Slashdot Mirror
PlayFair Pulled Due to DMCA Request
doubleacr writes "MacSlash is reporting that PlayFair has been removed from SourceForge.net. Didn't see that one coming." We posted about PlayFair on Monday. SourceForge.net received a DMCA complaint from Apple on Thursday, claiming PlayFair is in violation of the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA, section 1201(a)(2). As per SourceForge.net policy, the project has been disabled. Should the project managers file a counterclaim, the project could be restored. SourceForge.net is owned by OSDN, the parent company of Slashdot.
The project has been moved here:
http://sarovar.org/projects/playfair/
Though nothing has yet been posted to it, the author posted on MacSlash that the C&D order from Apple will be posted - and will be continued as long as there is no violation of Indian law.
Funny, everyone else did.
By trying to sue something off the Internet, you only ensure its wider propagation and interest among people who otherwise wouldn't have cared. I'll be sharing a tarball on eMule immediately. Come and sue everybody, Apple.
it has been mac/.'ed
Apple created a piece of software that doesn't allow people to play the music their paid for on the devices of their choice.
What this program is is not circumvention... It's fair use.
> PlayFair has been removed from SourceForge.net.
Oh good, should I order my T-shirts now?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
In this case, though, that's a moot point, seeing as it's been rehosted. Oh well.
Goo goo g'joob.
It's that time again... Seems like people would eventually get the point that programs are free speech. I can't wait to see the poems and prime numbers that get produced for this (remniscent of DeCSS).
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
*runs and hides*
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Unless you mean the music publishing company. Which of Apple Computer's copyrighted works, does PlayFair remove the protection from?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
my black what?
the layman's guide to computer science
First, iTunes Music Store is by far the most successful online music store. Good prices, great selection (sounds like a damn commercial doesn't it?).
I'm very pleased with it. I get ALL my purchased music from it.
This "playfair" project is just going to have the recording industry folks who reluctantly agreed to go in with Apple and distribute their music get scared and pissed off. They're going to pull their music and/or the prices are going to go up in fear of piracy.
It can not only hurt Apple, but also hurt online music sales as a whole.
Its nice to see the people bitching about the $20 CD's ruining the $10 online albums.
Its not good enough until its free right? GIVE ME A BREAK!
Get paid to code OSS
...you need to have a Terms of Service to deal with junx like this. We've got one on RubyForge just in case...
The Army reading list
Sarovar is hosted on a Compaq box running Debian woody and GForge.
(34,266) PSTricks Tutorial
(5,855) PDFscreen
(5,693) LaTeX Primer
(3,965) PDFslide
(3,675) PDFtricks
(2,087) Draft Copy for PDFTeX
(1,504) JavaDBF
(1,256) TeXLive
(966) Swathantra Malayalam Computing
(802) CVSPermissions - An ACL tool for CVS
Hosted Projects: 126
Registered Users: 659
Why must people insist on going around the system!??!?! .99 cents and burning it anyway they want!?!??!
.99 cents is SOOOO cheap!!!
Why can't people be content in buying music at
This isn't a "Unconditional Surrender" here...There has to be some rules....
I just can't understand this,
It's not like your paying $50 bucks for a game!!!
Somewhere down the line something has to break....
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
I can only conclude that OSDN are either lazy, scared of Apple, or have interests in Apple. None of these are good things.
from the fair-use-foiled-again dept.
Could that line be any more biased? Exactly how is FairPlay fair use? When the RIAA started cracking down on MP3/digital music sharing, the most common excuse given by those who download and/or share was that it was because CDs were too expensive, and they just wanted one or two songs off of an album that they could download. They even claimed that if they could do this legally for the appropriate price, they would.
Well, Apple (along with others), have granted you your request... tracks off an album you can legally purchase and download without spending $10+ on a CD. But what do some thieves do anyway? They go ahead and download it for free anyway, going around the protections made by the owners and original distributors of the content.
So, what is your excuse now? When it comes down to it, those who are involved in FairPlay and those who use it are nothing more than common thieves, and should be treated appropriately.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
I cant really say anything I am still miffed at the idea of charging 1.25 per song or more. This is really making me hate music, one side, music should be free, and on the other side you have the RIAA saying that they will charge more because music copyright code is being cracked.
....
I am about ready to say Fork it, and I will just listen to the radio. and not buy any of the beer thats advertised on the radio commercials! HAH! I just won, I listened to the radio and the music and didnt buy any of the advertised products, HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW!
okay I feel better
Mirror early, mirror often!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Unfortunately, I am not a lawyer, nor do I have the disposable income to pay for one.
However, this looks to me like a(nother) possible test case of the DMCA.
What makes this case attractive is that, to my understanding, PlayFair works WITHIN the accepted norms of society for copyright law (if you don't have a key from iTunes showing you bought the song, it won't convert the audio).
It is a law that is OUTSIDE the accepted norms of society that is causing the problem here.
I googled EFF.org for "playfair" and didn't have any returns of relevance.
Is the EFF involved in this case, or are they even aware of it?
- Neil Wehneman
P.S. I've mentioned this in previous posts, but I'll mention it again here because it's relevant.
Dr. Larry Lessig, who argued "our side" in Eldred v. Ashcroft, has put up his new book Free Culture under a Creative Commons license. Noncommercial redistribution with attribution is freely allowed.
Download the PDF or buy it and support Creative Commons in the process.
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
Give me a break, you speak as if they have a reasonable alternative. If Apple doesn't go after these people, you know that the recording industry is going to throw a conniption fit.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Mod parent up - by banning this project, OSDN are making a very clear mark as to where they stand on Open Source as a tool to protect rights in the face of bullying corporations.
DeCSS?
Apple didn't 'play fair' in '84, if they had, the world might be running on Macintosh today. Jobs always tries to cut out any 3rd parties. The first thing he did when he returned as 'interim' CEO was to buy up all the really good 3rd party Macintosh computer makers like Power Computing and Motorola. The entire point of iTunes, the entire reason they are suffering the losses they are, is that every customer that purchases even one song from them must have either Apple licensed software or hardware to 'play fair' with the DRM.
I think this sucks. The DMCA is a rotten law and I hate seeing it used. Rather than innovate and try to protect copyright companies are allowed to use legislation that has a side effect of silencing free speech. I understand Apple's concerns about fairplay since it reduces the chance that the record companies will renew their contracts but using the DMCA is vile. It's especially ornerous because I recall Apple (possibly even Steve Jobs) admitting that they purposely encumbered itunes with fairly weak copyright protection.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Its a great thing this was taken off. Finally we see some good prices, and some good technology to protect the artists. And yeah, there will always be ways around the protection... but leave it for the L33t; dont give it to the masses.
...not quite. When you bought your music from the iTMS, you already knew that you would only be allowed to play it within iTunes or on your iPod.
That's it.
If you want to play it on a different device, there are many other sources for your music, including buying a CD and ripping it into whatever format your heart desires.
Whether you agree that "information should be free" or not is irrelevant. By purchasing your music from iTMS, you agreed to Apple's restrictions.
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
I haven't gotten a DMCA takedown notice in the last week or so, so here is a torrent for everyone to enjoy:
t
http://www.isthatdamngood.com/playfair-0.2.torren
Enjoy!
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
I honestly don't know, but I would imagine that Apple is concerned about this not because they want to make sure everything stays locked up for the sake of being locked up, but probably because they don't want the RIAA to yank their licenses and cause all of the iTMS to come crashing down.
Sure, you can make all the standard black helicopter and tinfoil hat jokes, but I really don't see how Apple would care about this, save the ramifications for keeping an amicable relationship with the RIAA pigopolists.
While the DMCA is a horrible piece of legislation, a business would not be doing their shareholders a favor if they didn't use it to protect their business. This is a standard move, everyone saw it coming; and to say that it is a dumb mistake is a bit myopic.
To do nothing would be a bigger mistake for Apple, for entirely different reasons.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
i think it's more of a symbolic move. apple/jobs probably knows better than to think c&d will remove this program from existence.
but at least taking a public stance against it, they can appease the record labels...
This is purely a business move by apple. They're DRM is pretty light. Everyone has known that you can burn a cd then rip it back. Even easier you can record anything going to the speaker as an mp3 using some freely available software.
Jobs is quoted as saying the his PHds said you can't make a DRM that stops piracy completely.
However apple needs music to resell. To allow software the strips the DRM would likely irk those big music companies that sell apple the songs it needs to sell. And with other DRMed formats apple probably needed DRM to open the store in the first place.
And your recommended response for Apple would have been...?
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
As soon as I read the earlier /. story about PlayFair, I went straight to SourceForge and downloaded a copy. It now sits at home in a (sadly) ever expanding directory named "samizdat", along with things like deCSS stuff, the Grey Album, and various other bits from Illegal Art. Some of those things are still available, but I have such little faith in the DCMA that I think private copies are warranted.
>btw don't eat meat today. unless your black.
unless my black what?
It's not about piracy.
All one has to do to "unprotect" the files is have a player that unlocks them and a high-fidelity digitizer (you know, something like an Audigy card or pod...) to record it with. The loss is not going to be noticeable (i.e. even AAC inserts worse loss than this process does in the first place...) and as long as you use AAC or something that doesn't distort the results appreciably worse, you win.
All this program does is make it easy for a legitimate user to shift it into other formats for their own use. They don't want you to do that. They want you to pay for the CD, the AAC/MP3, and any other format you want to use. In all honesty, they want you to pay for each time you listen to it, but they've not figured out how to do that without drawing too much attention to their damn greed.
If anyone needs a break, it's me- I'm tired of hearing about piracy when it's not about friggin' piracy. Get it in your head about that. They lose FAR more to real IP pirates in Asia where they crank it out by the tons in spite of the protections these jokers keep adding. Why in the hell don't they go shut those SOB's down first? It's because the "public" is an easier target and provides for nice, nifty laws bought with their money that give them all the advantages and the consumers nothing in return.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
How about burning Macs/iPods/etc that I don't own? A lot cheaper that way. Besides, I couldn't afford an iPod even if I wanted one
That no matter how good/bad the encryption mechanism is, people can't break it.
If I published software that "encrypted" an audio stream by reversing the bits, and someone figured it out or wrote software to get rid of my "encryption" scheme, then I could just start a legal battle against all those who try to publish against me?
This is a wild, unpredictable, capitalistic world, not a pre-school.
