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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?"
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.
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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.