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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?"
Well, everything's relative.
When it first came out I bought ~30 songs within the first week or two, since then just a single file here and there, not so much to acquire the tune, more just to register a paid vote for that artist. And, to be honest, about a dozen of them were my best friend's music. I've already got a few copies of his album, one of them a pre-mastered copy, but I figured it'd make him happy to see a few sales that way. But shhh, don't tell him it was me!
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
It would be cool if there was a way to send this script off to crunch the iTunes library, searching thru all the subfolders, so that it will fix all the files there... even if that means it would modify non-DRMd AAC files (such as those created by ripping CD's you own).
... not broken.
The reason for this is - i have 300+ songs that i have Hymned.... i found them by searching in iTnues for "Protected AAC files" - dropping those into a folder, unprotecting them, burning the purchased tracks to a DVD-R for safe keeping, deleting all protected files from iTunes, then dropping in all the unprotected files.
So now, i have no simple way of going thru my whole library picking out the previously protected now unprotected file.
Any ideas (pudge) on how to modify this script such that it would work in this fashion?
plus - what happened to that 1 line perl (you guys just fscking revel in that type of thing, don't you?) script that did the same thing? Could that be hacked to do a search and repair of the iTunes Music Library.
after looking at that script - it appears that it would be easy to make the modification - because it appears that it simply says "not broken" if the files was
I'd code it - but i'm not a coder...
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
One possibility that comes to mind is that the codec might use a different psychoacoustic model that would filter out more than the first compression did. Whether it would or wouldn't take a golden ear to notice this, I don't know, but there is a wide perception that a degredation in quality would occur.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
These are whines, as others point out. My problem with iTunes is that it is not graceful at handling large song libraries. A library of 14k songs for example is difficult to navigate (scrolling randomly slows down, and sometimes the computer completely stalls when iTunes is running, which I believe is related to the library size, since it doesn't happen on my laptop). Is this a common problem for people with large music libraries? Or does it sound like I messed something else up? The sluggishness would be ok if the crashes stopped; when this kind of crash happens nothing works except manually restarting.
With the DRM in place it's like Apple has a hand loosely gripping my nuts. That hand might give me great pleasure or it might suddenly squeeze so long and so hard that I beg for the surcease from pain that only death can bring. Anyone sane would get out this situation if they could. H-Y-M-N spells freedom for my nuts.
If anything this incident is a further argument for using tools like hymn to strip DRM.
A Hymned music file complies perfectly with the AAC spec. Quicktime, VLC, WinAmp, etc. play them just fine, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Once an iTMS file is stripped of its DRM by Hymn, it is future-proofed: any AAC-capable player, under any OS, will be able to play the file.
As a 'goodwill gesture', the Hymn developers chose specifically to leave the Account ID field in Hymned music files. This was to leave an identifying mark of the owner in the file, so as to underline the fact that Hymn is intended for personal use, not to make files available for sharing.
However, some bright bulb at Apple decided to add code to iTunes 4.6 specifically designed to recognize these files, the ones with the Account ID field, but no DRM, and refuse to play them. Again, you could play them in Quicktime, VLC, on your Palm Pilot, etc. just fine -- only iTunes had this crippling feature added. So what is the solution? To remove the Account ID field, of course, which makes Hymned files indistinguishable from AAC files you have ripped yourself.
Apple really shot itself in the foot on this one.
four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
That's how I feel about it. But I'm beyond that sort of reasoning at this point. The record companies have shown they have no intention of dealing in good faith with anyone, artists OR music fans. They do whatever they can get away with, so I'm going to do the same. They've got stacks of money to lobby and to litigate and to bribe. I've got a computer, a good brain and a bad attitude. Let the games begin.
I see your point, but I -- sorta -- disagree. At any rate, NatasRevol's point certainly isn't a straw man argument.
I agree that, for now, "the only people caught in this "game" are those who use Hymn to break the DRM, in willful violation of the iTMS license." But it does matter to the rest of us. See, if this shit keeps up, Apple may need to develop a much more restrictive DRM, just to appease the RIAA.
There's that old SNL sketch called something like "They Ruined it for Everyone" (I think), where they interview the first bum who pissed all over a public toliet, the first hitchhiker who raped and murdered the person who gave him a ride, etc. This is roughly analagous. We've got a Good Thing going with the iTMS, in my opinion, I'd hate to see it ruined for everyone.
An AC earlier said that Apple doesn't always give back to the community. S/he gave the example of X11. After a long discussion about what the AC meant, someone asked me to give an example of where Apple hadn't "given back". I repeated the AC's example of X11.
How is whether Apple "clamps down" on X11 users relevent to the question of whether Apple has a proprietary X11 server built on originally F/OSS code? I don't think anyone's suggesting Apple has done anything of the sort. What is clear is that when Apple takes F/OSS code, it doesn't contribute F/OSS code back in equal measure.
Indeed, for all of Darwin's supposed open sourciness, the code is often missing for quite low level and critical operations. An example would be the device drivers for CD and DVD burners (That's DiscRecording.framework, in case you need to know) which Apple seems to have gone out of their way to keep closed so they can dictate the burners people can and can't use (something which had a major impact when DVD+R started to become popular.)
What Apple is legally or morally obliged to do is a different debate and will depend on the licenses of the code (former) or ethics of the person arguing (latter.) But on a basic, non-partisan, non-judgemental, objective level, Apple, while it gives far more to the F/OSS communities than, say, Microsoft, does not give as much as it benefits. I find it ironic really that Slashdotters tend to "like" Apple for this and yet will abuse Sun, who really have given more than they've taken, without a single thought.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
No, I'm slamming people who can't live with reasonable DRM and just HAVE to strip it out. When that product is already available through a different outlet.
If you can't live with the DRM, don't buy it with the DRM. I think it's reasonable AND acceptable that Apple tries to enforce the DRM that they've already agreed to. If you break it, they will fix it so you can't.
And NatasRevol is just an old college roommate's joke. Don't read into it any further than that.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure