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.
...Apple should hire the guys, as they are obviously at least as good as the guys they have now.
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.
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
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
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'
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.
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.
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.
Bull! The music is owned by the public but the artists or whoever shafts them are granted by us a (supposedly) time limited monopoly on that work during which they can make money. This is incentive for people to actually create things.
Disney, et al. have perverted this system so that an artists grand-children can milk money from their works. They have also worked hard to mislead people about copyright. In your case they have succeeded.
If you want free music, buy from artists who choose to give their music out freely. Respect the property rights of others.
No argument.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those that need closure
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.
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
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
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.
Illegal fair use?
Fair use includes making a backup copy. I don't believe making a backup includes downloading one from the Internet (but that is open to interpretation).
Illegal copy I make for my wife?
Doesn't fall into the downloading category.
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?
Again, doesn't fall into the downloading category.
Illegal monopoly on region codes (violates WTO)?
I don't see how this has anything to do w/this topic. We are talking about music not region coded DVDs/games.
Illegal price fixing (RIAA)?
They were found guilty and supposedly paid the price they deserved. The open debate about the severity of the fine is irrelevant.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
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 .
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.