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.
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.
Just to play devils advocate, it's not as if people who bought their music from Apple weren't aware of the "limitations" of it's use. If they were, then it's no one's fault but their own.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
No, it's not "your music." You have certain limitations on what you can do with it, like it or not, because you bought it from Apple with those limitations. Don't like it? Don't buy it from them.
I don't like what Apple did (with this lawsuit), but changing the facts to suit your argument doesn't do you any good.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
Apple created a piece of software that doesn't allow people to play the music their paid for on the devices of their choice.
It's also clearly stated what these limitations are ahead of time. Last I knew, you could burn any song you bought from Apple onto a music CD, and play that. Or rerip that back to an MP3 to put on device X.
Oh, wait, the quality goes down, right? Well, explain what device it is that has AAC audio playback capabilities? There are very few beyond the iPod, so having the raw AAC does most people very little good, since it would still have to be transcoded into another format.
I don't like the idea of DRM and the DMCA much, but the print on the front door was pretty clear. Don't like it? Don't shop there and instead go buy a CD.
When you downloaded the song from iTMS you agreed to the terms of use of the song. You knew from the beginning that you had to play by Apple's rules about what device the music can be played on; and you agreed to it. To come back later on and say that you should be able to circumvent that agreement is wrong.
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.
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?
Now imagine that the I cry "fair use" (i.e. I didn't like this nasty GPL license so I decide to circumvent it). Doesn't sound so good, huh?
John.
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."
"play their music"
No, it's not "your music."
It's our music. All of us. The record companies just have it on loan for the duration of their copyright, which, unfortunately for us, keeps getting extended.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
...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 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.
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.
Thus begins the stampede of technological innovation to environments where freedom is celebrated, rather than crushed.
"First you get the Linux, then you get the power, THEN you get the women"
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.
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!
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>
If I don't distribute the results, I can do whatever the hell I want with the code, and be completely within my GPL license. How is this difference from me breaking my Apple files free so I can listen to them on an MP3 player when I jog? My wife buys plenty of music from the iTunes website and we have no iPod for portability, and no desire to spend $200+ to get one. As long as she's not distributing the music once ripped, it IS fair use.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
It's not so black and white. On the one hand, you are licensed the music under an agreement, so they are free to use technological measures to effect that agreement. However, legally they can only do that to the extent allowed by copyright law: copyright law allows fair use, so you are allowed to make fair use. Such a program enables you to make fair use (as much as looping an analog cable from your speaker back into the mic does as well), but of course it also enables you to do other things that violate the license agreement -- and this fine line is the important one.
The same goes for dual VCR's which were opposed when initially marketed, but couldn't be suppressed because although they could be used to do wrong, they can also be used to do right: and the courts can't allow the device to be suppressed just for this reason, otherwise they'd be able to suppress knives and all sorts of things that have dangerous uses.
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.
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.
When apple releases software for me to play my purchased iTunes songs on my linux box at work, then I will stop using Playfair. Until then, I will have to continue using it if I want to play the stuff on my linux box.
Think about it, almost all of the DMCA violations that have happened recently are the result of companies not making a DRM solution for the particular platform that people want to use their media on, so someone cracks it.
As others have stated, playfair probably won't contribute much, if any to piracy at all. You have to have the key for the music you are de-drm'ing, which means you've purchased it. If someone releases it on the net, big deal, it's already out there in higher quality mp3 and vorbis formats. If I wanted to spend the time searching for the music to get it for free, I would. But it's more worth my time to pay 99 cents for each track I'm looking for. I avoid getting tracked down by RIAA and sued, and I know that I'm getting a reasonable copy of it.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
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
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've written my Congressman on the appealation of the DMCA, I've gone to open forum talks and brought the subject up, so don't talk to me about bellyaching.
I've done my part in promoting fair use in as much as I can. I'm anti DMCA, just as a good SlashThinker should be.
Using the software that Apple provides means you agree to the terms that usage provides. 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.
Find an alternative, but don't ruin what I find is the fairest, most reasonable DRM to exist on the market.
