Slashdot Mirror
FairPlay v2 Reversed, Playfair Back Online
An anonymous reader writes "Two weeks ago Apple released iTunes 4.5. The minor changes Apple made to their Music Sharing Protocol (daap) were reverse engineered after just one day. According to a post in the Doom9 forums FairPlay version 2 has also been reverse engineered. playfair has
already been patched with the new code and is back online with FSF India providing legal support. How will Apple respond?"
"How will Apple respond?"
With FairPlay v3.
Jonny Fairplay from Survivor / NWA TNA. He can cut promos on Apple, and he's already got the name right.
Like the whiney self-absorbed little beeyatch that it is.
No, I'm pretty sure Apple will ignore this. The company would love for the RIAA to pull the plug on iTunes.
FairPlay 2 was cracked less than 8 hours after release and Slashdot is now getting to the story???
...Apple should hire the guys, as they are obviously at least as good as the guys they have now.
How similar was FP v2 to v1 because I think it would have to been similar or else it would tkae longer then it took to break FairPlay v1. Also on a related note, is anyone working of cracking the WMP DRMs ?
This signature was left intentionally blank.
I do not want to get flamed, but honestly, when I read this stuff I wonder how everyone can get so pissed off when someone breaks the GPL yet be so supportive of someone doing this kind of work?
For all of the lofty talk in the community, is it at it's root support for whatever it takes to get "what I want, free"?
I just would like to know the difference between these things which to me seem similar.
Looking for a better understanding.
a man, a plan, a canal, panama
I would much prefer WMA and WMV to be hacked! I find that much worse than Apples iTunes!
Can playfair be protected under the GNU GPL and be illegal in the US (under the DMCA) at the same time?
Evolution or ID?
I've read on several other Mac news sites (Macintouch, MacMinute, MacSlash) that FiarPLay is now called hymn (for hear your music anywhere). Why didn't Slashdot note this, or has there been a fork in the project?
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
...somewhere out there, someone will always have a pre-FairPlay vX copy. So for each time they fix it, they at best secure what is released between last time and now. Today that might not matter.
But if it comes down to "Sure, the last 30 years of music is bust, but we have protected the last 3 months worth" the DRM is essentially useless...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'm guessing that the decryption keys for the songs themselves didn't change. What they most likely changed with iTunes 4.5 was the method used to encrypt the iTunes keyring.
This is just a guess, however, I have no real info on the subject.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
This is probably the excuse the music industry is waiting for to force Apple to raise their rates in the future. It is the old "Gotta make up for revenue lost to piracy" excuse. You have to admit, that while this does provide an avenue for fair use, a large percentage of its use is going to be for piracy.
Will I use the new Hymn/Playfair program? Oh, probably - my .Mac account runs out and I'm not going to renew, and it's how I bought my iTunes songs in the past.
So, now I'm kind of boned (maybe - probably not, but maybe) in the future. Yes, I can "rip to audio-CD-and-then-to-MP3", but Hymn will make it all a "one stop shopping trip" for my fairly large iTunes store collection (hey, they had a special on classical music and BB King - give me a break).
Apple really doesn't have much to worry about, since people have to buy the music first before they can remove the Fairplay protections. And even if a bunch of butt-munches start "sharing" their music with others, that means more AAC files out there, which means a better chance we'll see more MP3 players that include AAC support in the future.
So while Apple doesn't have to worry about Fairplay, the fact is that the folks they get their music from - IE, the RIAA and even independant musicians - might like to hear that Apple's not letting just anybody give away their music without paying for it. Apple might not care, but since the place where they get music does, Apple's obligated to at least "fight the good fight" to show "due process" or some such.
Yeah, I'll use it, I know Apple will work to shut it down, but it should all be good in the long run.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
It's a great day! We found a new way to screw over the one company who actually found a way to provide what everyone said they wanted: convenient, electronic distribution of music at a fair price.
But wait, that's not really what they wanted. What they really want is stores with no cash registers and libraries of thousands of pieces of music representing the creative efforts of generations of people while valuing those libraries at zero.
Oh, and they also want to complain about greed.
I don't think so. Apple did counter the reverse-engineering with a second version, but at this point I think they realize that it is not cost effective to spend money on a problem that cannot be fixed. It takes Apple too much time and money to develop a new system. They will have to choose to 1. ignore it 2. change their philosophy
Personally, I think Apple should hire the person(s) that keeps reverse engineering it. Then they get a knowledgeable staff member, and don't have to worry about a new version being cracked... At least for a little while. :)
FSF India providing legal support
Hurrah! Finally the benefits of outsourcing are showing up.
We've outsourced our lawyers!
from Macworld
...Apple will respond by being glad that the site has been "Slashdotted" for Slashdot and the many other news sites linking to it.
DRM, copy protection.. it's all the same stuff, and it's never worked. I don't know what makes people think it can work now, when it has failed for the last 25 years.
The only successful DRM has been to have a completely proprietary platform like Apple or SGI. You also get the side bonus of locking your customers into only buying your proprietary hardware upgrades.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I do not want to get flamed, but honestly, when I read this stuff I wonder how everyone can get so pissed off when someone breaks the GPL yet be so supportive of someone doing this kind of work?
.m4p files into plain .m4a/AAC files. The reason people use PlayFair is to allow the use of iTunes-purchased files to be played back without having to use an iPod or iTunes. Sure this could lead to increased piracy, but so does buying a CD at Walmart.
For all of the lofty talk in the community, is it at it's root support for whatever it takes to get "what I want, free"?
There's a big difference here...
PlayFair decrypts
PlayFair still requires the music to be purchased in the first place. Apple's files (at the RIAA and record labels' demands) are still encrypted, even after "purchase".
PlayFair users are generally working with their own, purchased files. They are not dipping into some secret Apple server full of encrypted, unsold songs.
iTunes buyers simply want more freedom. They're using PlayFair to achieve this.
We have DRM'd music, what about Public-Private Key Encrypt'd music? Won't it ultimately come down to that, where the key's are owned by a company and you have to be connected online to listen to your music? It must be depressing to sell any type of software online... wait till nanotech does the same thing to the "real world" that dd and cp have done to the electronic world. My guess is either capitalism will fall, or liberty... at that point where you can replicate matter with ease, I doubt they can coexist.
Matt Fahrenbacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Frankly this is the only way I would even consider buying iTunes songs. I have no intention of sharing music illegally (I stopped using P2P networks a long time ago for reasons having nothing to do with RIAA), but the song files only do me any good if I can listen to them on non-Ipod portable players.
(Btw, I am not trying to be logged as an AC, I just can't seem to get my password to work this morning. Yes, I am that technically inept before I get my caffeine.)
-- dannotdan
Someone violating the GPL is using other people's work without giving them credit or compensation. It's copyright infringement.
Someone decrypting FairPlay'd songs has a whole host of reasons to do so, including using those songs in a fair use manner. You have to *buy* the songs before you can decrypt them.
Example: Say you want to convert the M4P's into MP3's for compatibility with your portable player. iTunes won't let you do that, without the tired hack of burning and reripping an audio CD. But if you FairPlay, you can decrypt the songs into M4A's and then iTunes will convert them to MP3's for you just fine. No (sane) laws have been broken, and it's perfectly ethical to do this. You're not giving away the music, you're just converting it to another format for compatibility with other devices. That's fair use, as I see it.
And frankly, getting iTunes store music, decrypting it, and sharing it isn't going to happen. Nearly everything you can get at the iTunes Music Store is *already* out there on the P2P networks. It's not like this creates more copyright infringement.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I support John Kerry. Recently, in a bid to be more palatable to US business interests, he had Steve Jobs (and Warren Buffet) sign on with his campaign. Jobs is advising him on tech issues. The same day this was annonced, Kerry spoke about trade with China and India -- his main trade priorities there will be to curb their "software piracy."
In my mind, this is clearly a short-sighted, feeble software priority. Clearly, the US should encourage open source code throughout the world for its verifiable security, standards support, freedom of use, and, as a commodity, for it's potential to further other entrepenurial endeavors (including the arts).
Instead, Jobs advises to spend energy and moral capital on saving his nihilistic compromise with the old-fashioned IP distributors.
Apple makes good hardware. They make some good software. They make pretty graphic designs advertising these wares. But their vision for Western culture is shallow and self-serving.
I think so also. As the couple of Slashdot articles in the past have stated, the more media coverage, the more your profits go up. Interestingly enough isn't it. Personally, I still think that iTunes was one of the better deals out there versus all those stupid excuses for companies tryin to imitate them. All we ask for is music that we'll buy that actually is worth what we pay for. Heck, what's the last "album" that you can remember worthwhile to pay for? Not many are out there when it comes to Top 40s.
-- Friends don't let friends buy Nokia.
Don't use them. Buy your music from other providers. The music is owned by its creators and its distributors. If you want free music, buy from artists who choose to give their music out freely. Respect the property rights of others.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
Also, it is legal in India.
Is there a way to emulate an iPod so those of us who don't have one can decrypt our songs?
I think anti piracy actions, and proper copyright enforcement is a good thing for free software.
Firstly the GPL (and other free licenses) get their strength from copyright law, without it they have much less value.
The second is that when people have to choose between expensive closed software, and cheaper free software, it will gain market share. Hopefully this will further development.
Next to none of its use will be for piracy. Why? Because the music is already out there. It's not like iTMS has anything special that isn't already shared. Okay, they do have the iTunes "Exclusives" that show up every once in a while, but beyond that I seriously doubt most people will be buying music and sharing it with the world. Hymn (as I see it's now called) will be mainly use for compatibility reasons. You should see the Apple forums, where the majority of questions are about how to play back iTunes Music Store songs on this or that MP3 player..
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Question with your idea that nanotech will cause capitalism to collapse.
Why? We would still need, services (doctors to design), raw material, and energy.
I'd think nanotech fabrication would only remove the manufacturing aspect, and this is happening in all the first world countries as we offshore it anyway.
And even if a bunch of butt-munches start "sharing" their music with others, that means more AAC files out there, which means a better chance we'll see more MP3 players that include AAC support in the future.
.m4a's up on Kazaa, tracing them back to the owner for major bustitude is trivial. Every file retains its signature. This should limit the appeal to pirates, at least the ones who don't put the files through a second process to remove it. And those guys will pirate things anyway no matter what format they're in.
And don't forget that FairPlay purposely leaves in the Apple ID used to purchase the song. So if people DO start putting their
I just wish I had either an iPod or a windows machine capable of running iTunes so I could use it. My G4s and linux boxen can't do it. And iPods are still way too expensive for me, so I guess I'm stuck with the CD -> mp3 method for now.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
According to MacWorld...
(Not really karma whoring, just adding the info that was in my submission... bah.)
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
What they really want is for the music they buy to be playable on the music playing devices that they own.
If someone is sharing music on P2P, I can virtually guarantee you that they ain't buying it from iTunes, and furthermore, this program will be of no use to them. You have to buy music to decrypt it. You can't decrypt other people's music.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
And even if a bunch of butt-munches start "sharing" their music with others, that means more AAC files out there, which means a better chance we'll see more MP3 players that include AAC support in the future.
I don't think apple would want that to happen. Such players would be direct competitors to the sweet but overpriced iPod. Their whole music business model is based on the iTunes/iPod combination.
I think it should be noted that: The software is now called HYMN for Hear Your Music aNywhere. The software has now made it so that while the DRM is stripped it KEEPS the AppleID inside of the song so that the original song can be traced back to its original owner if it were to show up on a p2p network. I think this is totally important and a GREAT stance for HYMN to take. While it allows fairuse of the songs to let us play them on Linux, 3rd party players, and Xbox Media Center, it still keeps copyright protection in mind. I'm really impressed with the developers for doing this.
Oh, I thought most people wanted cheap or free music. I wouldn't say everyone, because that is clearly not true.
It's free on the radio, why shouldn't it be free on the net.
with FSF India providing legal support. How will Apple respond?
The registered address of the hymn-project.org domain is in India, but for its "A" record I currently get the following:
OrgName: United Layer, Inc.
OrgID: LAER
Address: 1019 Mission Street
City: San Francisco
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94103
Country: US
So perhaps there remains a danger that Apple will simply DMCA this place as per usual.
- Brian.
Well, there are several opinions to that, so here's mine:
Fry this guy! Apple was the first to market with an online music store and is currently market leader. The Apple DRM system is probably the best out there when it comes to quality (AAC, much better than those crappy 128/192 KBps MP3s) and restrictions: Basically you can use the files on every computer in your household and iPod.
If you really want to hack a DRM system: Windows Media 9 is waiting for you and it will be the HD-DVD scheme both in coding and as DRM. Remember: If you break it now, make it to the press, the DVD Forum will not like using WM9. Clips are available here
What will Apple's reaction be? Well, the iPod has a lot of processing power (ARM core? Does anyone know the exact specs?) and it will survive the next generations of DRM change.
Hymn allows you to remove DRM -- it does not involve the unauthorised distribution of copyright material.
Nice try troll
A better comparison would be programming your own "Linux" to get around the GPL crap (go for it.) Nobody took Apple's software, they wrote their own.
Playfair actually decrypted the music directly, it didn't intercept it in Quicktime.
The key to decrypting iTMS files lies in its keyring. See, when you get "authorized" by Apple to play your purchased music, a key gets downloaded to your machine. This key is used to decrypt your music. The key is stored inside a keyring, and the keyring is encrypted using other information specific to your machine (Windows key, chunks off the BIOS, etc, etc).
The method to decrypt the keyring was reverse engineered, giving you the key, giving you the ability to decrypt the songs directly.
Simple.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
What is the point of this stupid game?
How exactly does letting me easily port my music library to the linux box that I want to listen to my music on screw over anyone??
It makes about as much sense as defending DVD region codes... "please, make it harder for me to use your product, that makes it much more likely that I'll buy it!"