Practically everything I own, the hard drives, the IPAQ, the Zen, the car, the thumbdrive, the DVD player, everything can be completely taken apart and circumvented in some way shape or form. Nothing besides fear of me breaking it is preventing me from tearing apart my Nomad Zen and bypassing their firmware chip and using my own home made one.
So in all seriousness how far can the DMCA actually extend? If I use a screwdriver to open my zen and do that, is Craftsman liable under the DMCA for providing me with circumvention tools? Most everything we interact with has some digital component that COULD potentially fall under some subclause or subsection of the DMCA as it is written.
So what is the furthest that it has gone? How far can it go? And how far will it go before we realize what we've done?
Why are you talking about money? What do $50 games have to do with anything? Why so much punctuation? I'm all questions today :)
Consider this.
Apple's 128kbps AAC's quality is very good, about the same as a 192kbps mp3. You can burn AAC to CD - that's allowed by the iTunes DRM scheme with no problems.
The AAC -> CD data conversion has no quality loss associated with it. The data, on the CD, is sonically identical to how you bought it from Apple.
If people rip commercial CDs to OGG (or any other format) without complaining about quality loss, I don't see how it's anything but hypocrisy to say that converting from AAC -> CD -> OGG/whatever is some kind of huge hindrance to their fair use. There's only one loss of quality, which is tiny, in that chain of events, and it happens EVERYWHERE else you convert CD data to a compressed music format.
Where is this mysterious and show-stopping quality loss happening?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Huh? The policy linked to speaks of copyright violation. Was the code stolen? If not, I fail to see the reasoning.
It simply allowed fair use- it couldn't be used to unlock songs you didn't already own, right?
What about programs which are almost exclusively used for illegal activity, ie, copyright infringement? Like, say, emule? Or BitTorrent? Or any of dozens of gnutella clones? None of which require you to own a copy of anything?
One can argue that all these p2p clients CAN be used for perfectly legal purposes. The same argument applies to PlayFair, if not more so because it required ownership in the first place.
Please help metamoderate.
I'd like to think that Apple is doing this reluctantly, but they've used the threat of litigation against individuals and small organizations too many times in the past to give them the benefit of the doubt. They're like a smaller version of Microsoft--just as evil, but with style and with better PR.
It's a great day to be an advocate of freedom.
First, the report that MS is dropping several failed, controversial features from turdhorn...thus displaying their fundamentally flawed model of marketing before design, rather than actually helping people with products and features they want.
Second, Crapple is exposed as the wicked runts that a lot of people have suspected they really are...by shattering the image that they, in any way, shape or form, support the fair use provisions of US copyright law.
Yes! The free software model is proven superior whenever this crap flows.
Apple is mearly defending there copy protection mechinism(sp), most likly a requirment in the sea of contracts that Apple has with the RIAA and its affiliats, though I do not agree with using the C&D with the DMCA instead of a normal C&D. You must remember that Apples DRM is is the most liberal out there, allowing you to burn multiple CD's (which can still be ripped into MP3's) and transfer AAC Files to a back up and restore.
I don't see this as any type of strong arm tactic by Apple to "put the little guy down" just protecting an updated bussiness model. Without ITMS no more iPod sales, which means no more street muggings (maybe this is a good dthing after all)
Ahh.. The mind what a wonderful trap!
Apple's DRM allows you to burn your tracks to a CD and rip them back to any format you want. Oh, I'm sorry, is that too much of an inconvenience for some of you? Or is it that $0.50 for a CD-R is too much out of your budget?
The RIAA and MPAA use things like this to boost their campaign for more control. You stupid fucks out there supporting these developers are the ones who are making the case for legislation like th CBDTPA and DMCA.
Apple has been working hard to make fair use online distribution possible at a reasonable price then these guys come along and work hard to undo all of that so that they can do.... what exactly? You can already change the AACs to MP3s with a good CD ripper. What do you need this app for, besides sharing the tracks with every friend and family member you have plus on Kazaa?
When the feds mandate Palladium and the CBDTPA, you people will only have yourselves to blame because you're making it hard for companies like Apple to create a market-oriented alternative that protects your rights. Maybe if you dumbasses would get away from your Linux boxen and hacked XBoxes long enough to study politics and causality you'd understand why supporting this is so stupid.
I say good riddance to this project.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Who made the new Apple trojan that attaches to MP3s? And why have the M.A.C. Fanbois here at slashbot not put an article on that? Oh that's right, because it is not an attack on microsoft.
"All one has to do to "unprotect" the files is have a player that unlocks them and a high-fidelity digitizer (you know, something like an Audigy card or pod...) to record it with. "
Haha, oh sorry, I wouldn't call the Audigy line "high-fidelity". Maybe "good enough", but not "high".
"Now that Apple has publicly sided against freedom"
Since when is Apple protecting their and others' copywrited works that they DID NOT RELEASE AS FREE (as in speech) SOFTWARE siding against freedom?
Maybe you can explain that, as I don't understand.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Good thing you posted as AC. There's nothing more hazardous to one's karma than to dare to criticize Apple here.
besides.. its already out..so gone from sourceforge or no.. its out and its not going away .. I got it and I know heaps of other ppl who got it too..
I can't wait to read all the apologist crap that's about to be posted here. Let the McFanboy fest begin.
Being free (as in beer or as in speech) doesn't exclude you from being prosecuted if breaking the law. Don't like DMCA? Go lobby your congressman.
If Apple didn't go and prosecute and strong-arm the "little guys" that illegaly (see above) damage its business, it would be a stupid move and be perceived in future lawsuits as "having no interest in protecting its trademarks, etc.".
Apple is only protecting its interests, damaged by people that are acting against the law... how exactly is that "behaving like Microsoft"? I would call that "behaving smartly".
<sarcasm> If some "little guy" mugs you in the street or strips your house bare, it should be your duty to report to the police, however futile. Poverty in the world? Go lobby your congressman. </sarcasm>
Looks like you might be able to still donate to this project here. Could help them cover some court fees?
doubleacr writes "MacSlash is reporting that PlayFair has been removed from SourceForge.net. Didn't see that one coming." He has to be the only dude on earth that didnt see it comming... It was pretty obvious...
It will come back to haunt you until you die. It's immortal. You are not.
:-)
"So raise the scarlet standard high,
Beneath its folds we'll live and die.
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We keep the red flag flying here!"
Eat flaming death, capitalist pigs...!
I would never use this because of that fact. I bought my music at iTunes because the agreement is reasonable to me. I have burnt my songs to CD to play in my vehicle, and I have copies on my laptop and iPod. I'm satisfied, that my needs were met. If this is unreasonble to you, don't buy it. The people who use this software are trying to change the agreement after the fact, to suit them. Personally I think the price is about $0.49 too high, but the DRM restrictions are in no way unreasonable to me. If I thought otherwise, my money would go elesewhere.
I fully expect this to be struck down in the same way action against DeCSS was struck down. PlayFair only allows those who have already legally purchased the music to remove the DRM protections - something that was already possible with burning and re-ripping.
Apple is no friend of DRM, but you can bet they are going to do what is necessary to maintain their relationship with the music labels, particularly in light of the labels trying to raise prices and increase restrictions.
The end result of this is moot. Some will say the cat's out of the bag, the genie's out of the bottle, etc, but that's not the case. The cat was never in the bag - this could always be accomplished by a simple burn/rip cycle.
(And before people point out that this doesn't require lossy recompression, seriously consider how many people will leave the file in AAC format, rather than transcode it to the ever-popular MP3.)
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Huh - weird, I thought Sourceforge was related to Free/Open Source software. Odd how relevant that the DMCA is to this goal.
Sounds like free and Open Source world requires a better domicile which is unaffected by parochial considerations. Maybe time that the EU or UN hosted software for and on behalf of the free world.
Its a serious consideration as the US seems to be cyclical based on presidential terms whereas the EU or UN has no such short term considerations to trample rights.
Apple should realise that the only way to protect youself from Open Source is to adopt a strong cryptographically signed service. There is no intrinsic value is any line of code but in code as a service. Sounds like lazy programmer bugs fixed by application of lawyer.
Call me a McFanboy if you want, but do you really think that Apple wouldn't be sued out of existance by the RIAA for aiding piracy? They have to protect themselves by making at least token effort to stop it.
You seem to think that fair use means you can download stuff for free despite the wishes of the copyright holder. That is completely untrue! Fair use is a set of rights which are granted to you despite copyright restrictions. They include the ability to quote, criticize, study, and parody works with or without a license, and to make a backup copy, personal copies, time-shift, and format-shift if you do have a license. It's obvious that PlayFair can be used for many of those purposes.
What makes you say that free downloads are fair use but PlayFair can't be used for fair use? That seems completely backwards, and contradictory, to me.
They basically broke the law, it doesnt matter if the law is total crack induced bullshit invented by fuckwhits while they did their morning shit and had a smoke, its still the law, and unless you want to arm bears and rise up against the US government (which is supposed to be your right or something) then you just gotta get your DMCA violating source code from an off-shore ISP or get sourceforge to relocate.
Or you could take the government to court for violation of the bill of rights? or even better create a new encryption protocal which is trivial to break and start sending 'spoof' terriost type messages around the net with various automated scripts until the feds crack it, then take the fbi to court. Didnt kazaa try and sue the RIAA for violating their network?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Publicly burn any Apple hardware you own Mac/Ipod/etc. Try to do this en masse, and call your local news station.
I hereby volunteer to be the organizer for a massive event of apple destruction. Please send any Apple hardware (and accessories... don't forget accessories) to me and I will personally supervise its elimination.
"I don't need an excuse. I am the almighty consumer, and I will continue doing whatever is easiest/cheapest to get what I want. This is the way it has always been, and the way it will always be. "
Which is why we have towns devastated by Walmart, and outsourcing to the cheapest nation. One of these days the "almighty consumer" is going to learn some kind of restraint, or pay the true price for their actions, and that my friend will always be true.
This "crack" would not have cost Apple one cent (okay 99) in lost downloads.
So someone could distribute high quality AAC files stripped of DRM. So what? There are already plenty of high-quality mp3, ogg and various other audio format rips of cds on p2p. There are also tons of fakes, radio rips, decoys, trojans, and just plain crappy rips floating on these networks as well. There is nothing stopping anyone from taking a fake or crappy mp3 rip and re-encoding it as aac and distributing it via p2p.
