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After DeCSS, DVD Jon Releases DeDRMS
An anonymous reader writes "Jon Lech Johansen, who reverse engineered FairPlay back in January, and wrote the decryption code that was later used by an anonymous developer to create the playfair utility, has released a similar utility: DeDRMS. It's only 230 lines. T-shirts anyone?"
Not that I have anything against C#, I actually find it quite nice, just stuck me as odd that someone would write a cracking toolin it. These things are traditionally written in C ( for speed ).... like DeCSS was.
"In practice, the goal of maximizing publication regardless of the cost to freedom is supported by widespread rhetoric which asserts that public copying is illegitimate, unfair, and intrinsically wrong. For instance, the publishers call people who copy "pirates," a smear term designed to equate sharing information with your neighbor with attacking a ship. (This smear term was formerly used by authors to describe publishers who found lawful ways to publish unauthorized editions; its modern use by the publishers is almost the reverse.) This rhetoric directly rejects the Constitutional basis for copyright, but presents itself as representing the unquestioned tradition of the American legal system.
The "pirate" rhetoric is typically accepted because it blankets the media so that few people realize that it is radical. It is effective because if copying by the public is fundamentally illegitimate, we can never object to the publishers' demand that we surrender our freedom to do so. In other words, when the public is challenged to show why publishers should not receive some additional power, the most important reason of all -- "We want to copy" -- is disqualified in advance.
This leaves no way to argue against increasing copyright power except using side issues. Hence opposition to stronger copyright powers today almost exclusively cites side issues, and never dares cite the freedom to distribute copies as a legitimate public value."
Misinterpreting Copyright
This code shows with more simplicity than ever before how the FairPlay DRM scheme works. This can be used by programmers to add support for applications (i.e., GStreamer) to play encrypted files with a key produced from an iTunes username/password. It can be used by researchers to see any weaknesses in FairPlay and develop better methods. Unfortunately it can also be used by those who want to destroy the iTunes Music Service.
Interestingly, I believe the ideas could also be used to create files encrypted with a particular iTunes login, though perhaps I'm misunderstanding the scheme.
I could be wrong, but I think he was being sarcastic. Like, while p2p services have illegal things happen on them, people kill the p2p. Gosh, I guess I could be wrong...doubt it though.
DeDRMS? I wrote a song about it. Want to hear it? Hear it goes... *da dum da dum*... slash asterisk bla bla asterisk slash... *da dum da dum*... Using System; *bah bum bah bum*...
--
Power to the Peaceful
I actually like the irony of a Microsoft pushed technology being used to kill an Apple-pushed technology THEN getting GPL'd!
C# is a pretty clean language, all in all. One of those things that MS got it right by successive approximation.
I can sorta understand that, as far as I know, DVDs don't state at the time of purchase that you have to have X or Y, just that you have to have the disc. Fine.
So, when you buy something from the iTMS, it STATES that you have to have X or Y. It clearly states the restrictions that you agree to. This is not a hard concept, so why is it felt that a technological solution is required to 'fix' it?
Something that just struck me... DVD Jon isn't in the Americas, but iTMS isn't selling to those outside (maybe Canada, I'd have to check). So ... what part of this equation am I missing?
... and, so began, the legend of the Five-point Atkins Exploding Heart Technique!
http://hrothgar.mine.nu/dedrms.txt
A temporary mirror to the code. It wont be up more than a week, so dont bookmark it.
Remember PlayFair
Remember the bitTorrent sites
If you want it, get it now.
Interesting how this news comes out on a Sunday, when the lawyers should all be out at play.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
From here:
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
So you do everything corporations tell you to do? You've never stood on the top rung of a ladder? Or taken a double dose of ibuprofen? Never used a beach ball as a flotation device? Once you buy it, it's yours and no one can justly tell you what to do with it. Not that the justice system is ever just, mind you.
My main fear, is that the Big Five will use this, to either show that 'digital distrubution of music is an unsound business model', or something along those lines. BEST case situation now, we come out of this with a much heavier DRM than we have now. End result, only those willing to bend the rules come out ahead -- just like it is now. Thanks, Jon. Much
Rules are for suckers. If something is morally wrong, good people won't do it anyway. Rules aren't going to stop the dirty ones. So the only reason to have rules is to stop moral people from doing something that's not morally wrong.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Everybody here seems to be glad about this hack. I'm not...
Please think about it:
1) Apple's DRM Fairplay is rather fair - at least compared to other DRMs. Every "normal" user that simply wants to listen to the music, that he or she bought legally, can do it. You can even burn it on CD and listen to it in your car. The only thing one can criticize it that the only mobile digital music player you can use is the iPod.
2) The music industry still doesn't like digital music. Few days ago I read about the music industry demanding higher charges than 99cents, which in my opinion are quite fair as well.
