Do you know you can copy and save Internet Archive borrowed books to keep it in your file?
In other words, you can save a copy of the books from its Lending Library to your computer or any external hard drive.
As it is, you CANNOT make a copy and save the borrowed books.
You can only BORROW the book to read for just one hour duration or for fourteen days only.
For the one-hour option, you can read the book right away on the site itself.
But for the 14 days borrow option, you need to install the free online book reader called "Adobe Digital Editions" to access the e-book.
Then you have to return the book back to Internet Archive.
In short, you CANNOT save any digital copies of these Internet Archive borrowed books.
The urllink. acsm file (of 14 days borrowed book) is actually a reference file for the e-book, and it is not the actual e-book itself.
In addition, it is protected by the Adobe DRM (Digital Rights Management) copy protection.
The books are read-only.
But there are ways to overcome this technical obstacle, so you can save a copy of the book for yourself.
Save Internet Archive borrow books
I know there are those of you who prefer to save the borrowed books, so you can read them at your own convenience.
This detailed tutorial will show you how to SAVE the borrowed books to our own file.
You can do it for both, the 1 hour access and 14 days borrowed books.
Before I proceed, you must have these two basic things in place:
Firstly, you must have a free account with Internet Archive.
You can sign up an account from here.
Secondly, you must download and install the free e-book reader "Adobe Digital Editions".
You can download from here.
Adobe DRM copy protection removal
In order to copy and save the Internet Archive Lending Library books, you have to remove or to decrypt Adobe DRM copy protection.
Remove DRM from ACSM file online.
It means you have to remove archive.org borrowing restrictions.
Yes, you can convert ACSM to PDF online or convert ACSM to Epub.
After you have removed or decrypted the DRM copy protection, then only you can open them with your Adobe Acrobat Reader or the EPUB file reader.
With the Adobe DRM copy protection removed, you not only can save the book, you can even edit and print them from your Adobe Acrobat Reader.
NOTE: Beware of copyright infringements. Do it for personal usage. Never use it commercially after DRM removal.
How to save Internet Archive borrow books
There are two (2) workable ways to remove the DRM copy protection, so you can save the books for your own keeping.
Calibre together with a plugin
DRM removal tool
I have tried out both methods and they work just fine.
Personally I prefer the latter method with just the DRM removal tool.
ACSM remove DRM Calibre
Anyway, for those who want to use the Calibre with the plugin, use these versions that definitely works: Calibre 3.48.0 and the plugin use DeDRM Plugin V6.6.3.
The tutorial I am showing you here is using the DRM removal tool to do the trick.
This free tool can remove DRM from PDF, Epub, Mobi and Kindle file.
You just installed the software and you can remove or decrypt the DRM copy protection right away.
From there you can open the newly DRM-free pdf file with your Adobe Acrobat Reader or EPUB file reader.
The first part of the tutorial, I will show you how to do it with the 14-day borrow book, as it has already come with the ACSM file.
The second part of the tutorial, is how to do it with 1-hour borrow book, which does NOT have the ACSM file.
For both options, you need the help of a DRM removal tool.
Firstly, you need to download and install this free DRM removal tool called ePUBee DRM Removal onto your laptop.
Click here.
Now, this is how to do it with the 14-day borrowed book.
Save 14-day borrowed book
After you have clicked on the "Borrow for 14 days" these are the four (4) main steps you need to do:
Step 1: Download the book to Adobe Digital Editions
1. Go the Internet Archive and get the book which you want to save.2. Scroll down a little and on the right side of the page, under DOWNLOAD OPTIONS, you can see: "ENCRYPTED ADOBE PDF" and "ENCRYPTED ADOBE EPUB" .
3. You can select either of the two options.
NOTE: If you prefer to use Adobe Acrobat Reader to read your e-books, then choose the PDF format.