The people that shop at itunes are not going to stop because there are now some additional aac files available on p2p. People that shop iTunes do so because of the user experience. You know you will get a fast, high quality download from iTunes. You can't be sure with P2P until you've downed the file and listened to the whole thing.
On the other hand, increasing the price of downloads and/or forced bundling will cause iTunes sales to drop.
This is a really interesting comment. You're drawing a comparison between the people who wrote the GPL and the people who wrote the iTMS contract, which is not something I've seen before.
But it makes sense. Whether you're drawing a contract to protect intellectual property or protect *distribution* of intellectual property, in either case you are deliberately writing a contract that protects some actions and prohibits other actions.
The GPL was developed based on the notion that software is essentially a form of speech, and so should be free. In order to protect this freedom, the GPL dictates that modifications to GPLed software must also be made under the GPL.
The iTMS contract was developed based on the notion that in order for digital music to prosper, there must be limits on how widely a given purchased download can be distributed, so that the music's copyright holders can make a return on their investment. Without the profit motive for the copyright holders, the music won't be put on the iTMS, and Apple won't be making money.
In both cases, restrictions are placed in the license to further the end goal. Attempts to circumvent the license by definition negate the end goal. If the GPL were repeatedly circumvented, the *implementation* of Free Software would be crippled as well. The same is true of the iTMS.
You can't expect that if you change the rules of the game so you can enjoy benefits beyond those you agreed to at the time of purchase, Apple is somehow going to continue to provide the very tools that you hacked. This is quite similar to what would happen if Microsoft took all of the GNU tools, changed them slightly, and released their own Free Windows OS. Everyone on Slashdot would be crying bloody murder, because the value of GPLed software would be denigrated by Microsoft's circumventing of the GPL contract.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
pathetic. i knew va was evil but thats nugz.
"Maybe you can explain that, as I don't understand.
Certainly.
It iss an assault on freedom. I support good access control - access control that is strong enough to prevent reverse engineering. This is how security works. What I cannot support is organizations like the MPAA, RIAA and Apple using a bad law to suppress the speech of programmers. Source code is free speech! Where have you been all these years?
I am very sorry for the MPAA and Apple that they hired incompetents to write their access control mechanisms. However when you start banning speech, where does one draw the line? I'm sure we will soon have a PlayFair T-shirt at ThinkGeek, and Apple will have to start having wearers of the T-shirt arrested, much like the MPAA.
It is a very simple assault on freedom that fortuneately is illegal in the countries like Germany where reverse engineering is legal - and where this software will eventually find a home.
How many of you have been in restaurants and bars where is costs between fifty cents and a dollar to play a song on a jukebox? If everyone who wanted to hear "Freebird" whipped out a crowbar to (w)hack the machine, it would be insane. Parents would stop taking their little kids to Pizza Hut and shopkeepers would become outraged at the lawlessness.
For 99 cents a song, people need to grow up. For the price of a spin of a jukebox you get to take the music with you. What was it my dad used to say, if you want to dance, you have to pay the piper? Damn straight.
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
Should a site really have slash in its name if it can't stand a little bit of dotting?
Say no to software patents.
I see all these people bitching about how PlayFair lets you steal music. (It doesn't.)
And then I see all these people modded up, and none of the replies modded up.
*sigh*
By your standing by and doing nothing other than bellyaching (do you even know who your reps/MPs are?), you are ruining it for everybody.
Yeah, right.
I honestly don't know, but I would imagine that Apple is concerned about this not because they want to make sure everything stays locked up for the sake of being locked up, but probably because they don't want the RIAA to yank their licenses and cause all of the iTMS to come crashing down.
Sure, you can make all the standard black helicopter and tinfoil hat jokes, but I really don't see how Apple would care about this, save the ramifications for keeping an amicable relationship with the RIAA pigopolists
So they are acting as a proxy for the pigopolists. That is at least as bad, if not worse than being a pigopolist in the first place -- aiding and abetting the enemy as it were.
If you don't like the licensing terms, don't purchase the music under those terms! The choice is all yours!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
"Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can ever imagine."
I guess it seems to me that this program is most important as a proof of concept, as it shows some of the flaws inherent in DRM thinking. I would never use it spread files myself, but such things need to keep popping up to remind media companies of the futility of what they're trying to foist on those of us who just want the right to listen to the music we purchase without arbitrary restrictions.
Full copy of the CVS root:
- cv sroot.tar.bz2
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/playfair
Will be gone tomorrow, so be quick.
Hosted on a server in a country that doesn't believe in stupid IP laws. Move the projects there.
But that wasn't the point. I'm not whining about what Apple is doing.
Should the project managers file a counterclaim, the project could be restored.
Uhh, I doubt it. This is about the most clear-cut case of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions applying you could get. The only way this could be declared unworkable is if the DMCA was struck down. Given, striking down the DMCA is only a matter of time, and it needs to happen. But if you're trying to find an optimal case on which to challenge the DMCA, this certainly isn't it.
The EFF failed to challenge their lower-court losses over DeCSS because they believed they would not have a higher court's sympathy when defending a group named "2600.com", and they needed to wait for a more opportune small case that could be used to set precedent. I'm not so sure this was a good idea. But in any case, this would be even worse.
With DeCSS, there was at least overwhelming public sympathy, and the intent of the opposition was clear; you were fighting the DVD consortium and MPAA directly, and they were clearly moneygrubbing oligopolists trying to price-fix between countries and take rights consumers had had for years (like copying vhs tapes) and remove them through a law they personally bought. Whereas Apple has created something new, and is giving their users at least a modicum of ability to exercise fair use. The application of the DMCA is still unjust, and DRM is still an idiotic concept, but framing Apple as a villan in this would be really difficult, especially when far more clear abuses of the DMCA are still going on.
I do wonder, though, why the EFF seems totally disinterested in challenging the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions. It seemed like DVDxCopy made a great test case, and the bullshit with the lexmark print drivers made an even better one. Have they just given up?
(P.S.: If I am not mistaken, isn't this the first time Apple has ever invoked the DMCA? There was that one time that someone was doing something wierd involving allowing iDVD to work on a different OS version, and Apple asked them to stop, and they did and went and complained to the press and made some cryptic comments about the DMCA, yet from what was seen of apple legal's correspondence with them there didn't actually appear to be any DMCA invocation. Hm.. oh well.)
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I submitted this story last night when I found that the project got pulled (like 1930 EST), but at the time it had not been re-upped anywhere. I quickly URL searched a mirror for links and grabbed the 0.3 tarball and the compiled Mac OSX dmg GUI version.
:)
I'd be glad to give this to someone with a mirror. I won't host this for a slashdotting
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
"But the barrier to a real "market oriented alternative" is the RIAA members' oligopoly on distribution which would prevent the sale of lossless, non-restricted tracks."
So all those people calling for musicians to deliver their music via the Internet are wrong then. Either there's a barrier or there isn't, choose.
hahahaha
And just keep reusing the same disc for conversion?
Apple is just trying to keep the music industry happy, Jobs himself said in a Rolling Stone magazine interview that DRM for music is "not possible". They need to pay lip service to the industry but I think it's fairly clear (no pun intended) that they are advocates of fair use.
The fact that you can burn limitless CDs for your friends of the music you have purchased is proof enough for me.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Apple is so cute. I love my fastest computer in the world. Developers are flocking to Apple !!! I'm going to the next Pixar movie after attending Virginia Tech (who saved money by using Apple) with my shiny new iPod !!!!
I love Steve Jobs !!!!
Read the post you're replying to. For comprehension this time.
Anyone who didn't learn the lesson when W.A.S.T.E. was posted, and taken down the next day, should learn from this to grab the interesting stuff when you hear about it, and not wait until you think you have a use for it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
SourceForge.net is owned by OSDN, the parent company of Slashdot.
Thanks for the info.
Brainwash!
So they are acting as a proxy for the pigopolists. That is at least as bad, if not worse than being a pigopolist in the first place -- aiding and abetting the enemy as it were.
You couldn't tell that from the fact that they sell the "pigopolist's" music openly?
If you don't like the RIAA, the RIAA'a family and anyone who owes the RIAA money then that's your business (and I don't blame you), but don't act like you this is some "big, new surprise" that apple has contracts with these people and they try to follow the requirements of the contracts.
TW
"We are allowing for bad precedents to be set. "
Really? What kind of "bad precedent" is it to not buy something you disagree with?
I'd bet that most AACs at iTunes are ripped from the master instead of from CDs. It's likely that an AAC>CD>OGG rip couldn't be differentiated from a CD>OGG rip by the average person.
I haven't tried it, but it makes sense.
EOM
Point me to that "wider propagation" of the Windows 2000 and NT4 source code. Don't forget to cull out the fakes set by the black helicopter brigade (Cyveillance, BayTSP, et al) to entrap would-be downloaders.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
Apple created a piece of software that doesn't allow people to play the music their paid for on the devices of their choice.
You know how hard it is to format-shift those DRM equipped AAC files in iTunes?
Congrats, you now have a standard audio CD. No DRM, plays in any machine that will play a CD. Feel free to rip it to MP3, OGG or anything else.
All PlayFair saves is $0.25 on a blank CD and about 5 minutes. If that's a serious problem for you, perhaps you should buy something else.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I didn't think I had a problem with the DRM either. Well I don't BUT...
At work they recently firewalled off the connection to iTMS so I can't auth my work PC to play my own purchased m4p files. Using playfair I was able to convert them to m4a, post them to a website of my own and then I can play them from any web browser.
I have no interest in sharing the files except with myself. I paid my 99 cents each, if you want them you can do the same. But I found myself being a hypocrite on the matter. I SAY that I support thier DRM, but I found a reason that made me want to circumvent it, damn network admins!
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
While the DMCA is a horrible piece of legislation, a business would not be doing their shareholders a favor if they didn't use it to protect their business.
Yes, because being an etical company and doing the right thing for their customers is nothing Apple is up to. This isn't the first or second time Apple pulls up the DMCA. They think the law is great. Boycott them.
Additional mirror: http://evilpen.net/playfair.tgz
Be kind, my upstream is only 768k...
[reposted 'coz im an idiot and didn't make it clear what my post was the first time]
The MPAA tries to use the DMCA to suppress source code as free speech, spawns a million Slashdot stories and a T-shirt, and the concept of the "digital crowbar" is born. They're suppressing fair use! We can't excerpt or time-shift!