And on that random segue... does anyone know what the official MPAA position is on what you're supposed to do when you move to a different continent, as I'll be doing later this year?
[TMB]
Actually, what they really want is to turn a profit, and look like The Good Guys in the eyes of John Q. DCMAer and Mr. RIAA Man.
The GPL isn't a form of DRM you wanker, it is a license which permits redistibution under certain conditions. DRM is a technological device which *denies* the owner of a product the *fair use* rights of copyright law. Device, license; device, license. See the differnece yet shit-for-brains?
You don't need an iPod. Just iTunes. If iTunes can play it, then this should be capable of decrypting it.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I'm inclined to jump on the bandwagon that says why mess with a good thing (Apple user, supporter). On the other hand, Hymn users would most likely have already bought music from the iTunes Music Store. That certainly doesn't hurt Apple. Although a DRM-stripped song might appear on a P2P network, it's not like that song hasn't been there forever anyway. Downloading DRM files from P2P then stripping them of DRM seems a bigger hassle then simply downloading the MP3 version in the first place. Besides, circumventing Apple's own DRM-stripping method using Hymn does save time and money. In the end, I just don't think it's a big deal anymore.
Where in the world did you get the idea that Apple wants iTunes shut down?
1. RIAA pulls the plug on iTunes
2. Apple (and therefore everyone else) no longer sells AAC encoded music
3. No one needs an iPod to play AAC files
4. iPod sales drop
5. Apple looses its lucrative music hardware market
iTunes and the iPod are intimately linked, kill one and the other will fester. Apple knows this and, despite currently getting the shaft on music file sales, will continue to support and protect iTunes and the FairPlay standard to maintain iPod's market.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
it's about fair use in the country the application was created. Same as a certain other application created in Russia to decrypt eBooks. You may argue that the application damages the community more than it helps the few who want to play these music files on nonsupported devices, but as you say we're all free to not use iTunes (I don't use iTunes and don't intend to).
All of these applications continue to raise the issue of globalization vs. property law, which is a sticky issue that needs to be thought out a bit further. In this respect, things like PlayFair serve to force the issue into discussion, for good or bad.
If we don't let our representatives know we are watching how they vote on this, Big Media will crush this legislation. If the /. community would spend a fraction of the time lobbying against laws like the DMCA as we do bitching about the companies that sue using it, PlayFair (and any other DRM cracker) would already be legal.
If someone "breaks" the GPL (presume you mean uses code released under the GPL without complying with the license) you've committed copyright infringement. There are specific affirmative defenses (e.g. "fair use", etc.) for copyright infringement.
If someone uses a tool to remove DRM from files purchased from iTMS then they've violated their purchase contract. There are specific affirmative defenses (e.g. illegal contract) for contract violation.
Sure sounds similar... Oh folks here can whine all they like about iTMS' contract being illegal because it deprives them of rights they think they should have under the First Sale Doctrine but that was in a case where there were no alternative ways to obtain the intellectual property.
Apple has given us the milk from their teat with iTMS. Its fun, fast fair, and although it has DRM, its as fair as fair can be. If we don't support this, then we might as well just give up to Microsoft.
SO you boys come and break the copy protection. This is the magic that makes the record companies allows apple to sell us this wonderful, almost magical service.
I used to download illegally, but I've spent $1,000 in iTMS. I listen to all the music because I don't really work, and my parents so far have come through and paid for it. I hope I pass all my classes.
Anyway Apple should sue and sue big, because these guys have broken the magic, and they might take iTMS away, and then I'll have to spend less money and get better sonic quality by buying CD's online.
Oh, you guys frost my doughnuts. If you don't like the EULA, then don't use it. Don't you realize how magical and wonderful iTMS is, and I don't want to lose it because its made by apple and its magical and wonderful and I don't want to miss a drop.
NM
" Don't forget that it continues to make the community look bad."
.. .. .. ..
I never thought of it that way. We did the wrong thing. I'm sorry.
Okay. I'm over it. I'm now heading back to kazaa and then I'll round out the afernoon by cracking iTMS a couple dozen times.
Has anyone actually gotten this program to work? I've never been able to get this program to work on my Windows system. It always spits out "Couldn't get DRM key for user." Even as I'm playing the song in iTunes, it still says it can't find the key. The instructions say you don't need an iPod for the Windows version... maybe it's not true.
I think the only way that Apple really can respond is to put together a new DRM scheme that is harder to crack and is more restrictive. If you're so worried about your precious music files than go out and buy a damn cd. No DRM, no compression. Or, just download a non-drm copy of the music from gnutella (which after you purchase a legal copy should be okay). I am just bitter because these people who are out trying to break every DRM scheme will eventually make the RIAA and labels not want to put music online. People said that they pirated music because they can't purchase it online, but now that they can purchase it online, the few who are trying to get more than they paid for (If you buy DRM music, you have no right to break the DRM) are likely going to mess it all up for the rest of us.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Breaking the DRM doesn't allow people to pirate the music. It's CD's and MP3's that make up the bulk of pirating. DRM or no, legitimately purchased AAC files don't make up any substantial portion of pirating anyways.
I would guess that approximately ZERO pirates have been twarted by DRM and LOTS of legitimate users have been annoyed by the restrictions.
Why are they (Apple|RIAA) so intent on DRM anyways?
Cheers.
This doesn't let you get your music for free; quite the opposite. It only lets you use songs that you paid for when and how you want.
Are you stupid or just trolling?
Never mind... its all the same in the end.
You forgot the most important word in that sentence... "legally".
I do respect artists rights, I buy all my music (which iTunes has made possible, before I did download songs if I wanted singles and not a whole album).
Now how about you respect my right to listen to the music how and where I want? I can already burn a CD with the music, so how is that really different than freeing up the song a little more than it is already so I can listen to it on my own computer which happens to be unauthorized? If I'm not sharing it with others than there really is no difference.
In short, I'll respect yours if you'll respect mine. Mutual respect is the key to having any respect at all. Apple has doen a pretty good job there, Hymn just ensures that the music I buy will always be accesible even if Apple (or iTunes) should go away someday and I can no longer authorize computers (or have to rely on a network connection being present for new computers).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This whole new HYMN approach is making me think - what if DRM were used to encode and protect the digital signature of the original purchaser of the music. You can play the music on any PC, digital device, etc, but the user's digital signature will allways travel with it. If you share it and it gets back the the RIAA, it is easily trackable with this Digital DNA back to the one and only registered owner who either gave the music away, in violation of the EUL/copyright laws or had it stolen, in which case the possesor of the music is in posession of stolen property.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
There goes that theory.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Would that be as in ...
Illegal fair use?
Illegal copy I make for my wife?
Illegal copy of music I already bought so I can take it in my car without worrying about car thieves stealing my only copy?
Illegal copy on my hard drive so when the less than immortal physical CD craps out I don't have to pay for a new copy at full price?
Illegal monopoly on region codes (violates WTO)?
Illegal price fixing (RIAA)?
Please clarify who you think is behaving illegally.