There is a GPL comparison found later in this discussion which I love completely, and will reiterate here.
What would be said by the OSS community if someone decided they were going to use GPL'd software outside of it's license "because they didn't agree with it," but still wanted the benefit of using it. You'd all be up in arms. I'd be up in arms.
I think I've made my point.
Can you ping me now? Gooood! | Manhappenin.Net - Things to do
They are not illegal if you live outside the US.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Does Jules Verne own "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"? Do we have to negotiate payments with Mark Twain's estate to get a copy of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"? Who do we bestow ownership of Beowulf to?
The fact is, these works are in the Public Domain. Nobody owns them. Although, where possible, they are attributed to their authors.
You discard copyright rather quickly. However, the concept of owning a creative work (rather than the physical representation of that work, such as an actual book) come entirely from copyright. Copyright is a grant by government to a work's creater. It gives them a (in theory) limited time to capitalize on their work though exclusive control over that work. Eventually, this grant runs its course and the work enters the public domain.
There is no ownership of ideas.
Compare this to physical property. The origional manuscript for "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" could still be owned by Mark Twain past the length of his copyright on the work represented by that physical manuscript. Furthermore, that property could have been passed on to his estate or sold. The actual manuscript never becomes public property unless it is specificly sold or donated to a public library (government seizure aside).
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.
You've got two forces operating here, and they're not necessarily the same shit.
Copyright law gives you fair use of the audio. Which you have. Burn it on a CD, use it to your heart's content. It's yours. There's not even any copy prot on the disc.
However, the AAC file itself it not audio. It's an encrypted data representation of audio -- but it doesn't become audio until you decrypt it. And the encryption is protected under the DMCA. Say what you will about the DMCA, it's the law, and breaking it is not guaranteed by copyright law any more than owning a copy of the White Album gives you the right to the original magnetic tapes it was recorded on.
After all, the artist didn't make the AAC file. They made audio. Apple made the AAC file, and sold you the rights to make CDs with it.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
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...
2. I think $0.99 is a fair price, too. I just (a) philosophically disagree with DRM and (b) want to be able to play the songs that I have legally purchased outside of iTunes / Quicktime.
It's in their terms of service, and is a contract/license that is fully enforceable - while click throughs are arguable, payment definitely constitutes agreement. By this logic, he doesn't really care about the GPL or any agreement that isn't convenient to his personal whims.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
You make the same mistake most non-Americans make in assuming that everyone in America thinks with a like mind. This is very much not so; our fascist president just doesn't like to let anyone hear opposing opinions. The "fat cats" rig the elections; the media doesn't like to report on stories of election fraud, which is actually pretty rampant in America, because it undermines our belief in democracy.
Oh, and of all the people the American government fucks over, none does it fuck over more than its own people. I gotta pay taxes so they can line the pockets of corporations like Halliburton and Lockheed while not getting decent government services that most other industrialized nations have such as health care and breathable air. Any single European women out there who wanna get hitched?
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.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't one of the principal reasons against the DMCA that this is not correct? You are not allowed to circumvent copy-protection schemes, period. Whether the protected work is copyrighted or part of the public domain is irrelevant. E.g., if someone were to sell a CD of PD works, say, from Project Gutenberg and used some trivial copy protection on it, you wouldn't be allowed to copy the CD.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Such as where? If there was alternate service, you may have a point. Is there?
Um... a CD, perhaps? We're talking about obtaining music to listen to and use as he sees fit. All iTunes offers are DRM-tied AAC files, which obviously isn't what he wanted. He wanted the price, but not the terms, which is a breach of contract* by any definition.
* Yes, I'm still making the leap that authorizing payment implies agreement with the Terms of Service and therefore a contractual agreement. It's the same legally as when you buy something off the 'Final Sale - no return' rack. Or buying anything at Best Buy agrees to their Return restrictions that are printed on the wall. Maybe even more so, since you could reasonably claim you didn't see them if you have bad vision and the sales person mentioned them.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.