Apple tries to use the DMCA to suppress source code as free speech, a million Slashdot users get in line to support their right to do it because hey, "They're Apple!!".
Maybe Jack Valenti was right after all - it's all about who you know.
Now get in line and drink the cool-aid.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
Oh, fuck off.
Why, when Apple does something like this, do all you slashbots rush to defend them?
First the story yesterday about jacking the prices, now this.
They are a corporation. They are protecting their bottom line. They exist to make money for their shareholders.
They LOBBIED for the DMCA with the rest of 'em, they stand to profit from it just like the RIAA and MPAA members.
The only difference between Apple and MSFT is that Apple failed to capture it's monopoly.
Why is iTunes a US only service? Because the DMCA only exists in the US.
I dont' mind this kind of outsourcing. The man comes to kick you ass, you move the files to India.
So, can anyone tell me why it is that it's "fair use" for "us" to disregard a companies copyrights but it's not okay for a company to disregard our copyrights?
Did I miss a memo or what?
Or are we all just a bunch of hypocrites?
Like China or Asia.
Having read "This Business of Music" Revised and expanded 8th edition By Krasilovski and Shemel, I feel I am qualified to set the record straight on copyright law. As the Law stands, (or stood at the time of the book's publising) all people involved in the creation of a work, be it a book, speech, Musical score, or recording, or Video content such as TV and Film, have equal rights as anyone else invloved in the production. In the case of the band I am with, I have equal rights to the copyright and any royalties, even though I am not a "Musician" (I am the Recording engineer, and I insure that levels are good, and without my contribution the recordings would sound lousy.) If, on the other hand, I was working at a professional studio, all clients (Bands and individual artists) would sign a contrack that establishes the studio as a contractor on a "Work for Hire" basis, and therefore, by default hold no power over the copyright, except anything explicitly spelled out in the contract. A common clause of this nature gives all employees of the studio who work directly for the band, (All the people in the control room) the right to use excerpts of the band's songs as a Demo Reel, or in promoting the studio as a whole. the point of the above was that "Record Labels" make musicians who are "Signed" give up full copyright control over their existing body of work, to the "Label" Lastly, Failure to take action against a known infringer is tantamount, according to the letter of the law, to willfully allowing the work to fall into the public domain. The ultimate point is this: The Judicial system needs to work out who holds the trump card. The Users: In other words "Fair Use is the trump that overrides all else" The DMCA: DMCA makes it illegal to break the DRM, and that is the end of it. Apple: The iTMS EULA is the trump and everything, even fair use must be carried out in accordance with the EULA and its DRM protections
That no matter how good/bad the encryption mechanism is, people can't break it.
I actually have no idea what you wrote because you used an encryption mechanism when posting, apparently encoding text as a sequence of bits, with certain groups of 7 representing individual characters. That's a total guess, based on my using a similar technique to encrypt my own text. I cannot be sure, of course, because I would be in violation of the DMCA if I were to attempt to decode your protection mechanism to get at the copyrighted material. I trust you'll likewise not break the law by decrypting my reply.
There are several ways to do this.
The simplest is to open the AAC song in iMovie; this converts the song to AIFF and places it in the iMovie Project folder. Another way is to burn the song to a CD-RW which can be recycled. You can also capture the stream when you play it.
Obviously, the iMusic conversion is just a kludge hack that anyone can do. There are programs out there that automate this and dont require the services of iMovie to do it. Its a quicktime feature being used. The fact that you can do it with iMovie just demostrates the point.
this time I don't think the problem it's the RIAA.
iTunes does not make any money
Apple earns money from selling the hardware (iPod e c.)
So they can never let to play their songs withouth their buying anything else from them
Additional mirror: http://evilpen.net/playfair.tgz
[voice type="whiny"] i want a take down notice too, c'mon, please? [/voice]
Got plenty of upstream left...
that is easy for you to say...lets see you put your money where your mouth is and host the project for them. then we will see whos ass get's hauled into court when apple/RIAA come around with their thugs/lawyers
A large part of what you're paying for when you buy songs from the iTMS is the payoff Apple has to give to the music industry just so they'll allow Apple to use such lax DRM.
I think that with any music I purchase online, I should be able to make multiple copies on multiple computers, my iPod, and so on. In a perfect world I'd be able to do that right now.
But realistically, what I'm paying for when I buy songs from the iTMS is convenience. I can find songs I want, listen to clips of songs I haven't heard, and satisfy my craving for some long-forgotten song in a matter of moments. I don't have to get in my car, drive to the store, and buy a full album just to hear the one song I actually want.
So the iTMS is giving me a totally new option. I'm paying for the convenience of a new shopping experience. Because I'm able to buy music in a fashion that suits my individual preferences (I've probably purchased more music from the iTMS in the last six months than I did at music stores in the last six years), I'm willing to make a compromise with Apple: You make it ludicrously easy for me to obtain, organize and manage my music, and I'll forgo full fair use in favor of limited DRM.
People who say that digital music shouldn't have DRM are right. But I'd argue that in this case, the medium truly is the message. Apple has come up with the first truly viable means of legally purchasing music online. When I started using the iTMS it radically changed my music purchasing and listening habits. So I ask myself, how is Apple screwing me?
In particular, how is Apple screwing me when I agreed to the terms of the contract, which are based on the fact that online distribution is quite different than physical distribution of music?
People talk about the music industry being unwilling to change, but at the same time they want more benefits from digital music without being willing to compromise in the slightest.
It sounds like a triumph of ideology over practicality to me.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
No, it's not fair use. When you buy music from Apple you are buying it under a specific contract and by buying it you are accepting the terms of that contract which limits the use of the music. Don't like the terms, don't get it from Apple.
...they're not using contract law, but copyright law. It's amazing how mucb smoke and mirrors you can make with those two laws, just look at SCO which is FUDing about copyright, but using contract law.
Fair use exists in context of copyright law, so it is very much so relevant. Sure, we can take the discussion of whether this is allowed under Apple's contract terms (where fair use doesn't apply), but that's not what Apple is doing, so does it matter?
Also, you seem to miss an important difference between the GPL vs EULA. I can break an EULA without breaking any law (only a contract), while you can not break the GPL without breaking copyright law, since the GPL only grants rights above and beyond the default.
An EULA that forbids changing formats for interoperability with other players is likely to decleared null and void, that's why the content industry bought the DMCA. Even the DMCA "allows" this, except it's impossible to do that without violating every other paragraph (sure, you can do interoperability, but any tools or information to do that is illegal... right)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The GPL only grants additional rights, it doesn't take any away. You are free to refuse the license, yet still use the software as allowed by copyright law.
Your analogy is also flawed in that you would be profiting by selling the commercial software with GPL code in it, and it would be an act of plagurism. This is not saying "I wrote this.", it's just saying "I bought this and I'll listen to it however I please."
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Okay Mr hair splitter. Were only doing the transcoding once. Were not repeating this ad infinitum. The AIFF derived from the AAC sounds excellent, recoding it one time to MP3/192 is not going to be noticable to any practical listener. What is your point in splitting hairs?
The parent has a good point. Apple should have looked at the example set by deCSS.
/. article alone. And more are coming. And no doubt that work on PlayFair will continue, with much-increased enthusiasm once it is hosted somewhere outside US borders.
Before the MPAA started harassing "DVD-Jon" and DMCA-ing everyone who so much as mentioned the name deCSS in public; only a small handful of linux nerds had even heard of the thing, much less built and compiled it into media players for their own machines. No big deal. It was just a toy for extreme hobbyists.
After the MPAA tried to take deCSS out, every self-righteous geek on the 'net made sure to get a copy. And many of them made it their mission to spread it further, and more mirrors than I could guess popped up. Somewhere *I* still have a copy of deCSS embedded into a webpage banner in some way that I don't even remember how to extract it.
So what was PlayFair before Apple DMCA'd sourceforge? Another cute toy that was only of any use to someone who had already BOUGHT the song from ITMS in the first place. It's not like anybody hacked a backdoor into ITMS itself and made the entire library free to the 'net. Now, there are half a dozen mirrors in this
It reminds me of a Douglas Adams quote.... about how while humans are unique in being the only species capable of learning from the mistakes of others, we are remarkably disinclined to actually do so.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
I'd like to get your dealer's number, because you are smoking some fine drugs. Apple sent sourceforge a complaint. It pretty much said "You are violating the DMCA, if you continue to do so, we will sue you." So SF took the project down instead of risking getting sued. You are right about one thing, SF is afraid of Apple. Of course they're afraid of Apple! Apple just sent them a cease-and-desist letter threatening legal action, not an easter basket.
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
Many people very rarely actually listen to CDs. I listen to hours of music every day as I work, but I don't want to continually change CDs every hour. I also like a lot of variation in my music, so one CD at a time is no good. I use Winamp or XMMS to play my whole library. I don't much like iTunes as a player as I'm used to winamp and have global shorcut keys and I know winamp won't hog my memory and spy on me (not saying that iTunes is spyware or bloatware... I haven't checked.)
To do this I've burned CDs purchased from iTunes to CD then ripped to ogg. I, of course lose quality in the encoding process. I would love to have a tool to allow me to play these files in the player of my choosing without having to encode the files again.)
Really, I don't see what the big deal is... if you can burn to CD then rip, you can share the ripped files without any problem... And if you are a *yuck* Kazaa user, you probably won't care about the negligible loss of quality.
-Derick
No, it's not fair use.
Yes it is. See below.
When you buy music from Apple you are buying it under a specific contract and by buying it you are accepting the terms of that contract which limits the use of the music. Don't like the terms, don't get it from Apple.
Flip this around and imagine that I decide to circumvent the GPL by taking a piece of GPL software and using its source in piece of closed source commercial software. Wouldn't like that now, would you?
Neither Apple's contract nor the GPL trumps Fair Use. Copyright doesn't prevent doing what you want with your own copy within certain limits. Copyright doesn't prevent proprietary software vendors from incorporating parts of GPLed software in proprietary products, again withing certain limits.
In the case of music, the limits allow making format change copies for personal use and giving away or selling the original if you don't keep a copy - but prohibit giving away or selling clones (or the original but keeping a clone), giving public performances, or doing a "cover" version in violation of the license terms.