Infuriate left and right
OK, I'll admit up front that this is highly tinfoil hat, but I think it's kind of interesting to explore.
Anyway, the PlayFair people are promoting this as a fair use tool, and the software and the concept are logically consistant. But! What if they are operating under a "false flag"?
It's possible that they could be:
(a) Representing a disident wing of the RIAA. This wing dislikes Apple's DRM (too easy to convert back to MP3, too easily cracked AAC protection, etc), Apple itself, Steve Jobs personally, or they back another system/entity, or just don't like online sales at all (like outsourcing, they view it as the beginning of the end). Playfair is a way to undermine the DRM and, hence, undermine Apple/iTunes.
(b) Representing another entity competing with IMS. Make Apple's system look bad to the RIAA and you can undermine Apple's position with RIAA and strengthen your "better" version.
(c) Apple itself. With music stores popping up faster than zits on a 13 year old, and other DRM systems portable to more competing portables, Apple plays a phone game of tit-for-tat with the Playfair developers to keep the RIAA going. As long as sales stay up, RIAA is placated and Apple's system attracts a critical mindshare leadership for its simple crackability (ala Apex DVD players).
I know that they're all probably not true, but it's an interesting theory. RIAA and others chase mysterious "hackerz", meanwhile a hidden agenda is advanced.
Anybody seen my hat? It's kind of metallic and shiny.
Fair use does not gurantee you to the right to a perfect copy.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
This argument needs to go to sleep and fast.
;)
Burn protected AAC to CD Media.
Rip with VBR --r3mix -b112 with lame or your favorite encoder.
Play on whatever you want.
And the 'compression' argument doesn't hold water unless you have a $10k set of speakers to listen to it on powered by a McIntosh analog amp. And if you have that you're just a cheap a$$ bastard for not buying the music.
I burn all sorts of CDs and listen to them in my cars, my stereo, etc. I can't tell the difference between it and my lossless compressed burns when they are side by side. Granted I've not paid for a song I have and tried it but if you decompress a 128k AAC and a flac compressed one and play them on the same stereo they sound no different
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
...that I'm not going to be giving the FSF any money this year if they're going to use it to support this kind of crap.
You over simplified it; it should really read "If you make it better and distribute your changes, you need to make your changes available.
It's quite legal to make all the changes you want to GPLed software and not tell anyone or give them away if you just keep your changes in-house.
I would much prefer WMA and WMV to be hacked! I find that much worse than Apples iTunes!
Here's a link. I haven't personally tried it, since I don't have any MS DRMed files, but I've heard it does actually work.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
Everyone here saying "but it only removes the copy protection, you still had to buy it" Same is true for CDs. Someone had to buy it somehwere. Didn't stop them from sharing them all over God's green earth. Expect the same with AAC files if this continues
You want to show some support for Hymn? One way is to buy some iTunes songs, to show that increasing freedom of music only leads to more sales! If everyone from /. went and bought a song or two, that would show a nice jump.
I plan to buy a CD or two this week to show that just because I can free up my music doesn't mean I'm going to stop buying or shipping my music out to everyone on the planet.
You can also fill out a form to let Apple know you'd like Hymn to stay around and it will increase you purchases there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Therefore the PlayFair people are pirates."
No, they're people who want to use music they purchased in a way that Apple doesn't want you to... outside of iTunes.
With this patch, I can use non-Apple players, I can move it to my other computer (without asking for Apple's permission).
One thing it does not do is allow you to "steal" music. It requires you buy the music first, because the decryption depends on your personal key.
So instead of grousing about people just making use of what they paid for, maybe you ought to take your beef up with RIAA and Apple trampling all over your rights.
And for what? Overpriced, underperforming music?
Shit. You'd sell your mother for a candy bar if that's how you feel.
One change mentioned on the page (if anyone actually read it) is that the new version strips the DRM, but leaves intact the Apple User ID who originally purchased the song. That is pretty cool - as it give them some legal justification. If people share stuff they can be ID'd. This is perfect for me, as I just wanted to be able to play my songs on whichever computer I use but wouldn't share them with anyone other than my wife. (Which for all I know, might be illegal, but WTF is with that?)
Cool
FSF India providing legal support.
Hmmm. I wonder if businesses might start picking up on the idea that outsourcing their software to india might not be a great idea.
I doubt Apple is seriously concerned about PlayFair. The purpose of a lock really is to keep honest people honest. It's just a minor inconvenience for someone determined to get at the contents. Apple just wants to make it trivial+1 effort to keep most people from breaking it because it's too much of a chore. That's why they let you burn it to a CD and re-import as MP3 or whatever, but not convert directly to MP3--to make it too much of a hassle for most users to massively violate the agreement.
Sharing of CD's is okay. Always has been.
Making a 2nd copy of a CD is okay for use in listening in your car. Always has been.
You're a victim of brainwashing if you think that's not true. Its only been recently that the media cartels have assaulted our fair use rights.
If that's okay with you fine. But some of us will ignore EULAs and make use of our rights.
its not about "stealing" music, its about using music we've paid for in a way that suits us, not apple and the riaa.
How come all it seems to take is the mention of Apple, and all the things slashdotters normally hate, such as DRM, and restrictive click-through agreements that prohibit reverse engineering, suddenly become the best thing since sliced bread?
I'm not sure why it was modded down.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"AAC encodings have more quality for size. It is making copyright infringement more efficient."
This is so over the top stupid, but I hear Apple fanatics say it all the time.
A few FAQ's here for you genius:
1) One codec will produce the same *size* file as another at the same bit rate
2) AAC in listening tests seems to be sound better than MP3 at the same bit rate, but on the other hand, 192kb/s MP3 have been shown to be a better sonic quality than 128kb/s AAC's
"Structured society is all about trading certain rights for benefits,"
Those rights are already well defined in existing copyright law, including Fair Use exceptions. You seem to be willing to trade Fair Use away so you can get sub-par music quickly. I'm not.
"It's called being an adult."
Part of being an adult is to know when to say NO to new and shiny. Life isn't all about instant gratification. Instant gratification says "I'll trade my fair use rights so I can use my iPod better". That's called being an adult, too.
It's not like fairplay has to break an encryption scheme; it just has to break an obfuscation scheme. It's hard to call DRM "encryption" if you give the freaking private key to the people from whom you're trying to hide your data, but that's what you have to do if you want them to be able to play it at all.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Don't like the current terms? Don't buy off the iTMS. Nobody is holding a gun to your head.
I hear some people say they want to play iTMS songs on their linux box. There is a simple way to do with, burn them onto a CD with your mac or windows box.
The guys writing Playfair are obviously amoralists. Please go away and get some help with your sociopathic issues.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
There's nothing truly compelling on iTMS that can't be found physically or on p2p. If you want to use songs with your non-iPod player, buy the fucking cd or just get it for free like you probably do anyway.
.ogg's.
Half the people here crying out "it's about fair use!!111" probably don't use iTMS anyway. I -do-. I also recently bought an iPod. Not because I couldn't listen to the purchased songs on anything else - I owned a -cd player- before this. I just find that the iPod suits me better.
