages, anywhere from 20 to 270 MB.
> That's not possible to break up if you have only the encrypted version, but
> after you decrypt it, you can break it up into separate parts just like any
> other PDF.
> 
> And they do not have any of the nice navigation markup like chapter
> headings and so forth. You'll have to keep your own notes about what pages
> things are at and all that.
> 
> It's ultimately just a scan. So there are all the usual drawbacks, on top
> of the annoyance of having to crack the DRM.
> 
> On the other hand, it's free, in fairly high quality, easy to crack the
> DRM, and the collection covers a huge number of books that are usually very
> hard to find in an even partially accessible format (if at all), or
> outrageously expensive.
> 
> 
> 
> FWIW, circumventing DRM in order to make content more accessible for blind
> people is perfectly legal, under Article 7 of the Marrakesh Treaty. It's
> nice that we get an exception for this.
> 
> 
> I hope it's useful to you all. Happy reading!
> 
> Sincerely,
> Sai
> President, Fiat Fiendum, Inc., a 501(c)(3)
> 
> Sent from my mobile phone; please excuse the concision and autocorrect
> errors.
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