DRM, or digital rights management, is the Stuff that limits a consumer’s capabilities with his or her recommended for digital media. It’s what curbs the iTunes music you buy to your own use Specifically. It Prevents you from sharing your paid-for Kindle books with others.

Peter Purgathoffer, an associate professor at the Vienna University of Technology, built a Lego robot That squashes the Kindle e-book DRM, we learn via Boing Boing.

The robot works by Repeatedly pressing the “next page” button on a Kindle, then snapping a picture of the new page with a laptop’s webcam. Captured pictures are saved to a folder where They are or cancel treated with a process called OCR – optical character recognition – Which digitizes the text and turns it into a completely DRM-free e-book.

The best part of this little robotic creation Is that Because it’s engaging in a transformative act (and is obviously for one’s own personal use), it’s legal.

DIY kindle scanner from peter purgathofer on Vimeo.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider staff through his investment company, Bezos Expeditions.