Really if you're spending that much money on iTMS, why would you buy a different player? No one's going to spend $600 on there but buy a different mp3 player for their ~20
--Moo.
trying to argue against FairPlay, you've now argue that downloading is illegal.
Duh.
PlayFair does NOT allow you to download files from the internet. It removes the DRM that blocks fair use.
The site is becoming slow. I have a fast Internet2-enabled University connection, so anyone can download quickly from these. This has enough bandwidth for all of you. :)
It's probably a DMCA-banned circumvention device, but these are my last days on ResNet. *sniff*
Here's a mirror:
UNIX-style source: http://128.220.38.69:8071/hymn-0.6.0.tar.gz
Windows binaries: http://128.220.38.69:8071/hymn-0.6.0.zip
Mac binaries (with GUI): http://128.220.38.69:8071/hymn-0.6.0.dmg
You can check my MD5SUMs against the official ones, http://hymn-project.org/download/MD5SUM .
"How will Apple respond?"
They will hire Cowboy Neal to beat the crap out of them with a big stick!!!
AaaarrrrrRR!!!!
...to never give the FSF a penny. Or a rupee, in this particular case.
The parent of this comment is a mirror of the files. It seems informative.
|/usr/games/fortune
Minors may enter into binding contracts, there's nothing stopping them from doing so. The difference is that minors' contracts are usually voidable to the loss of the non-minor party to the contract. The exception is for "necessaries," something like necessities, but more stringent (i.e. when there's another source for a necessity, it's not a necessary). All of this is based on Anglo-American jurisprudence.
Essentially, if you're under 18, you can make any contract, hold the other party to it, etc., but (exceptions aside) you can always get out of your obligations.
and you will get the anwer:
Why NOT break a DRM that can be easily broken.
Path to enlighenment is via changing perceptions...
The ultimate slashdot fantasy! riaa vs. Microsoft
"How will Apple respond?" By hacking Windows Media Player 9's DRM themselves because the so-called L33t haxx0rz seem too lazy to do it themselves and seem to only want to damage Apple's ability to "protect" the Industry's Intellectual property, which only makes Microsoft's push to control everything more convincing as they hold the unbroken DRM seal.
Something intelligent here.
I love how they don't close their nobr causing a lack of linebreaks throughout the page (depending on the browser you use, as is not standard HTML, but an extension.)
It's about time Apple put Akamai to some real work--
DoS attacking India
Last I heard, you had to actually purchase the music and have a iTMS account for Fairplay to work. It won't work on that AAC file you grabbed off of Kazaa, because you don't have a valid key to begin with. This is clearly a fair use issue, not one of copyright infringement.
I just burned my ability to mod this discussion, but that had to be said.
BTW, in Canada, downloading music from the internet for your personal use is explicitly legal. Further, based on a recent court ruling it appears that leaving files in a folder available for sharing is also legal (so long as it is other people pulling them from you rather than you pushing them).
Is realease a Fairplay codec for xmms, etc. If one can play iTMS files on linux, odds are that people will stop cracking it since if they wanted to "steal" music, there are easier ways.
It only worked with the very first versions of WMP 7 for W9x/2k (when the MSDRM v2 first appeared), but MS soon patched it, and the patch was bundled with a security update.
And yes, I've tested it myself, back in 2002. I no longer have any machines running Windows, but i still have this screenshot, taken from WMP8.
As you can see, the DRM terms of the files were pretty draconian - one could not even back up licenses. As a result, when I was forced to re-installed Windows, the files were rendered unusable (as the licenses were lost). I still have them analogically re-recorded, but for my ears at least, the quality is not the same.
For anyone interested, the files were downloadable for those, who had purchased a limited edition of Nightwish album called Century Child. They included their old demo songs, which have never been published anywhere else.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
"The guys writing Playfair are obviously amoralists"
I agree. As someone else put it so beautifully, apple is doing the equivalent of giving us mother's milk, perfect and pure with iTMS.
To break it is so, so wrong. I'm afraid my iPod will no longer work, and I'll have to go back to buying CD's.
I like iTMS, because it lets me show my support for Apple. I try to wear Apple branded clothes and a bumper sticker to show other people that I support apple. I feel good about myself when I do that.
"... and it's perfectly ethical to do this."
That's an opinion, not a fact. I personally think that using software that may lead the RIAA to kill iTunes is unethical because it screws me.
Wait a second here.. How is me decrypting music leading the RIAA to kill iTunes in any way? Answer: It ain't.
Look at it this way.. say I developed equivalent code to Playfair, for my own usage. Never released it to anybody. Just used it myself to exercise my fair use rights. Decrypted my purchased music, converted it to a format compatible with the player I bought in a store, and happily listened away.
Where is that unethical? I paid for the music. I paid for the player. I've not done anything illegal. Okay, I broke the iTunes usage terms, but beside that, where has any wrongdoing occured? The RIAA wouldn't know. Apple wouldn't know. There'd be no issues whatsoever with this.
No, what you are arguing is that RELEASING CODE to allow others to exercise their fair use rights is somehow unethical. You're saying that because now everybody can exercise their fair use rights, and because it's reasonably easy to do so, that somehow that's unethical. You're saying that it's unethical for me (as a developer) to tell other people (by handing them a piece of code) how to do something that's perfectly legal for them to do (indeed, protected by fair use). You're saying that's unethical?
I admit that under the DMCA, me handing out that code might indeed be illegal, but unethical? I can't see how you could successfully argue that.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Yeah so what. This doesn't hurt apple a bit, it doesn't hurt the riaa a bit, and it makes everybody's life easier.
The only people reacting to this are knee-jerk Apple defenders. If you find yourself *angry* about this program, you fit into this category. Please just go hang yourself, because you're being a stupid PITA.
Right now, under the laws of the United States, we have the right to make music compilations and give them to friends and family. There are no limits to how many times we can do this or how many people we give them to. DRM takes away that right away.
If you feel like turning over your rights to corporate America, then so be it. Fortunately, not everyone shares your view.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
And I for one welcome our new anti-corporate open-source hippy weed-smokin' bastards.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
To you, HP is the most important point. That's fine. To others, it would be reputation. But it would be silly to say "Only buy this brand of car because its good enough".
Now all I need is faad to support Apple Lossless codec and I can listen to everything I own on Linux.
because i'm pretty savvy at getting rid of my 9-18 month old macs on eBay, i'm often turning over my computers.
twice now, i've had a machine leave me without deauthorizing it. once because i forgot to, and once because it died on me totally (iBook repair program).
So i have yet 1 machine that is authorized - and rather than do an XP-like "mother may I" call to Apple to pay for music i've paid for - i'd rather just run this app, move my music to whatever machine i've got - and keep buying more music.
there are lots of good reasons for this - few are bad - and since my ID is still attached - its not like i could easily get away with using it on a P2P anyhow.
I use iTunes because it works better than p2p, and will keep on doing so so long as Apple doesn't stop me from using what i've bought.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Due to the nature of emulation, PearPC is quite slow (the client will run about 500 times slower than the host).
