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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.
Sarovar is hosted on a Compaq box running Debian woody and GForge.
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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;
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.
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
- not be accepted in the marketplace--information moves too fast for even today's sheep-like consumers to be fooled that easily
- be cracked anyway
The industry is still making billions of dollars a year selling Red Book CDs with no DRM. But they want to move towards a pay per play model with DRM. And I'm the prick?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
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
only a small handful of linux nerds had even heard of the thing,
False. DVD-Jon's warez palz had built a Windows-based GUI ripper program long before the Linux community was aware of the software.
The Windows Rip & Pirate community was up and running and distributing thousands of movies over P2P before Linux even got DVD filesystem support, much less a working player.