In the case of GPLed software the limits allow small snippets of code to be incorporated or the functionality to be replicated with newly-written code, but prohibit copying of substantial sections, wholesale distribution, or straightforward translation, in violation of the license terms.
DMCA is a whole new can of worms, creating a catch-22 to block the exercise of fair use rights. This will eventually get shaken out in the courts, one way or another. But don't hold your breath waiting for that. It might take decades, or generations.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I do believe evidence (even if obtained through illegal means) is in fact admissible provided it was not obtained by a "agent" of law enforcement. (Where "agent" is either a officer of the law or someone who has been asked (however idirectly) by law enforcement to obtain said evidence).
That does not mean that the person who obtained the evidence illegally is not going to be charged with the illegal activity through which the evidence was obtained.
That's my understanding of it, anyway.
HAND.
I told you so....
I keep hearing Comparisons between Fairplay and Decss yes they lost the court case but won the war,
so bascially it was a cerimonial ruling that nobody gave a shit about at best.
Will fair play be struck down too? sure but who cares once its on the net WE WIN. it'll probably spawn a few better rippers kind of like how Decss evolved into much nicer apps decryter smartripper and libcss variants
just ask Direct tv and dish network how well their little DMCA song n dance has been going
Not.
Ave Molech Setting
"... Jobs is quoted as saying the his PHds said you can't make a DRM that stops piracy completely.
Which is presumably why Apple employs Phds to 1) devise new forms of DRM
and 2) head the Copy Protection Technology Working Group with Sony and Warner Brothers.
They look as snug as three bugs in a rug.
ed2k://|file|playfair.tgz|458151|7c4853428a9e1e870 34038ec3c9fe060|
as usual without the slashcode-inserted spaces...
Now what am I going to do with my army of gun toting bears? Back to picnic baskets I guess...
Opensource is a beatiful thing. why not spend the time writing programs that do "Good." Like something that will cure AIDS, or make traffic light more efficient, or a real time translator for the web.
I don't see how hacking a program, just to steal music will help the opensourse community. Yeah, you are cool for writing a program like this, pat yourself on the back. I don't know who wrote the program, but I bet it's another kid in Sweden. I mean, some person at Apple spend a lot of time way from there family, working weekend, for little pay, to make this "iTunes" work. It's getting to the point where no one will want to invent a cool program because someone is goning to hack it, for little or no real purpose but to do, which is cool, in some sort of 16yr. old way.
You dumb fuck there was an article about it yesterday. And it's actually only a proof of concept that shows that if you have an executable that looks like a document and people click on it, bad things can happen.
Whoopdee-fucking do.
update your .sig.
Bugmenot
+&x
Apple has not come close to proving that a law has been broken [...]
I can only conclude that OSDN are either lazy, scared of Apple, or have interests in Apple.
I conclude something else.
SourceForge is a major resource for FOSS, serving as the project host and canonical version maintainence site for a large number of projects.
Fighting for this particular one, winning, and establishing a precedent, might be useful. But it would be DAMED expensive, and DAMNED risky. A loss - or even an expensive win - would take out the resource.
And fighting it is not NECESSARY. Because the project is already multiply mirrored (no doubt by a large number of people who realized this would be coming as soon as the project was announced) and officially rehosted at one of those mirrors, beyond the direct reach of US law.
The secret to winning a war is to fight it on your own terms. RIAA and its cronies are like a small herd of elephants. FOSS is more like a prarie-dog colony - or perhaps several hives of army ants. One side has great strength, the other great numbers and diversity but little strength in any one place. How should the diverse side fight this battle? One-on-one fight? Or "whack-a-mole"?
"The Colonists win the toss. The British have to wear red uniforms and stand in rows. The Colonists get to wear brown and green and shoot from behind trees and rocks."
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Actually I think I'll just carry on using their products. But all you cheapskate Linux users can go ahead and not buy the Apple products that you were never going to buy in the first place.
I'm sure the board is quaking at the thought of it as we speak.
It might have been a contractual requirement as part of the distribution deal. I agree, it's hard to see how Apple has a dog in this fight otherwise.
Besides, what's to stop someone from patching their iPod earphone output into an adapter and running it into the recording device of their choosing? Or mounting my matched Schoeps in front of the studio monitors? Or have they solved that problem? And did they solve in such a way that a signal pre-processor couldn't strip out the analog signature?
They can't win this battle and they're dead anyway. Artists don't need record companies to succeed anymore. They can sell their music online, direct to consumers and...*gasp*...make money off record sales.
It makes me sad to think of all those poor record company execs who are losing their cocaine, limos, private jets and porn star girlfriends. What will they do? How will they get by without the beach house in Malibu? I'm starting to tear up a little just thinking about it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Your post went right to the heart of the matter, and the Groklaw article clarified several things for me.
Something tells me it's going to be a while before this is all hashed out, because there's so much money at stake and so much ideology driving the conflict. Anyway, I appreciate your well-reasoned response to my post.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
...if you want to dance, you will dance the way the piper tells you to. No Linux or FreeBSD dancing allowed.
You could buy your car only from an authorized dealer, and only online... but it would be delivered to you in 23 seconds and placed in your garage.
You could drive your car anywhere you wanted, so long as you only park it in authorized spaces. Those who do not park in an authorized space will be immediately crushed and sold for scrap during your incarceration.
You may drive your car anytime you want, so long as you gain permission from an authorized Apple Car Dealer first. Once permission has been granted, your car will be unlocked and started for you. Any attempt to unlock or start your car without prior authorization will result in your car exploding.
You are the only authorized driver of the car. Any attempt to "share" the car with another passenger or driver will result in your immediate incarceration.
All cars would only have 3 seats.
The Code Ninja is swift with his tool, precise in his delivery, and deadly accurate in his execution.
How is PlayFair different from DeCSS?
They're close.
But DeCSS got leaked when it was still a stand-alone module developed within a windows application. This weakened the argument that the purpose was to generate a Linux player. (It was, and this was a convenient intermediate step, but it still weakened the argument.)
PlayFair is a complete application which refuses to operate unless you have the appropriate license for playing the content, and only performs conversions that all aid recognized fair use. Since it's open-source its guts COULD be ripped up and rehacked into a pirate tool. But as distributed the functionality is strictly within the bounds protected both by copyright law AND the DMCA.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How do you know the original program wasn't written by the MPAA? Along with stripping out the fairplay it sends your name, address and bank accounts to the MPAA so they can sue you.
That $0.99 song just cost you $5,000.00
It's funny (funny ironic, not funny ha ha) that when I've said the same thing about Apple being a mini-Microsoft with a better gui, but just as evil, in the past on Slashdot, it's been modded troll.
Hm, enough about me.
To the jackass who said Apple would not be doing their shareholders a favor if they didn't "protect" their property using the DMCA, jackass, you miss the point. The DMCA is a miserable piece of legislation, and if we are to respect and financially support any company, it would be for standing against the DMCA, and working out any problems directly, in a more civil manner, with the Playfair author.
But, if Apple (and this applies to Adobe too) was truly interested in "protecting" what is theirs, they'd implement their ideas in a more unbreakable fashion. Maybe, a better quality product will draw more real customers to the Apple camp. I was on the verge of buying my first Mac because of OSX, but you know, it's hard to financially support a company that does this kind of shit.
When the DMCA gets repealed, what are you going to do Apple? Hire thugs instead to find software authors, and deal with it that way??
While viewing the page for this article, I spotted a clear example of "wrong behavior". So, under Safari's "Safari" menu, I clicked on "Report bugs to Apple", and selected from the pull-down menu "Wrong behavior," with a calm explanation that the DMCA is unconstitutional and therefore should only be attacked in court, not supported.
I would encourage anyone out there with a Mac to do the same.
Everything about Apple says pretty but not free. So let the lesson be learn't that just because something looks good doesn't mean that it is. Apple Inc should really be called Poison Apple.
They're like that pretty girlfriend who suckers you in hook, line, and sinker - and you let her get away with it or don't pay attention because she is sooooo pretty. Next thing you know, you have no money, no pretty girlfriend, and one big agonizing heartache that you never really get over.
Please pal, I know you won't listen to me till it's too late, I know you're beyond hope, I know you can't help it, probably can't even muster up the will-power, you may even get mad at me. But if you know what's good for you, you would dump her hard before it's too late and never look back.
Look, how about I set you up with that penguin gal - I know she's not as pretty, but I promise you'll really get to like her as time goes on, and most importantly she won't leave you high and dry when you need her the most. She'll stick with you thru thick and thin.
Slashdot creates a new web protocol htttp:// and are using it to reference www.osdn.com. Experts assume this is a another prank similar to the name of the site, which a spoof on web naming conventions.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
I downloaded playfair a couple of days ago. Built it fine, but it doesn't work. It claims to be decrypting my m4p files, but the resulting files are corrupt and crash QuickTime and iTunes. (Yes, I had my iPod docked.)
I'd be a bit more upset about the program getting yanked if it actually did something.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I wonder if corporate america is ever going to figure out that you can't (ever, ever, period) remove something from the Internet....
Burn a bunch of iTunes with copywrite protection. The format on the disc will now be AIFF. Put the new disc back in. Re-rip (Using iTunes, if you like). No more 'FairPlay'. Not that I'd do it, I'm just saying... I have bought songs from iTunes. I was fine with only burning them twice. But because I can't burn with iTunes (No idea why), I was forced to use the Toast Lite that came with the burner. It wasn't until I had put an iTune on about five different mixes that I realized I was (Gasp!) 'circumventing the DMCA'! Of course I quickly microwaved the discs and scattered them at sea. Then I realized I had just dumped toxic waste in the ocean. I quickly wrote a letter to the EPA telling them I was going to have to move my business to another country if they decided to pursue any legal action. Then I sent the Republican Party a check for $2,000. Then I threw a big party at a hotel, got the Bush twins drunk, and took pictures of them taking lines. The moral of the story? Don't cheat, unless you're a good cheater with lots o' dough.
The iTunes DRM'd AAC file is ALREADY degraded, yet is very, very high quality and nearly indistinguishable from a CD copy, even with professional-level biamplified stereo monitors. Double-blind tests have proven this over and over. Same with nearly every other audio compression scheme w/ sufficient bitrate. Today's technology is that good.
If you don't mind Commercial CD -> OGG/MP3, you're surely not going to mind iTMS AAC -> OGG/MP3. It's a matter of logic.