So PearPC is written in Java, then?
Ba-ZING!
Microsoft's WMA technology included DRM long time ago, still nobody was able to touch it up to now ... Apple releases the same kind of tehnology and gets busted in LESS THAN 24 HOURS! ... and not for the first time!
/. doing?
... simply amazing!
and consequently, what's everybody on
bitching the whole day about the bad-quality software released by MS and the great, secure, stable and so on stuff that Apple makes
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Fairplay does not deny your right to fair use.
True. Fairplay LIMITS your right to fair use.
While fairplay doesn't prevent you completely from exercising your fair use rights, it does severely limit them.
Fair use does not gurantee you to the right to a perfect copy.
Actually it does. You have the right to make a perfect digital copy, IF YOU CAN. Playfair makes it so this is possible.
Life is too short to proofread.
Yet another reason I LOVE Steve Jobs and HATE Bill Gates. Got to love a guy who built his companies first computers in his garage. Steve Jobs knows whats up, Billy just knows buisness.
:-P)
His only BIG buiness mistake was closing down the hardware and making it propitary. If only Apple would A) port OS X to x86's or B) let the OSS community do it for them, I would most likly be running OS X rather than Gentoo Linux. (I know thats blasphamy
Found some more screenshots in a german forum. Seems to work well enough. Though he reports menus take 2 secs to drop down. Not that bad.
Ok, slighty off topic, but now knowing that there is software to rp out Apples DRM, has anyone gotten the windows port of iTunes to run under WINE? Guess I could just run iTUnes and Hymn on my PowerBook, and transfer teh files over to my Linux Box once the DRM is ripped out. ;-)
The limit was bumped up to 5 machines recently. That helps a little bit.
It would be nice though if Apple let you deauthorize a machine from their web site. People will forget to deauthorize machines before they sell them. It would be a lot easier to deauthorize via the web rather than requiring that you contact Apple.
Anywhere doesn't start with N, but Nowhere does.
Hear Your Music Nowhere?
Keep in mind that I am not trying to defend Microsoft's DRM, my position is that BOTH DRMs are bad. Anyway, my real question is, what makes Apple so perfect and Microsoft so wrong?
It's a simple matter of history. For the past 10 years, Microsoft has behaved atrociously in any market where they have had a stake. They have run roughshod over consumer interests, antimonopoly laws, and have singlehandedly destroyed free market competition.
While no one can be sure, many of those who mod pro-MS DRM (or pro MS anything) negatively are relying on their historical knowledge of MSs behavior. Apple generally have not abused the markets in which they compete (though they have been known to do so: e.g. Final Cut Pro, though that is debatable given Adobe's letting Premeire languish).
So, long story short, people mod pro-MS posts negatively and pro-Apple posts positively because they recognize that the two companies are DIFFERENT. It's not only what you say, but of whom you say it, and let's be realistic. Given the chance, MS would almost certainly use any DRM scheme it controlled in a way that abused its monopoly position. Apple doesn't have a monopoly it can abuse. Its lead in digtial music sales is independent of its horrifyingly low desktop market share.
In context-sensitive debates involving IT, it does matter if you are talking about IBM, SCO, Apple or, Microsoft. Funny that you can't seem to understand that people use what they know when deciding whether to moderate up or down.
blog
So if you are say a graduate student in the United States and you move back to India after having purchases some music on itunes what do you do? Are you legally obligated to delete them?
If you are on a business trip to India, is it then legal?
-- john
Bill gates started teh same way as jobs.
They're two peas in a pod. Steve Jobs just seems hipper. You're the kind of guy who thinks "TOMMY BOY" on a sweater makes it "cooler".
Its all about image.
I had the same question, I'd really like to convert my workstation to Linux and still use iTunes. It is nice that at least I can play my iTunes musci there now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The iTMS is a service, not a God-given right, and if you don't agree to the terms of the contract...
I agree to the terms of the contract that do not violate the law. However, no contract can supersede the law in these matters. The anti-reverse engineering clause, for example, is illegal, or at least unenforcable. I have the right to reverse engineer for several purposes, including compatibility. Even says so in the DMCA of all places.
Just agreeing to a contract can't take away rights that the law may give you. That's why there's always a clause at the end that says if any part of the contract is voided due to supercedeing law, the rest of the contract still applies.
So here's the deal: I *can* decrypt my purchased music, and I *can* convert it to other formats, and I *can* put it on other players than the iPod. And I can do all this and *still* be abiding by the terms of that contract. Because these are rights that you can't simply click away from yourself.
This is moot for me, BTW, as I own an iPod, but the point still stands.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
So when there is no need for manufacturing companies, they will collapse. Isn't that the point of capitalism? Things that aren't needed don't exist.
Marketing will be important, I'd say more important. With nearly unlimited options you'll have trouble choosing the right or best one.
Copying other designs may happen, but then many will pay a premium for custom work.
I will trade a custom car design for some custom art.
Read a bit more science fiction, there are many solutions to these problems.
There's really nothing else that Apple can do. If they ignore PlayFair, the RIAA will surly pull the plug on iTunes.
Except for one thing - iTunes is making a LOT of money for the RIAA and associated companies! As iTunes grows in use and popularity, Apple has much more of a stick to brandish and show music companies that even with tools like Hymn, sales can continue to grow. I think that was Apple's plan all along, to start with the least restrictive DRM possible and then relax it further as time went on and the music companies became more comfortable with the whole thing (witness the recent relaxation of number of computers to five instead of two) - they only dislike Hymn because it accellerates the time table faster than they would like.
The RIAA could possibly pull the plug (not sure what the contracts are like) but will they do it if they throw away a ready cash flow in the process? You can argue other things they have done have hurt sales, but only from a theoretical standpoint - iTunes represents a very concrete flow of money that I'm not sure the RIAA would have the gumption to shut the valve on.
So now the question is - is Apple willing to undergo the expense of a legal battle they are pretty sure they will lose and not even agree with, or are they strong enough to tell the music companies they cannot fight it from the start?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I really like this. Even more now that they leave the ID info intact.
This program is made to circumvent DRM, but not to pirate. As such it allows fair use as stipulated under copyright law
IANAL but I don't like this trend of locking in the user more and more. There was never any real action against people taping their LP's in the time when my back didn't hurt that much after sex.
I'm actually from the other side (involved with a label) I and don't think pirating stuff is in some weird way noble and nice, but like almost everybody on that side of the fence, I do like music - a lot more than most Britney Spear copying idiots I'm sure - and I do buy the stuff, and I can't foretell on what equipment I'll be wanting to play it on in a couple of years time. So the more options I have, the happier I am.
That doesn't mean I want Apple to support every music format possible, I like their focus on ease of use... When I was a kid I also had to find out how my cassette player and mixing desk had to be hooked up in order to copy. But nobody was actively trying to make my life difficult either.
