How To Play Your iTunes Music On Other Systems

ptorrone writes "Engadget has a step-by-step for the non-uber geek on how to play your purchased music from iTunes on other systems. To be clear, this isn't a way to take music you bought and give it to someone else, this is so you can listen to your own purchased music on other systems or devices. In fact, your personal info is still in the file."

Comments

PFT.

[Anonymous Coward]

oh christ, why is it that when a real, viable, legal alternative to illegality is created, people have to spend so much damn time and effort to break it up, and make it illegal? i mean, i realize that this is not about sharing, but seriously, it makes you think about what a waste of time it is to crack fairplay....

Cool... But...

[thedogcow]

This is a great way to do this legally... but... there is always someone that will circumvent the issue and find a loop hole to share music within iTunes.

I really don't see illegal mp3/acc file sharing to be stopped. Ever.

Re:Cool... But...

[arkhan_jg]

a) Terms Of Service are not a contract. They are terms which if you do not obey, they are grounds for terminating your business relationship. I.e. if apple catch you removing DRM from itunes tracks, they can refuse to sell you any more tracks. However, once they've (Apple) sold you something, first sale doctrine dictates that they cannot use copyright law to impose further restrictions. Specifically, use restrictions (i.e. you cannot do this with our product) are simply not enforceable post purchase. The music is not licenced, it is sold, and the only restrictions are those of copyright itself, i.e. you cannot distribute your copies to other people.

b) even if by some legal juggling*, these TOS could be treated like a contract, i.e. you were considered to be licensing the music, not buying it, you cannot give up your legal rights by contract. No more than you can sign into slavery, or sign away your first amendment rights in the US. Such a clause would be, and has been judged to be an illegal clause, and thus stricken from the contract. Since fair use rights are not constitutionally granted rights, it would be less clear cut; but there is a strong precedent for fair use rights not being revocable by contract terms. But in this case it's a moot point, as there's emphatically not a contract post sale.

c) There are in fact two offences you could be taken to court over. The first is copyright infringement. Your fair use rights are a defence to this charge, as long as you do not distribute copies to anyone else. Potentential to distribute has nothing to do with it, you have to actually be spreading those tracks on a p2p network. Therefore, making copies to play on another device would be legal.
The second charge would be with the DMCA. However, it's not illegal to use a DRM-removal tool under the DMCA, only to write or distribute one. Therefore, stripping music you own of drm to use on another device is also fully legal.

Ergo, despite what Apple and it's fans tell you, removing DRM from music you own is 100% legal. Distributing it to others without permission is 100% illegal. Since the article contains instructions on how to play your legally purchased music on other devices you legally own, that is a 100% legal action.

* Note, in order for it be a valid contract, the seller has to have to have an ongoing relationship with you regarding the product post sale. If, on the other hand, they give you something, and you give them money, and you get nothing more from them after that other than their legal obligations like warranties (and you pay them nothing more for that particular product) it is a sale, and the contract is finished regarding that item, regardless of what the vendor would have you believe by tacking on EULA's, use clauses, licences or anything else. The only things that apply from that point on are the relevent laws of the land, and the vendor *cannot* restrict you any further than the law allows. And I will keep saying this till people stop spreading false information to the contrary.

Re:4 cents

[reiggin]

You did not buy them outright. You bought them with conditions attached. You licensed them for use with iTunes and iPod. Those are the terms you agree to after you install iTunes and the iTMS. You are violating those terms after you click on "I Agree."

It just works?

[Bifurcati]

I find it ironic (though perhaps humorous!) that this hack is most simply implemented on a Windows platform. Note that on Mac et al., you have to have an iPod, and have it plugged in, because that's where the decrypted keys come from. On Windows, however, the key encryption has been reverse engineered somehow (I don't really understand this bit) and they're able to get the key directly from your computer. This hasn't been done on the mac, so you have to wait for the iPod to decrypt it for you.

I just find it interesting that the DRM was most easily compromised by allowing iTunes for Windows! Is this just because of the sheer user base, meaning things get hacked together faster, or is it more profound, i.e., Windows is more easily hacked. Food for thought :)

PS - I've just ordered by G4 Powerbook laptop (drool, drool), doing the switch from Windows. Faintly nervous, but all my friends (both of them...) are getting the Powerbooks and loving them!

Re:It just works?

[Dahan]

That's pretty interesting... Your earlier message says Apple added a flag to execve(), but Darwin's execve() looks standard to me:
int execve(const char *path, char *const argv[], char *const envp[]);

Having execve() do the protection wouldn't work anyways, seeing that gdb wouldn't call execve() with that flag set. I ktraced iTunes, and it's just calling ptrace(PT_DENY_ATTACH, ...) on itself, rather than having its parent do it. You could probably run iTunes under a debugger and set a breakpoint on ptrace() and skip over the offending call.

On the other hand, while recompiling Darwin may not be "something a user would be able to do" (I've never tried), I'm sure someone who is knowledgable enough to reverse engineer iTunes' key generation scheme is also capable of compiling their kernel.

Re:It just works?

[SmittyTheBold]

Why not modify the iTunes binary to NOP at the point it sets the flag? Simple, easy-to-undo hack that solves the problem.

It certainly sounds more likely to work reliably than just hoping any potential user has an iPod.

Re:4 cents

[harlows_monkeys]

You did not buy them outright. You bought them with conditions attached. You licensed them for use with iTunes and iPod

Then how come iTunes supports CD burning? Are you only supposed to use iTunes to play those CDs?

Re:I have an easier method:

[Hanji]

Step 4: Play music at loud volume and cringe at distortion caused by music being re-encoded twice into a lossy format.

Re:Not necissarily

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Breaking a contract is not necissarily illegal

Yes, it is. We even have a term for it: "breach of contract."

The contract stiplulates the penalty for breaking the contract: refusal of service.

Right. Which means if you run PlayFair or Hymn or I'mABigScriptKiddieLookAtMeWoo or whatever on one of your iTunes songs, you are no longer legally authorized to listen to any of your iTunes songs. You are, at that point, engaging in copyright violation, which if you do it enough is a felony!

Re:I have an easier method:

[real_smiff]

This method (the one discussed in the article) is superior* because it doesn't involve transcoding.

*from an audiophile (i.e. not legal) perspective

Re:Not necissarily

[DaHat]

I will not debate you on the legality or binding-ness of a EULA as they have almost always been upheld by the courts.

I suggest you check your facts though, as you will note from the Apple Terms of Sale which says:

You agree that you will not attempt to, or encourage or assist any other person to, circumvent or modify any software required for use of the Service or any of the Usage Rules.

This does not mean that if you bypass the DRM of a song that you loose the 'right' to download any new songs but still retain the 'rights' to your existing ones, it means that if you bypass the DRM that you can have your 'rights' to the already purchased songs revoked! You not only loose access to the service but everything you 'purchased' from it.

Re:Not necissarily

[d34thm0nk3y]

Except that at this point you are no longer copying them since they are already on your computer. Copyright only deals with distribution.

Re:4 cents

[OmniVector]

and does that make it right? it used to be illegal for black people to sit on a certain part of the bus, or for rape victims to get an abortion but it's not anymore.

if everyone's breaking the law, then it's a sure sign that the law is flawed.

Re:Not necissarily

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Copyright only deals with distribution.

Nonsense. It deals with all aspects of the rights of the creator of a work. Which is why, for instance, copyright law governs when, how, and how often a radio station can play your CD.

Re:4 cents

[TwinkieStix]

WRAAAAAG! At times it feels like I'm the only one who recognizes that fair use does not apply when you have contractually agreed not to bypass the DRM... for further info, see some of my other posts in this thread.

Contractually? I believe that it's a "license agreement" not a contract. That's a big difference. And these licenses haven't yet been tried by a court. License are intended for copyright - how I can distribute the program. If I pay for something, I own it, and nobody but the government can legally tell me what I can and can't do with it.

Some of those things I can do:

• destroy it
• dispose of it in an environmentally friendly way
• drive over it with my car
• yell at it
• take it apart and look at it
• tell my friends that I have it
• make backup copies of it
  

Some of the things I can't do:

• use it to kill people or physically harm them
  
• copy it and distribute it without permission
• use it to hurt the environment or some endangered specie

Re:Not necissarily

[damiam]

Playing a CD over the radio is distribution.

Re:4 cents

[elbarsal]

I find it interesting that you are unable to cite any case law supporting your claims.

OK, I'll bite, even though I'm not the parent poster.

Take this with a grain of salt, because it's only an engineer's understanding of law from the professional practise exam.

If you contractually agree to something that is legal and within your rights to agree to, and does not restrict "commerce", the courts are likely to interpret the wording of the contract in a strict sense - i.e. accept that you intended to waive your "fair use" and abide by the terms of the contract (maybe the Hedley Byrne case applies, if i remember right). This is similar to companies entering into an agreement for services, and the customer agreeing to the use of the product provided - terms that could include non-disclosure agreements and restrictions of the use of designs and such.

It may be arguable that the terms of service are not a contract and as such are not enforcable under contract law, but that is an issue for the courts to decide, and in general, the courts are averse to trying to re-interpret agreements between two parties when the wording is clear, except in cases of "fundamental breach" (see Harbutt's Plasticine) where the service provided was so flawed as to render the contract invalid on the whole.

Again, IANAL, but I did have to take a (limited) contract law exam for my engineering professional practise exam. This is Canadian common law - precedents can sometimes be applied to US cases. Is there a lawyer out there who can add anything, or correct me where my memory fails?

ed

Re:Not necissarily

[cpt kangarooski]

What your parent is saying is that copyright law is a misnomer: it should be called distribution law. Sure, copying a file from one place to another, including with this program, is copying. However, it isn't distributing it, and thus title 17 has nothing to say about the actual copying (though the DRM removal would be a sticky issue).

Whether this is true or not, who knows.

I know. It's not true. Copyright law deals with copying AND distribution AND lots of other stuff besides.

Copying a file as you describe is copying, and is perfectly capable of being illegal all by itself per 17 USC 106. Title 17 discusses copying quite a lot, in fact.

Re:I run ful time in linux, you insensitive clod

[AnEmbodiedMind]

Apple don't support KDE except to release changes to KHTML back to the community as required by the GPL.

There is presumably no good business case for building an iTunes for Linux.

They are a company, not a charity.

Re:Not necissarily

[Wylfing]

>> Breaking a contract is not necissarily illegal

> Yes, it is. We even have a term for it: "breach of contract."

I've almost lost count of the number of times I've seen this misunderstanding. A breach of contract is grounds for a lawsuit, but it is in no way, shape, or form a crime or "illegal." In other words, the other party(-ies) to the agreement can take you to court if they think you've harmed them, and then a judge will decide whether you were justified in breaking the contract.

So no, it is not illegal to break a contract. It is merely actionable by the (possibly) aggreived party.

Re:Easier with VLC

[Dahan]

VLC will work on any machine playfair/hymn works on, seeing that playfair/hymn use the decryption code contributed to VLC by Jon Lech Johansen. Note the "Copyright (C) 2004 VideoLAN" at the top of the src/hymn/drms.c file, for example.