If it's the ORIGINAL loss of quality that you have a huge problem with, then you're barking up the wrong tree. Tell them to distribute uncompressed AIFF and/or CD data.
If not, well, then I don't see what the problem is. iTunes' DRM is perfectly acceptable. It's just there to prevent wholesale copying between anonymous parties.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Let's step out of 1998 people.
But I'd have to say I come down with Apple this time. They've been trying to come up with some sort of way to control copying (The RIAA won't license them all their music otherwise, so as much as Apple probably doesn't want DRM, they've been forced into it) that's acceptable to everyone. You can still un-DRM iTMS songs by burn/rip, and you don't see Apple running around randomly suing .001% of the people who have a CD burner.
But the big difference that I percieve here is that people generally respect Apple, whereas everyone would personally shit on the RIAA given half a chance. On one hand, that might just mean that the RIAA is trying to use Apple as a front that everyone doesn't hate, but I doubt it; The RIAA is doing everything it can to prevent any distribution of music over the Internet. However, it still comes down to a matter of respecting the vender. No one on earth respects the RIAA, therefore no one feels bad when they claim to be hurting from "piracy." However, the person who wrote PlayFair wrote it to only decode legally purchased songs for the purpose of playing them on non-Apple platforms.
For what it's worth, Apple could please all sides without using the DMCA: Release an iTMS player for Linux and Windows. People who simply want to play their music on another platform can now do so, without the need of feeding the RIAA propaganda machine.
Think different? Think like goose-stepping assholes, you mean.
I hope we can make them regret this, in the same way that Adobe and EV1 regretted and apologized for their stupidity. (Not that the good side got much besides press out of either victory.)
The DMCA is a bad law and anyone who invokes it should be made to pay pennance. Until they make good for this, Apple sucks.
And while I'm on the subject, Blizzard sucks too.
Remember thier names and mention them often - make invoking the DMCA the kiss of death for a company.
Seriously, the three computer limit isn't much of a problem. I own more then three computers, and it's very easy to play on more then three. I keep all my purchased music on the powermac, and use iTunes Music Sharing to my other machines. When I connect to the PowerMac, I enter my iTMS username and password, and listen to my heart content. Then why I'm done, I click Advance -> Deauthrize computer. Them I'm done and I can go onto another computer, and stream the music. On my two main machines (the iBook and my PowerMac) I leave them authorized 24/7 so it isn't a problem, and as my iPod doesn't count I have one computer unused. When I will finnally replace either the iBook or PowerMac, I'll deauthorize that computer and authorize another one.
This signature was left intentionally blank.
That's a bit of a leap of logic. If the contract said "and we get your firstborn son", he could have a philosophical objection to that without being against the idea of enforcable contracts. In other words, he objects to the terms of the contract, not the contract itself.
while click throughs are arguable, payment definitely constitutes agreement
Just because he legally agrees doesn't mean he philosophically agrees. Just because he accepts terms he doesn't agree with - terms he can't escape when buying music online - doesn't invalidate his beliefs.
Last post!
" Wow, so posting a link to illegal material is +2, Informative?"
Wow, so posting incorrect legal advice is +1 Funny?
I thought it might be at least +3 stupid.
No really, who said it was illegal?
"Thanks for being a prick and ruining it for everybody"
What is he going to ruin? Your ability to use iTunes? Who cares? You iPod will work with MP3's just fine.
Besides, are you stupid enough to think that the record companies won't sell you stuff because it can be copied?
Again, stupid. They sell CD's every day with *NO PROTECTION AT ALL*.
But you think you got that magic juju from apple and its special and magic and you're holding it tightly like a totem against the bad guys.
People like you should really just take some poison, lie down and stop making other people deal with you.
http://btiteam.bttracker.co.uk/download.php?id=370 &name=playfair-0.2.tar.gz.torrent
Karma: Bizzare (mostly affected by varying internal caffeine levels.)
" Don't like it, don't use it, but SURE AS HELL don't ruin it for people who agree with it and accept it in it's current form because you can't play it on every device you own. "
You seem to have a point here, but its not clear what it is... a little DRM is good, a lot is bad, you're anti-DMCA, but you're going to live with it?
Seriously, you have no point. You just seem to be saying "Well, I don't like DRM, but I really like iTunes, and I hope they still let me use it".
Dude, just relax. iTunes isn't going away. Its the only service that's having an impact. If they screw down DRM too tight smart people will just download it from Kazaa and ignore it.
Why don't you buy CD's... they sound better than iTMS, they're more convenient, they're re-sellable, they have no DRM.
The only think iTMS is getting you is not waiting 48 hours to get your music.
That seems like a bad reason to give up your fair use rights.
But if you're dumb enough to pay $1/crippled song, then I guess you're dumb enough to listen to apple and not strip off the copy protection.
You're a basket case. I wish you wouldn't even own a computer.
But, if Apple (and this applies to Adobe too) was truly interested in "protecting" what is theirs, they'd implement their ideas in a more unbreakable fashion.
Oh, come on! If you understand why the DMCA is so bad, you certainly realize that nothing can be made "unbreakable", and further, that the harder you try to lock something down, the more you invite (and even force) people to try to break it.
Indeed, Apple seemed to have realized this in their DRM implementation, imposing such lax restrictions that fewer people need or want to circumvent it. I doubt it would have taken this long for a tool like this come out if FairPlay were more restrictive. (Barring, for this discussion, the proof-of-concept implementations like DVD Jon's and VLC's undocumented support, neither of which produced a usable file alone.)
I was on the verge of buying my first Mac because of OSX, but you know, it's hard to financially support a company that does this kind of shit.
I suppose you also don't pay taxes to the government that created the DMCA in the first place?
When the DMCA gets repealed, what are you going to do Apple? Hire thugs instead to find software authors, and deal with it that way??
That's rediculous. However fucked up it may be, the DMCA is law, and Apple's has a legal right to do what it's doing. To suggest that their willingness to do something legal (though deplorable to some) means that they'd be equally likely to do something illegal, like hire violent thugs, is misleading hyperbole.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
" At least now I have a choice. Pay less, have a slightly more restrictive license, or pay more and get a physical CD."
Your choice is:
Pay more, get less rights, less quality sound, but get immediate song: iTMS
Pay less, get more rights, get full sonic quality, wait 2-4 days: CD
Check out the price of a CD versus the price of downloading it. I just bought 7 new CD's last night on BMG music for a grand total, shipped, of $49.
That's the equivalent of about $110 worth of iTunes music, not that you can download all the songs.
You're just silly. You think anything new is cool.
...just a useful one.
as you were.
+&x
" After the copyrights lapse on all the music that Apple offers, then you can break the encryption and fuck with the songs all you want"
This is incorrect. It is always illegal to break encryption to get at content, regardless of the underlying copyright.
Welcome to the wacky world of DMCA.
I managed to pull 0.0.1 thinking they were gonna shut it down.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Nothing special or orignal here. I just wanted to express my agreement with your comments. I think they were well written and thought through. It's nice to see that now and again, Thanks
Exactly the point I was trying to make (well, at the end of that comment).
ps - I have a bunny too!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I don't have OSX. Therefore I don't have access to the Quicktime developer tools/libraries. I have a windows box without MSVC, solaris, and linux.
/dev/kmem to pull the decrypted version of the AAC from memory.
So what are my options?
1) Use wine and the QT dlls from windows together with
2) Out to CD and back (not entirely bad, but kinda clumsy)
3) playfair
I like #3. I'm very happy with it. The extant tools are much more clumsy than this simple, direct method.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Burning and reripping is time-consuming and wasteful; the right software can eliminate the waste and some of the time, but even that is flirting with the DMCA. Also, iTMS files represent a minimum acceptable level of quality to some people; settling for 128 Kbps AAC doesn't imply a total lack of standards.
if a government creates a law they can allso remove a law. laws should never be passed to protect the few from the many as long as the few is the ones that are on top of any sort of "food" chain, that just creates a kind of nobility.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
"I honestly don't know, but I would imagine that Apple is concerned about this not because they want to make sure everything stays locked up for the sake of being locked up, but probably because they don't want the RIAA to yank their licenses and cause all of the iTMS to come crashing down."
I think it is worth pointing out that Apple has stated they are in the music download business in order to create a market for iPods. It is definitly not in Apple's interest to allow people to convert DRM'd songs off iTunes to a different choice. Being able to change song format means that iTunes users are no longer locked into iPods for portable listening which is in directly contrary to Apple's stated business model.
So I would think a lot of the pressure to sue is internal to Apple.
-
Download my free songs!
However fucked up it may be, the DMCA is law, and Apple's has a legal right to do what it's doing.
I would like to point out that not only does Apple have a legal right to do this, but as the parent of the parent inferred but did not state explicitly, they have a legal responsibility to the shareholders to do this! The executives of the company can be held legally and financially responsible for not acting in the shareholder's interest if they do not do everything possible to protect their businesses interests.
It's not Apple that's screwed up, it's the (legal|economic) system. Start writing your Congresspeople and helping the campaigns of those who would improve the system.
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
If I am ok with the fact that I can play purchased music on three computers and an iPod, rather than on four, or five, or ten, is that equivalent to acquiescing to a police state?
I'm also puzzled by your comment about technology. You think it should go to ordinary citizens, not to Apple or Jack Valenti. Agreed. Apple created iTunes and I use it. Anyone can use it. If you don't want to use it, rip your own CDs and use whatever filesharing mechanism you want to listen to your music in your house, your car, your basement, your tent, etc. Nobody is stopping you from doing that.
But if Apple developed and deployed the technology of iTunes and spend a lot of time and a lot of money to do so, are you saying that they shouldn't be allowed to set a price for the service? How does Apple make money? If they don't make money, how do they provide the service?
If they don't provide the service, perhaps someone else will. But how will this other party do so and still make money? How will this other party get the broad variety of music that powers the whole thing, if the music owners don't want to play ball?
A "damn The Man" attitude is fine and dandy, but it's ultimately self-defeating if you can't come up with a viable replacement for the current situation. I doubt anyone will get the RIAA and the government to acknowledge and fix the problem with the current situation by engaging in illegal activity.
Here's a crazy notion. Why not actually make this a political issue and vote people into office who will do something about changing some of these absurd laws?
We actually do have the power to do that in the US, even though we seem to have thrown it away.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Apple Rocks!!!
Karma Schmarma
This isn't specific to the DMCA, but it's relevant.
...but Shakespeare is DEAD! ...?!
There are collections of Shakespeare's works that are copyrighted. It is illegal to make duplications of these (unabridged and unaltered) writings.
fs
First of all: Apple Computer holds no copyright over the works they distribute via ITMS. The record labels hold the copyrights to the music.
But this is just symantecs. The record labels entrust the protection of the copyright to Apple.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
It has been found in the past under the DMCA that source code is not a device. Therefore, source code cannot be an anti-circumvention device.
Source code is equivalent to the plans to make something. The DMCA doesn't prohibit working on plans to make something.
This C&D is BS.
But is that going to have the same quality as simply stripping out the DRM on the original ACC file?
If you take an MP3 and reencode it as an OGG, there will be quality loss.
Does the same thing happen when you go from ACC to WAV to MP3?
It seems to me that their real fear is that people will be able to easily share iTunes music files after downloading them, without any quality loss, and without the inconvenience of burning to CD first. That makes it even more convenient than buying a physical CD and ripping the songs to MP3, because you wouldn't even have to leave your house or open your the door on your cd-rom drive.
Even people who normally wouldn't bother to share music they'd bought could do so with ease.
I don't know if they are right to worry so much about this... or whether they can legally stop this project... but that is their or (by proxy) the RIAA's concern.
It pretty much makes lawsuits their only tool to stop the sharing of their music. And with projects like Freenet improving all the time, the lawsuit tool isn't going to remain viable.
I neither rejoice over, nor cry about the demise of our over-marketed pop culture... but I do believe that's what we are witnessing: its demise as a victim of its own success.
~~~
if you want to get semantic on me then I'll get semantic on you. One could argue that you bought an encypted file. you can use this however you like though its utterly worthless in its encrypted state. There are no limits on how you can use this encryted file. But if you want to distribute the music it contains that is different. You cant distribute that music to any machine that does not support decryption. Thats a restriction on distributing the music not on the use of the music.
If you are afraid of censorship in whatever form (including the DMCA) then you really should mirror yourself on Freenet.
Freenet is currently the #1 publishing medium for people which censorship is a concern.
I've read several posts drawing on the comparisons of iTunes and the GPL, which go on to prove by analogy that if we wouldn't like someone to break the GPL liscence we shouldn't like someone breaking the iTunes liscence.
I believe the this is a false analogy however because the GPL is protected by old fashion copyright law (which many slashdotters consider legitimate) and iTunes (at least in the case of PlayFair) is protected by the DMCA (which many slashdotters cosnider illegitimate).
The reason we should/do reject the DMCA is because it prevents us from excercising our free use by preventing us from copying encrypted media. Therefore PlayFair is a fair piece of software (giving us back our fair use rights that Apple tried to take away), and Apple was wrong for going after them.
It is located in Trivandrum, India
Sounds like a nice place. Gotta visit sometime. Looks like India put a spanner in the works of the good old DMCA.
Apple invoked the DMCA? That was the last thing people thought would happen, right? I mean, Apple are our heroes - right?
Can someone put up a mirror on Freenet? This is exactly the ideal type of project that Freenet was designed for.
Ain't nothing stylish about Steve Jobs bending over for a dildo-wearing Hilary Rosen.
" Don't like DMCA? Go lobby your congressman."
Unfortunately, lobbying is, these days, a matter of who can pay the most money *cough/bribes and payoffs/cough*.
The politicians have become so corrupt that "the will of the people" is today a sick joke. I don't buy music anymore and that hurts, because I'm a musician and I love music, be it created by me or someone else. Nor will I sign with a big label. I refuse to buy into the game. Neither do I fileshare, steal, pirate, or however you want to define it. The DMCA, however, is an unjust law brought about by corruption, as is what has happened to copyright. Many people earlier in U.S. history also broke unjust laws passed by the state, such as sitting at the front of the bus, or drinking from the wrong water fountain if you weren't the right skin color. Mugging someone, and breaking an unjust, corrupt law are not equivalent. As a matter of fact, breaking an unjust, corrupt law could be argued to be the duty of a good citizen when the state refuses to address the wrong done.
"I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest." - Martin Luther King, Jr, from his Autobiography, Chapter 2.
Just my plugged nickel.
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
When will people learn that just because something is against the law it doesn't mean that it's wrong, or that the LAW is right?
/rant
The DMCA and DRM are ALREADY violations of other laws. You have the RIGHT to copy the content you buy onto another medium. It's not a philosophical point by any stretch of the imagination. You simply may not DISTRIBUTE it.
Playfair (get the name right, some of you...) simply allows you to backup the content you have already PAID for. This is your RIGHT.
Stop listening to Lars Ulrich. He's a shithead, and here's why:
1. Metallica got famous by precisely what they are bitching about. No radio play, no major promotion. How else were people going to hear it? That's very simple: those who had heard them and liked it made copies and gave them to their friends. Lars & co. seem to be forgetting their roots.
2. No musician works for the money. You do it because you love to do it. If you get paid, great, but that's secondary. Don't pull this 'that's their job' crap, they like the money because it means they don't have to get a job.
I've been a musician since I was 13. I'm 30 now. I've got 17 years worth of this under my belt. Don't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about.
This whole situation started with Mr. Ulrich finding out you could get a song for free from Napster. Before that, no one knew or worried about the RIAA, the DMCA or DRM.
Thanks, Lars. Thanks, asshole. Remember why I tossed my Metallica CDs, remember why I turn the station when their crap comes on, and remember that I'm just one more fan you don't have anymore.
Because of people like him, now programmers looking to exercise their *rights* must go OUTSIDE of the US to do so!!
So, then, I personally find the GPL offensive, and believe that it actively makes the world a worse place. What do you recommend that I do to undermine it?
> In other words, if you don't agree to the terms of the contract, there are plenty of other ways to register your disagreement
> without denying yourself the use of the product/service.
That is to say, 'I am the ultimate arbiter of what is fair and right, as long as I'm pretty sure I won't get caught at it.'
> Not only that - the terms may not be legal in all areas of the world, in which case it's quite legal to agree to the terms and
> simply ignore them.
I am assuming that you mean it's quite legal to agree to the terms and ignore them IF you are in a place where they aren't legal. However, even this is not the case, as anyone with a smattering of knowledge of international contract law could tell you. Otherwise you'd never end up with contracts between two countries at all.
Oops. Time for me to leave for the day. Sorry, more enlightenment tomorrow.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
I have had the file for awhile and can't seem to get it too work. My big deal is I want to convert songs to MP3 so I can listen to them playing GTA3 and Vice City. I took a few classes on programming and it looks from the stuff that I got that I would have to compile it.... Am I right or is there a simpler way?
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
playfair compiles in cygwin, you just need to make sure the line: "#define __STRING(expr) #expr" is somewhere in src/mp4v2/systems.h where it will get processed and then everything works fine. i compiled with the 0.4 version source which is up at sarovar.org and the latest version of gcc for cygwin. there may be problems with the executable generated but since i lack an itms account and songs, someone else will have to figure that out... if you have trouble compiling it and just want the executable, post something here and i'll see what i can do....
toodles
"Apple's 128kbps AAC's quality is very good, about the same as a 192kbps mp3"
Both of which are about "half" of CD quality.
So I burn back to CD. I haven't gained anything in that exchange; its more or less equal to a low-quality CD. Then I re-rip, which can't be better than the original source, and will probably reduce it to 3/4's the original AAC; most likely less in some cases because certain type of musical passages react badly to a double-lossy-compression.
So I have crap in an MP3 from a mid-quality AAC.
And they charge more for this song than had I just bought the CD in the first place.
If you go to a restaurant and see shit on a stick for $.50, do you say "wow, that's pretty cheap" or do you say "$.50 for shit? who would be dumb enough to pay for it".
But hey, flies like shit, so there's a taste for everything in this world.
The original post said
"By this logic, he doesn't really care about the GPL or any agreement that isn't convenient to his personal whims.
This technique is an analogy, quite relevant because the same things support both Apple's DRM and the GPL: 1> copyright law and its legal enforcement (threat of police, fines, jail) and 2> ethical committment to honor an agreement. It's one thing to create a tool to increase freedom. It's another to claim it's ethical, when used to deprive another (in this case, Apple, or a GPL'd author) of theirs.
--
make install -not war
"yet is very, very high quality and nearly indistinguishable from a CD copy, even with professional-level biamplified stereo monitors."
... sonically and financially.
128kb very very high quality.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
Ha...oh... man, you actually made me fall of my chair. 128kb is somewhere inbetween FM and CD quality. Oh wait... this is Apple, so AAC is so magic that its just as good as the CD because THEY RECORD IT RIGHT FROM THE MASTER.
And we use BiAmplifiers to listen, so it *must* be good.
Ha ha...stop it... my sides are killing me from laughing so hard.
Look, you're a kid listening to thumpa thumpa "50 cent" music. You could use two tin cans and string and you couldn't tell the difference.
Only a sucker would pay $1/Song with heavy DRM and poor sound quality when you could go to BMG Music and get an entire CD *shipped* to your home for under $8. There's no DRM on the CD. It sounds good. I guess not as good as those magic Apple AAC BiAmplified songs, but usually most people think the CD is a far better deal for the consumer
So get your rattle, your beads, turn on iTMS, and bow down to the magic juju of Apple selling you mediocre quality music at premium prices.
And steve jobs died for your sins, too.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
one is also restricted by copyright when it comes to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen even though the story is based on public domain characters - to include Capt. Nemo from 20,000 Leagues
Don't the studios that published the films Finding Nemo and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have trademarks on "NEMO" for various products? Though you may have the right to reproduce 20K Leagues, you may not have the right to, say, sell toys based on the descriptions of the likenesses of the characters of 20K Leagues if somebody else owns the exclusive toy rights. Trademarks do not expire in the United States, even if they match the name of a character introduced in a work that has entered the public domain.
(an excellet example of public domain use, btw).
Actually, some claim that LXG the movie didn't meet the potential of LXG the graphic novel precisely because other studios' exclusive movie rights to characters under trademark law restricted what the script writers could do with some of the characters. Notice "an invisible man" vs. "THE INVISIBLE MAN(R)".
"Some of us are here for the money."
The only thing you seem qualified to program is a VCR, and even then, only with the instruction book.
Please don't criticize open source; you don't even understand how computer code is developed. That's very very clear.
But the work itself is essentially on loan from the public domain and will return to it once the grant has expired.
You say this as if the grants do in fact expire. In practice, they don't. Given that the Supreme Court of the United States has let the Congress extend the term of copyright in works first published in 1923-1977 twice successively (excepting those works first published in 1923-1963 whose copyrights were never renewed), there seems to be little precedent for rollback of copyright terms that even the Supreme Court found counterproductive in its majority opinion.
There are fair use clauses within copyright that allow for certain uses of creative works despite any restrictions placed by the copyright holders.
There are also attorney's fees and court costs of raising a fair use defense to an allegation of copyright infringement. Most individual authors cannot afford a legal defense.
"I like to read up on assholes before I respond to them"
More like "I have to lick assholes before I respond to them".
And for the record, I think that's fine, although for me, I find it a bit, er, unsavory. But you should be able to lick any rim you please.
While we are at it let us revoke the length of copyright down to 14 years as it was origionally
That might not happen. Were Congress to (in our wildest dreams) pass a law rolling back copyright terms to twenty-eight years (roughly matching the 14+14 structure of the Copyright Act of 1790), every trade group for copyright owners would sue the Attorney General under the Fifth Amendment, alleging that any copyright term rollback takes "private property ... for public use, without just compensation."
I have a windows box without MSVC
Who needs MSVC anyway?
Oh, the doublespeak. This ought to be really exposed.
For those that would like to be more informed about copyright law and what the DMCA is doing to the rest of us, check out Lawrence Lessig's latest book, Free Culture. You can download the pdf for the book free here.
better check the closet...
So, did you pay sales tax on all your out-of-state internet purchases?
Did you speed today?
Some lawas are just fucked up and the DMCA is one of them. It is our DUTY to defy them.
People should just boycott iTunes. But it's not like any of the /. people buy that stuff anyways.
...your iPod and/or iTunes key. QuickTime doesn't work on linux (officially) but playfair can still talk to the iPod over your firewire in that particular instance.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
'cuz he didn't want to be trolled (or ripped a new one) on
But like in many other places, there are many people that just don't get it.
The current US and UK goverments come to mind for example.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"Read the DMCA sometime. Like it or not, it's THE LAW."
Facts like those make respect for the law weaker and weaker still.
Your car will also have exactly one door.
To compensate, you will immediately retrofit two aftermarket doors, without ever doubting the genius of the stock one door design.
But playfair is a solution to unlock AAC files without changing the format. Unlocking AAC files with changing format (by, say, converting to MP3) was entirely possible before.
Something like PlayFair would make a fantastic test case to see how the courts draw the line between the users right to effect some means for fair use, because it's a large debate at the moment about how technological measures suppress legitimate fair use, and there's surely a fine line between the DMCA rights management provisions and the allowance for fair use that we need some enlightened opinion on - until we get that opinion we have so much FUD.
Legally, this isn't a close question. Congress enacted DMCA years ago, providing additional protection to copyrighted content that had been the subject of an "effective" protection scheme (ROT-13 might legally fit the bill, ad defined), in the form of civil and criminal penalties against circumvention of the scheme. There are some exceptions for certain kinds of encryption research and other things, but they don't apply here. Fair use is not an exception to DMCA. The constitutionality of that provision has been well-tested in the CSS cases and other DMCA cases.
The FUD here is the suggestion that the legality of DMCA had not been tested. Enlightened or not, the courts have repeatedly spoken, all the way to the Second Circuit and some other higher courts. Like it or not, agree with it or not, it is the law.
Frankly, the present case present no interesting legal issues. DMCA is a bad law, so far as policy, but it isn't bad law, in the sense that it is unenforceable. Playfair clearly violates the anticircumvention provisions, and trafficking in the code is a crime and subjects those who traffic in it to civil liability as well.
I also far prefer having iTMS to not having it. I am deeply concerned that the RIAA might pull back or drop out of their agreement with Apple. If that happens, then playfair, and all you are currently distributing it freely, are hurting the community, certainly a significant section of us, as much as you may think you are helping it.
You know perfectly well that the people who buy songs from iTunes, and who download mp3s in general, don't give a damn about laminating artwork, liner notes, jewel cases or any of that crap. That's why they're downloading in the first place. They're just interested in the MUSIC.
I have all my CD cases in storage, with my whole CD library either in binders or digitized on my hard drive. Ripping a CD and stashing the case in a box is the first thing I do when I get home.
So, yeah, iTMS is cheaper. I can buy only what I want without having to be forced to buy some non-music merchandise I have no use for.
for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
How is cracking the encrpytion and placing it on another medium: criticism, commenting, reporting, or teaching?
It's NOT.
I find it humorous that everyone complains and moans about how schemas are developed in hopes of obliterating the copying of songs, yet... if you can hear, you can copy it... basically, the only true protection is not to give it out at all....
It's a late reply and probably no one will read this, but I have to put my 2 cents in anyway.
Has anyone thought that Apple probably sent the C&D just for the formality? I mean, other than making the appearance to "protect the music from them pirates - arrr!" for the benefit of the recording industry, Apple probably could not care less with the existence of Play Fair. After all, Mr. Jobs himself told the RIAA that DRMs were useless and pretty much guaranteed that they would be cracked. He then turned around and slapped a very easily circumvented DRM (burn an audio CD, use WireTap, burn a virtual CD -- won't even cost you a blank there) to AAC and you can easily have your DRM free music legally. In the end, how much different is it from using Play Fair? Either you burn audio CDs or use Play Fair, Apple has sold you a copy of the music. The rest is no longer in Apple's interest. However, Apple needs to create the illusion (that is what it is all about: illusion of control) of preventing people from circumventing the DRM illegally for the benefit of RIAA so that RIAA won't go and bury any effort to extend the contract (doesn't the 1 year contract to sell music via iTMS expire soon?) iTMS needs to sell music.
The latest version of playfair (0.4) is also available on freshmeat.net (though this is odd, in my opinion, given that it was originally removed from sourceforge, and both belong to the OSDN. Meh).
http://freshmeat.net/projects/playfair/
Politics aside, it's interesting to watch the code progress (and hop around the internet).
A lot of CDs are marked with a notice that lending is forbidden.
That's completely irrelevant, as they aren't challenging the C&D order. They've taken down the project at SF.net, and moved it offshore, where it should have been from the start. Case closed.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Tevis Money, the king of all homosexual Boy Scouts, is here, espousing and bleating his gayness. He is one with the Om-FAG. Master of all that is fat and sexless, the little fucking bitch. FUCK YOU TEVIS, WHORE. You ruined me, confused me, and taught me what it is like to have a reversal up the poop chute, and it hurts now mentally and physically. I hate you.
- and I'll stand by it. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
that argument is nice and simple.
"dont like whats happening? you can leave."
simpleton arguments like that may work for morons like yourself, but don't expect it to get much traction for people who are not mindless drones.
I submitted this, but it is gone again, see http://sarovar.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=474.
What is most interesting is:
Something that is interesting is that the cease and desist letter says: "When our clients addressed a cease and desist letter to SourceForge, the website removed the program immediately from its server, in recognition of the fact that PlayFair compromised the intellectual property rights of our clients."
If I read what SF said, they removed it per their policy and if there is a counter-claim they'll put it back up. What the sarovar letter said seems completely at odds with what SF said.
(I did submit the story here, but who knows if it will make it up to the news section).
I wasn't aware that the major labels were releasing most of their new albums with copy protection built in. I've been buying almost all of my music online for a while now, and most of the CDs I buy in stores are from smaller labels, so I'm out of the loop on that. It may be that the labels are contributing directly to the use of P2P networks by trying this rather stupid approach.
My basic stance is that while DRM is never going to work as a long-term solution, there are two basic paths we can take to get the music industry and the government to smarten up:
1) Subvert the law
2) Work within the law
I don't agree with the DMCA, but I also think that by directly attacking the music industry, it's going to take a lot longer for them to come around. The music industry is stale, moribund, profit-driven, and powerful. But to treat it as an evil entity is counterproductive.
My points about the iTMS pricing were meant to inject some economic reality into the discussion. Ultimately the music is not produced and distributed for free. It takes money, particularly if you're talking about music created by a star act like Sting, U2, Garth Brooks, etc. The marketing costs alone are outrageous. It would be nice if we lived in a world where artists could distribute their music online using whatever form of Creative Commons license they liked, but it seems to me that most artists are still captive to the notion that they can become Big Rock Stars. So they sign bad contracts with the labels.
The labels don't steal the music from the musicians. The musicians enter into bad contracts, and the labels make money accordingly. If artists got smart, they'd do what David Lindley does. The guy plays a lot of live shows and controls distribution of his music.
But given that the music most of us want to listen to is controlled by big labels (because the artists haven't gotten smart enough to bypass the labels entirely), I submit that if Apple or someone else is paying the costs of setting up an online distribution mechanism for the music I want, Apple and the labels have the right to determine the rules under which the music is distributed given the state of our current copyright law which is quite obviously flawed.
I think we're actually closer on this than it might have seemed at first blush. I think the RIAA is an anachronism, but I think the real unharnessed power lies with the artists themselves. If they started blowing off labels altogether, or started getting used to the notion that they would be better off controlling their own destinies, the RIAA would be rapidy consigned to the scrapheap of history.
The people who seem to be doing the best work in pressuring for copyright reform are not (in my opinion) the people who are hacking DRM, setting up P2P networks, or otherwise attacking from a questionable legal basis.
Rather, the folks who have taken the GPL as inspiration and have conceived more equitable variations on copyright are the people who have the most hope of ending the current RIAA stranglehold on music. If musicians would take a look at what Lawrence Lessig is doing with his latest book (distributing it as a download under a Creative Commons license while simultaneously offering it for sale in printed form), they might start to understand that they have the power to provide a better experience for listeners while retaining vastly more control over their own product.
Will musicians wake up to this? Maybe, but the evidence so far is that only a handfull of musicians really grok what's going on.
Apple's Music Store is a means of showing the labels that they can sell music online in direct competition with P2P networks. My feeling is that as online music sales increase, the online sales outlets that put fewer controls on downloads are the ones that will prosper. In business, money talks and rhetoric wa
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