On that: Apple needs to show it's "concerned" and needs to be seen to try and do something about this - it's a lawyer thing, else they don't uphold their part of the bargain - but really, do you think deep down they really care? There isn't a company that's more into music than Apple. They know very well what reality looks like and how consumers think.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
But you are acting as if this ridiculously convoluted way of getting mp3s is a "feature", which it's obviuosly not since this story demonstrates that they don't want you removing the DRM.
I can burn a CD with ANY song I purchase. That removes the DRM, and they explicitly allow that - end of story. They don't care if you remove the DRM, only HOW it is done.
This is much more about control of data conversion paths than about DRM specifically (only a form of that).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you really don't understand this, you've missed the point of the GPL completely. The issue is not, at heart, that the GPL is a form of copyright, but that it's a form of copy*left*--i.e., a license intended to destroy (software) copyright from within. When people break the GPL, they are (generally) doing so in the interests of restricing the freedom of people like us to do as we see fit with the code in question. By constrast, when people like DVD Jon, etc., "break" DRM schemes, they are doing so with the explicit intent of *increasing* (or rather restoring) our freedom. That's the difference.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
I just converted my whole library at work, with no error messages at all.
Now everyone can listen to my shared iTunes library on random and not have to worry about "not authorized" messages breaking the flow of music.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Congratulations, someone cracked the iTunes DRM. Honestly, good job. I wouldn't have been able to do it. But what would really be nice is if someone cracked the DRM on WMA files. Then, of the few songs that you can't purchase from iTunes, you could buy them from a WMA based music store and play those songs on any computer/music player too.
See, WMA is even more restricted. WMA-only music players using Windows operating systems.
The cracked iTunes DRM now allows for purchased music on ANY device capable of playing a music file. Complete compatability
yes, an iPod is an investment in a service since after all, it only plays iTMS music, it can't play a multitude of other non DRMed formats.
Who in the name of fuck moderated this insightful?
An iPod is perfectly capable of playing MP3s.
I am an avid customer of the iTunes store, but since day one I haven't been able to listen to my music "where I want to" because a) I already have a player that's not an iPod (several if you count my discman), and b) when I tried burning my iTMS files to audio CD format they wouldn't play in anything other than the computer that burned them (actually, this also happened when burning any audio cds-- anyone out there smarter than me know why the disc's track markers after #2 aren't being recognized?).
I will be downloading Playfair and using it on my files, because it is one fix that will work. If I share them, it will only be through the iTunes sharing mechanism (which is a damn nifty way to share, I might add). And again, if anyone can tell me why my CD-R drive doesn't want to burn properly, then I will gladly not use Playfair.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
But your iTMS account name still remains coded in the hymn-altered file.
Leela: "You can't just sit here in the dark listening to classical music." (classical music in the year 3000 = Sir Mixalot, Baby Got Back)
Fry: "I could if you hadn't turned on the lights and shut off the stereo."
"And Apple hasn't tightened the noose; it's loosened it probably in response to PlayFair. They allowed for authorization on 2 additional machines, but took away 3 burns"
+2-3 = -1
" (oh boohoo, like I'm going to burn the same playlist 7 times)"
Oh boohoo like I'm going to burn the same playlist 3 times.
Oh boohoo like I'm going to burn the playlist once.
Oh boohoo, like I'm going to play it on 5 machines at once.
Oh boohoo, like I'm going to play it on 2 machine at once.
Oh boohoo, like I'm going to play the same music 10 years from now.
Oh boohoo, like I'm going to play the same music 1 year from now.
Oh boohoo.
"I hope I can see the moderation of your post in the meta-mod panel just so I can make sure whatever imbecile modded you as "insightful" never gets mod points again."
The people modding down are using 'Overrated' to try to avoid meta mod penalties. Good counter points are being modded down to avoid discussion. I hope I see the people who modded you up in meta mod.
this is going to lose sound quality.
So chkdsking what? Low-pass filtering, sampling, and quantizing the singer's voice in the studio during the production of the recording lost quality. But if the transcoding process keeps enough quality that the second layer of added noise doesn't make the resulting recording unsuitable for its intended purpose, is there a problem? Or have you personally tried transcoding and has it failed to keep a recording listenable when played through a typical $200 stereo like mine?
Your argument is equivalent to: I don't mind DRM because I can just hold a cassette recorder in front of my computer speakers
In degree the arguments are not equivalent. A consumer cassette deck will introduce more noise than burning to CD-RW, ripping, and transcoding.
I guess Hear Your Music ANywhere just didn't sit right...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
... ok, I did a Googe search. For anyone interested, here is a Google search for Winamp AAC plugin downloads.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Quite honestly, I don't see the point to all the Apple-bashing. You can burn unlimited, unprotected CDs. Do that, re-encode your music however you want, and delete the m4p file. It doesn't take a genius to do that.
This post is right-on.
Apple has a record of just dropping stuff and walking away. Sure it sells iPods, but if the business changes a little then they could/will just drop the online music store and walk away. There is no profit for Apple in selling the music, only in supporting iPods, if piracy threatens the business, then Apple will do it's usual trick of sacking the department and moving on. For personal use, OK, but I know that not everyone is that honest so it is being used by someone to pirate music, there is no real excuse, just because you can do the same by other means, does not make it right. It is alway a few that stuff things up for the rest of us.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
"You have purchased a copy, but not a dispensation to copy."
I know vaguely what you mean, but if what you're saying is true, then he has no right to:
a) Back up his music collection
b) move it from one folder to another
c) do anything with it except press the "play" button.
If the argument is that "he can't change it", then does that mean he can't:
a) Change the name of the file
b) Change any kind of ID3 tags in the file (if AAC supports that)
c) go in and change 1 bit
I don't know the right answer, but I suggest that copyright in this case has to be a little bit more sophisticated that what you say.
Perhaps that's why everyone relies on EULA's, because copyright cannot be as encompassing as you suggest; it has to leave leeway, but not too much?
Meanwhile, the law would suggest that for personal use, copying and modifying something you've purchased is okay, and thus we have a dilemna here.
Either we have to grant content producers (and law enforcement) draconian measures to enforce these new super-copyrights, or the concept of DRM will fail and copyright will be forced into a circa 1990's model. I don't see how you can go much beyond DMCA at this point and not make a significant portion of the population a criminal for copying a TV program or music.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Contract laws require that you actually receive something in exchange for what you are offering. Now, the theory behind the EULA is that your computer (and through extension, you) makes a copy when you run it, as such, you need a license to copy. However, Copyright law specifically allows fair use
What 17 USC 117 giveth, 17 USC 1201 taketh away. Here's how it goes for boxed proprietary software:
When I purchase a program, law (and judicial precident) say I have the right to reverse engineer it. I simply remove the so-called EULAs from the program.
Not in the United States. The installer "effectively controls access" to the program, and modifying it circumvents the access control and violates the DMCA. Details
> In the United States, we do have the right to read books.
Yeah, I think you're right about books that someone is publishing with that intention, but it looked like the poster was indicating that someone else has the right to make a book you cannot read without buying his/her "decoder glasses." You do have a right to read books, but you do not have the right to read just any old book. For example, say I have a personal diary and an unfinished autobiography. They are both my property that I explicitly state on the cover are NOT for anyone else's use. So trim that down to any book that you have lawfully acquired or obtained the author's permission to read (such as the implicit arrangement at the library, where you are free to read it without paying money).