It was probably not very easy for Apple to convice the music industry of Fairplay being safe enough (think of all their competitors' DRMs). So what will happen now?
a) Apple will be forced to shut down their Music Store
b) Apple will have to update all their songs, the iPod-Software and iTunes. I guess, the new DRM will be more strict....
So what do we get from PlayFair and DeDRMS? A quite reasonable product will be gone.
And you can be sure, this development won't help the music store expanding to the rest of the world, either.
I agree 100%. It's sad to see all these ignorant morons blasting C# just because it's a Microsoft technology and pretty much a clone of Java. If anything, this is one of the few GOOD things that Microsoft has actually done.
.NET framework is a million times easier to work with.
Pretty much anyone and everyone who bashes it doesn't have an honest to god FACTUAL reason why it "sucks" so bad, that's the funny part.
I've worked with both extensively, and while Java definitely has the upper hand in being truly cross platform, C# and the
People really need to start taking their heads outta their asses before rambling off about something they don't know about.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
It's certainly quite possible to design a C# vector class that's both more memory and processor efficient in most cases than C++. Here's how:
You mean you've implemented this in C#? Or are you saying what you could do?
Sorry but there's no way to do it in the current C# implementation. You can't even get access to the memory allocators. There is no C# data structure that can tightly pack data in memory while still being dynamic. The best you can do is an array of struct's which is about as efficient as C/C++ but is absolutely not dynamic without causing a ton of overhead (eg. there is no realloc in C#).
If you can do it in C# then show me some code.
C++ doubles the amount of space allocated for a vector (or queue, or list, or stack, or dequeue, or binary heap, etc) whenever a resize exceeds the amount already allocated, unless you know enough to tell it to do otherwise.
You're talking about the default vector allocator. STL is extremely dynamic, you do not have to use to the default allocator if you don't want you. You can be extremely flexible here for whatever you need and design anything you want.
If you've ever done much benchmarking of the C++ STL, you know that it's usually faster than otherwise identical code written with arrays, which shouldn't be possible, since the array access code can be done fairly easily in assembly without virtual function table lookups and such, but nonetheless is quite real.
Actually, I have, and you're wrong. So me an example and I'll show you why your array code is slower than the C++ version.
Virtual function lookups?! Do you even know how the STL is designed or how C++ works? Now I'm not sure why I bothered with the rest of what I wrote above.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
I doubt, that there will ever be music without DRM legally available. File sharing makes it in my opinion too "dangerous" for the music industry. Maybe (and I hope that, too) we'll see something like free or "donation music" (in a greater amount than today), but the majority of successfull songs will probably simply stay paid.
This procedure you're talking about, where a bad law gets passed because a worse one was proposed is in my opinion simply called "compromise" and hence something very important in politics. The fact, that there could be a "worse" DRM comes from the music industry. The users (me too!) don't want any DRM. In this situation, there would be no legal digital music available.
But having FairPlay there's a compromise: The majority of users (obviously not the people here, but millions of songs have been sold up to now) and the majority of music labels/artists (e.g. not Metallica) are content (not glad) with it. And at least it works.
Sorry, but saying, that copyrighted material is illegal is not correct (at least not for Germany). Is there a law prohibiting copyright? The only thing we have in Germany is the users' right to make a backup copy. This is possible with FairPlay.
Just to make my point clear: I'm not at all a friend of DRM. I'm glad about DeCSS to watch movies using linux. I patched my DVD drive to free it from its region code restrictions. But regarding FairPlay: if you think, that it's not the best solution, it's in my opinion still a step to the right direction! Noone stops you implementing a fairer solution, if you can manage to bring the users and the music industry together. But please do not torpedo this first step.
Computer code is the way we request that a computer performs a task.
We don't do it in plain English (or Spanish, Russian, Mongolian or whatever) because we lack the technology (still) to do so.
If in the future it is possible to program a computer or any other machine with a normal conversation then how the hell are all the ridiculous copyright and patent laws are going to be applied?
As things stand computer languages are a necessary nuisance to allow people express in a succint and understandable manner their own ideas about how ro solve problems.
This is perhaps one of the purest forms of speech, which should be mantained unecumbered of patents and covered by fair copyright laws.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When I click on the link I get a .CS file that says I should have received the GPL license with it - I certainly didn't!
Is having this link on Slashdot agaisnt the GPL?
Now, project yourself forward 20 years. Will these same profit chasing record companies be willing to provide infrastructure to allow you to move your DRM encrusted music from PC to PC throughout the rest of your exepcted life, and that of your descendants who will inhereit this media? Sure, they'll be happily putting out more music, but are they protecting your previous investments? In the year 2039 when I should be just about ready to breathe my last breathe will I be able to hear all my old favorite albums or will I cark it listening to gangster rap on the radio because my rightfully paid for music isn't authorised for use on my new funky media player.
This DRM stuff is OK for playing todays tunes, but I worry about the longevity of the media.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.