4. A box pops up with the file "URLLink.acsm".
5. Click on the "OK" button.
6. Another box pops up, for you to choose where you would like to save this "URLLink.acsm" file.
7. As you only need it temporarily, you can save it on the desktop for the time being.
8. Now right click on the icon of this "URLLink.acsm" file on your desktop.
9. A context menu pops up, move your cursor to "Open with", then slide it to "Adobe Digital Editions" and click on it.
10. The Adobe Digital Editions interface will pop up, together with a box, saying: "Downloading Content...".
11. Once it finishes, the book will appear on the right side of the interface.
12. Click on "Library" and you can see two book icons on the interface.
Step 2 Get the book from Adobe Digital Editions
1. Go to Adobe Digital Editions to where you 'download' book is located (Bookshelves - All Items/ Title).
2. Right click on the book title and a context menu pops up.
3. Click on "Show File in Explorer".
4. It opens the "My Digital Edition" file.
5. Right click on the book title and then click "Cut".
6. Then paste the book file on the Desktop just temporarily, as you need it for the next step.
Step 3: Remove DRM protection
1. Open or launch the EPUBee DRM Removal.2. Click on the "Add" icon at the top left hand corner of the interface.
3. A box pops up, go to the Desktop to locate the book file which you have just pasted there.
NOTE: The file is with the book title.pdf. Not the first URLLink.acsm file!
4. Click on the book file and then click the "Open" button, as shown above.
5. Instantly it will decrypt the DRM protection.
6. You can see your book title under "File Name" and the "Status" as "decrypted".
9. It opens the page and you can find the book title there.
10. So it means it is already decrypted.
11. If you saved it in PDF format in STEP #1, double click on it and it will instantly open in the Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Step 4: Save the book to computer/hard drive
1. To save the book from the Adobe Acrobat Reader, click "File" and then click on "Save As...".
2. You can save the e-book to your computer/laptop or an external drive.
3. Now you can go back to Internet Archive to return the book by clicking the red color "Return now" button.
4. That's how you save the Internet Archive 14-day borrowed book.
Now let's find out how to save 1-Hour borrowed book.
Save 1-hour borrowed book
As you know if you borrow the 1-Hour option, you can just read the book directly from the site.
You do not need the e-book reader Adobe Digital Editions.
But to save the book to your computer or hard-drive, first you need to save the book to Adobe Digital Editions.
Just like the 14-day borrowed book tutorial, you have to remove the DRM protection, before you can save the book for yourself.
Now let's find out how to download and save the one-hour borrowed book from Internet Archive.
There are four (4) main steps:
Step 1: Create ACSM file for 1-hour book
As for this one hour borrowed book, it does not have the urllink. acsm file.
You can only see its URL at the address bar on top of the page.
Before you can remove its DRM protection, as I have explained above, firstly you need to create a ACSM file for the 1-hour book.
This is how to do it:
1. From the URL of the Archive book, copy the Identifier.
2. The Identifier is the line of text just AFTER details/
3. For example, the book URL is:
https://archive.org/details/lastgreatestmagi00stei_0
4. The Identifier is: lastgreatestmagi00stei_0
5. Now, paste the Identifier into the link below where the “XXXXXXXXXXXXX” is.
https://archive.org/services/loans/loan/?action=media_url&identifier=XXXXXXXXXXXXX&format=pdf&redirect=1
6. So, now the link should look this:
https://archive.org/services/loans/loan/?action=media_url&identifier=lastgreatestmagi00stei_0&format=pdf&redirect=1&format=pdf&redirect=1
7. Paste this new URL onto your browser address bar and click "ENTER" key.
8. A box will pop up as show below:
9. Make sure it is set to "Save File" and click on the "OK" button.
10. Just save it on your Desktop for the time being, as you need it later.
11. You have successfully created a ACSM file for the 1-Hour borrow book.
Step 2: Save it to Adobe Digital Edition
This is what you normally do when you loan the book for 14 days.
1. Right click on the newly created ACSM file on your Desktop.
3. Select "Open with" and then click on "Adobe Digital Editions".
4. The Adobe Digital Editions interface pops up, together with another box, saying: "Downloading Content..."
5. Wait for it to download onto your Adobe Digital Editions, just like when you loan a book for the14-day option.
6. Now you can see the book title under the "Bookshelves - All Items/ Title".
7. The following STEP 3 and STEP 4 are the same as the STEP 2 and STEP 3 respectively, as explained above when you want to download and save the 14-Day Borrow Book.
Click here, it will jump back up to STEP #2, STEP #3 and STEP #4 guide above.
Similarly like the tutorial above, after you have saved the book, you can return it back to Internet Archive.
You don't need to the borrow book any more, as you already have your own saved copy.
This is how you can copy and save both the 1-Hour & 14-Day books from Internet Archive Lending Library.