Now, the example of private books aside, just because someone wants to communicate an idea at all doesn't give you the right to hear it. Only if they intend that idea to be readable by all do you have a right come into play, the right not to have it be censored by the government. If I intend to write a book for my 5 closest friends to read, and I use this book encoding and give them "decoder glasses," you have no right to read it, and it is wrong for you to break the encryption. I'm not going to bother to think about whether it is/should be legal because by now any correlation between "right" and "legal" has been washed away by a crapload of lobbyist bribe money so it's a pointless exercise.
Anyway, in the same way, if I want to write a book for my paying customers to read, and I use the same book encoding, and give my customers the decoder glasses, you should not break the encryption. Just like you should not trespass and you should not read your friend's diary you find lying around. Even if you do have a key to either of those, or find a way to pick the lock.
And I can't believe this has strayed so far from the ITMS. In this case, publishers have made some "encoded" books that in some ways require "publisher-controlled" technology. This is basically only the restriction that you have to have iTunes in order to buy the songs. Which is free. But if you don't have a Mac or Windows box, they aren't really targeting you (since they refuse to sell you this version of the "book" at all if you aren't already using iTunes), so it's not nearly as sinister as the "book-and-glasses" racket we keep discussing here. So the "decoder glasses" are free and fit on 98% of people's heads. If you don't have an iPod or a CD player, then no, you can't play it on a portable without about 5 minutes of burn-and-rip per CD. In the same way, you can't play a CD on a tape player without one of those little tape adapters you buy for $15. Life is hard. Some formats are different and incompatible with others. It's not a sinister plot against you. It's just that no one cares that deeply about your needs here. The store is there just to sell iPods in the first place. Break the encryption if you can, to avoid having to burn-and-rip, that's fine, it's the same as burn-and-rip so it doesn't really bother my ethical nerve. But some people need to shut up with the sense of entitlement here. (Not referring the parent personally, just all the whiners.) Just because you don't have an iPod doesn't mean Apple's obligated to make it easy for you to play your ITMS tracks on a WMA player. Just as Honda's not obligated to help you fit Honda parts on your Nissan. Honda parts are made for the benefit of their customers, and ITMS tracks are published in the format they are in for the benefit of (A) Apple iPod customers, and, because Apple's not evil, (B) anybody who can play a Compact Disc.
Speaking of Compact Discs, they DO provide a "non-encoded" version of these "books." Perhaps you've heard of it. It's called Compact Disc Digital Audio. Have a look at one next time you see a Virgin Megastore or Tower Records. Or even deepdiscountcd.com. That's the reason why all this is a moot point. You aren't being deprived here. A store-boug
If it produces a generational loss
The difference is one of degree. If a consumer cassette deck recording from a consumer mic will introduce 1.0 generation of loss, then burn-rip-transcode will introduce what, 0.1 generation?
then its okay, but if its a direct copy, its not?
This is the exact reasoning the RIAA uses.
is that an actual quote or a case of mind reading?
cheers
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Fairplay does not deny your right to fair use.
It just makes it non-obvious how to do so and a pain in the ass to do so. You need to figure out and write, or obtain, software like PlayFair to be able to do many forms of fair use.
In conjuction with the DMCA, yes, it does in fact attempt to deny (criminalize) fair use.
Fair use does not gurantee you to the right to a perfect copy.
Correct. What it does is grant you TOTAL IMMUNITY when you *DO* create a copy, including a perfect copy.
Just because FairPlay 'permits' some forms of fair use does not mean they get any special power to do squat when you go ahead and engaging in any other sort of fair use you like.
Just because they 'permit' pun-based parody doesn't mean they can do anything when you go ahead and engage in some other form of parody.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
"Oh, I guess the world wants freely-distributable music, let's give it to them."
The ironic part is that the bulk of sales are in this format.
CD's are digital, excellent quality, DRM free, non-copy protected.
AND THE INDUSTRY LOVES WHEN I BUY ONE!
I don't understand why they think people will give up CD's for crappy (128kb/s AAC) DRM's music.
A few days ago my sister was trying to give me some pepsi bottle caps good for free iStore music.
I had to refuse.
She couldn't becouse her computer is dead.
I can't becouse I don't run Windows.
PlayFair is so that we of the Linux croud can actually use iStore.
I don't know if I could make any use of an ipod from Linux and frankly why should I do any research on Apples behalf?
Compaq and Dell aren't in the os wars. They don't care if Microsoft has total domination of the market so long as they stay in business.
Apple however. I understand the need to support Windows and the need to support some sort of content control.
However why is Apple leaving Linux at a disadvantage?
Playfair is trying to bring to Linux what Apple did not. They throw in a few advantages above and byond just to make it worth the effort.
And that is how things work in open source. Exclude Linux and someone will fix it and make it better.
Want your restrictions? Then give us iTunes. Give us support. Open source? Let's draw the line at a Linux binary. Works for Real Media so I don't see why not.
Continue to ignore Linux and you'll continue to see software like Playfair stripped of content controls.
As for me...
No playfair, No itunes, no istore.
The pepsi bottle caps go in the trash.
I drink Jolt anyways.
I don't actually exist.
The DMCA is evil. I really mean that. And there is no excuse for using it. In the case I hope you agree that the RIAA's demands are unjust. They want to have online music systems treated with stronger copyright laws than traditional media even though the Internet cries out for weaker protection. It's a losing battle but they are willing to take as many people down with them as they can. Why should I support that?
It does not generate keys. It's the equivalent of a program which removes the key from Microsoft Windows. This removes the DRM which makes the file only work on certain systems. It does not generate any keys.
The parent to your post was correct. Allowing you to burn to cd's was a feature, but then ripping those cd's to mp3 was probably not an intended use.
How can you say that? When you turn something into a CD, anything you can do with a CD becomes part of the intended use. Do you honestly think Apple never imagined that would be done?
What benefit does control of data conversion paths bring to apple?
It allows Apple to make sure the meta-data they want to stay with the songs stays wth them when songs are staying in digital formats, for one thing. (like the purchasers ID), and also make sure that all pats will work without a hiccup (the same reason for somewhat locked down hardware, that Apple can ensure a known set of behaviour).
DRM is one form of control, as I said a subset.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
but burning to cd, and then ripping to mp3 breaks that. So why are you saying that they intended to keep that intact, and intended for people to burn cd's and re-rip mp3's?
Actually, if you burn to CD and re-rip in iTunes it does preserve the ID3 information. I'm not quite sure how, but try burning a CD with iTunes and you'll see what I mean (when you insert a CD you see the track info for any custom CD you've burned). Perhaps it's only aviliable on the same copy of iTunes, or perhaps they have meta-data they put onto the CD. But they do preserve the information. Come to think of it, I've never checked to see if the AppleID is one of the things preserved in that chain though...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley