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iTunes 4.6, DRM, and Hymn

fluffy writes "Although the recent iTunes 4.6 upgrade refuses to play music decrypted with Hymn, there's already a trivially-simple workaround, demonstrated within hours of the iTunes release, which still preserves the 'fair use' intent of the tool. What move will Apple take against Hymn next?"

8 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Re:From a DRM ignoramus: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Downloaded tracks from iTunes are DRM'ed so that only the user who bought them can play them. Hymn is designed to get rid of the DRM, so that (for example) you can play your files on a Linux machine. However, it leaves in your user ID so to prevent piracy by making files easily traced.

    The latest version of iTunes refuses to play files that contain a user ID but no DRM - even if the user ID is your own. Hence, a fix is needed.

  2. Re:Wrong direction by NatasRevol · · Score: 5, Informative

    Man, you're a whiner.

    No hotkey support regardless of focus. I want to change songs while coding without switching to iTunes, damnit (and no thanks, I don't need any 3rd party mini-app)
    Use the Dock.

    Location of iTunes library file not changeable (and in users' homedir).
    Mine is on a server. Try LOOKING at the preferences.

    No watching of the library folders.
    Try LOOKING at the menu bar. It's called Consolidate Library...
    Yeah, it's not automatic, but it is a one step process.

    --
    There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
  3. Library Location? by SteveM · · Score: 4, Informative

    Location of iTunes library file not changeable (and in users' homedir). WTF?

    My iTunes library is not in my home directory. It's not even on the same drive.

    SteveM

  4. Re:How about applying it to whole library? by Hank+Scorpio · · Score: 4, Informative


    find ~/Music/iTunes -name "*.m4p" -exec ~/PlayFix {} \;

  5. CORRECTION by Hank+Scorpio · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oops. Correction: Replace "*.m4p" with "*.m4a" instead. D'oh!

  6. Re:Maybe now people will see . . . by outZider · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm curious where you see that Apple is 'clearly' not giving back. Looking at CVS for Konqueror, and quite a few FreeBSD tools, and you see Apple making their mark. Not to mention Apple's Public Source site where /all/ of Darwin is there, Streaming software tools, ZeroConf changes, and more are open to the public.

    Clear as mud, yo.

    --
    - oZ
    // i am here.
  7. Re:Forget Ruby. . . by kylemonger · · Score: 4, Informative
    How 'bout cat foo.m4p | sed 's/geID/xxID/g' > foo.m4a

    If you do it, you will be sorry. sed will mangle binaries.

    $ md5 < song.m4p
    e7e226f8bb2bd10ea4543abf879fc525
    $ sed < song.m4p | md5
    ec6849772458b78180fd8f8a434a2889

  8. Re:Wrong direction by Graff · · Score: 4, Informative
    No hotkey support regardless of focus. I want to change songs while coding without switching to iTunes, damnit (and no thanks, I don't need any 3rd party mini-app)

    Control-click (or right-click) on the iTunes Dock icon. You can control iTunes through the menu that pops up, no matter if iTunes is in the background or the foreground.

    If you zoom the main iTunes window to its smaller size you are able to control the small window without changing focus. Just zoom the window (press the small green button in the tope left corner of the window) and drag the small window to a corner where it won't be obscured by a document. You can even make the zoomed window smaller by dragging the resize area at the bottom right corner of the window. Then you can just click on any of the controls in that window to change iTunes without changing focus away from what you are working on.

    No watching of the library folders. Why can't I just copy audio files in the designated folder and iTunes notices that and adds them to the library like virtually any other player?

    Go to this web page, download this file. Unstuff the file, take the "Add to iTunes Library" droplet out of the "Desktop Droplet" folder and put it on the desktop. Then just drag new music to that droplet and it will automatically be added to your library.

    One thing, this script is a little bit outdated - it isn't set up to accept AAC files. This is easy to fix, just tell it to do so! Drag the droplet onto the Script Editor application found in the Applications folder. Change this line (line 8):
    property extension_list : {"mp3", "mid", "aif"}
    to this:
    property extension_list : {"mp3", "mid", "aif", "m4p", "m4a"}
    Save it and you are all set.

    It is trivial to change this script into a Folder Actions so that you can have a "watched folder" if you want that.