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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?"
. . . that Apple isn't all that "different," except in terms of cost. They're sellout DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs just like any closed-source vendor can be expected to be, their appropriation of the work of Open Source programmers notwithstanding.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
And what happens at the next update? And the one after that?
If you don't like the DRM, buy a version without it. Or whine about the cat & mouse game you're going to keep playing.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
So why would one need specialized tools to "break" the encryption?
Or is there some compatibility issue I'm not understanding?
I may not know much about iTMS, but I fail to see how the workaround is "trivially simple". It's hardly the sort of thing that jumps out of the screen at you.
Unless the submitter meant that running the script was trivially easy - in which case Linux is "trivially simple" too.
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.
iTunes doesn't evolve the way it should. Instead of including their AirTunes, WMA support and whatnot, they should consider fixing the embarrasingly obvious faults:
- 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)
- Location of iTunes library file not changeable (and in users' homedir). WTF? So not all users of a single machine can have a single synchronised library? So everyone has to import new songs manually. Thanks.
- 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?
Give props to Apple for applying the minimum amount of security necessary to do the business they do.
The people at Hymn would make it seem as though their application is rocket-science or something when really it's a tinker tool.
The iTunes DRM is easily bypassed: just open the file in a compatible editor (Bias Peak is nice) -> Save As MP3 / Ogg or whatever your flavor of the month happens to be.
While iTunes doesn't "natively" support OGG out of the box, it's a simple update, and they even throw in a free icon for you already in the iTunes package.
In my opinion they couldn't be more free and liberal with their version of DRM.
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
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
How 'bout cat foo.m4p | sed 's/geID/xxID/g' > foo.m4a
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
Oops. Correction: Replace "*.m4p" with "*.m4a" instead. D'oh!
Peace
First, it makes it look like they are combating piracy. It looks good on paper when they go to tell the RIAA how they have been fighting piracy "we disabled the latest version of Hymn, but a workaround was found quickly." So long as they are doing what they can, the RIAA won't complain.
Second, it prevents someone from the RIAA ascertaining what percentage of tracks shared are the iTunes version nearly as easily.
Think about it. If you leave the ID tag in there, the RIAA can download a bunch of files from P2P networks and very quickly and easily determine what percentage of them were purchased from the iTMS. Apple doesn't want this at all--if that number ever does become significant, they don't want the RIAA coming to them and saying "20% of all songs being shared over P2P networks were originally purchased on the iTMS..."
Unlikely? Sure, especially since m4a files are still relatively rare on p2p networks (though the number of them is growing), but Apple doesn't want it to ever be an issue.
If there is an ID tag that is unique to decrypted files and can be quickly scanned for, they can ascertain this percentage without any difficulty in a selection of downloaded music. Otherwise they have to compare the decrypted stream to the decrypted stream of the original for each individual song, which requires identifying each individual song and then matching it with the original--a much more drawn out process than scanning for the presence of a tag.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
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.
I have 13,300 songs in my library and none of the issues you have mentioned, this is on a 2x2ghz G5, I shared the library and then scrolled through it on my laptop (400 mhz ti) and saw a slight slowdown in scrolling, about the equivalent of every three to four pages of scrolling, it would hiccup and then catch up the re-draw. I am guessing this is due to netowrk speed more than anything else. I used to have wierd scrolling and stalling issues on my laptop (less than 3,000 songs), which went away some where in the iTunes upgrade cycle, although in there I also doubled the RAM, so I am not sure which it was.
If you are one in a million, then there are six thousand people who are just like you.
My problem with iTunes is that it is not graceful at handling large song libraries.
15,343 tracks here, and no problems at all. And that's on a G3 iMac running at 400 MHz.
I access the same library from my dual GHz G4 upstairs. No problems there either. In fact, apart from encoding speed, I can't tell the difference between the two machines as far as iTunes is concerned.
I write in my journal
Hymn was written to extend fair use of the iTMS, by allowing you to play the files that YOU bought in the iTMS in devices that DON'T support Apples DRM.
Ok so let's suppose you have a Mac, an iPod, a Windows PC, a Linux box, and another AAC-capable player.
You buy a file from the iTMS. It plays in your Mac, your iPod, and the Windows machine using iTunes. But you want to play it in your Linux box and in the other AAC player. And maybe in WinAmp, since I've heard that iTunes for Windows is a resource hog (I'm very glad I use a Mac).
So, you use Hymn to de-DRM-ize your files. The new files work in the non-Apple players, but not in iTunes.
Well... who gives a f**k if iTunes refuses to play the new files? You already have the original files, which play nicely in iTunes! So you don't want to have duplicate files in your computer(s)? Well, leave only the copy that works in each machine! Duh!
I see this as an issue if you want to play the files in iTunes in more than five machines all in different places. (If they are in the same network, you can use the iTunes sharing feature). But quite frankly that is far from typical for a normal user. Very, very far.
What I see is a bunch of pirates who want to share the Hymn-ized files illegally, and don't want to leave evidence to trace them back in the files. Users who really want to enforce their fair use rights should have no problems since they still can play their iTMS songs in all their AAC-capable players.
This is supposedly fixed in the 4.6 Release
You still cannot transfer those files to your iPod -- even if you can get them to play in iTunes.
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
I agree that large song libraries are not well dealt with (and not to do with scrolling/speed).
Sure, the search function is *the best* when you want to find the artist/genre/album you want to play
wouldnt it be great, though, if you could have your whole library visible and be able to group via artist/genre/album/whatever - as in choose the field you want to group by, then have a collapsable group (think finder list-view directories with the arrows or those little +/- boxses) formed for each matching group
the problem with search is if u cant remember all the stuff u have! u want a reduced, summarised version at your fingertips..
I have purchased about 20 CDs from itunes music store, but was always concerned about what might happen with the tracks if apple were to get out of the music biz, my worry increased with the changes to the iTunes license in 4.5 & 4.6. I was happy to see fairplay and hymn come along. I used it to clean my tracks. I have not shared or copied anyone else's purchased music.
I thought it was an interesting decision on the hymn programmers part to keep the apple id tag in the cleaned tracks. I find it curious that apple chose to check for that to decide if a track was legit (in itunes 4.6). Perhaps this was the easiest way to check if it was a track altered by hymn, but also perhaps apple would rather have hymn go back to stripping out all info so that their legal case against hymn will be stronger. AFAIK apple has sent no cease and desist orders to the hymn developers since they got to their current home and released the version that keeps the apple id intact (if it has happened neither side has made it public).
I think hymn at this point should keep trying to take the high road (as much as is can be called a high road in this case), if possible instead of storing that apple id in a non standard tag perhaps they could move it to a standard tag, so again the info would remain there, but they wouldn't be able to scan for it like they can now.
To those who say that covering this story isn't news because it's just a cat and mouse, tit for tat thing are missing the point. This type of battle will play out many more times in the near future, but the actual choices both sides make, to me anyway, is interesting to follow.
Anyway, between sharingthegroove.org and allofmp3.com I aint got no time for iTunes store anymore anyway, and, I may actually fill up my 30GB iPod for once!
Run iTunes, select a playlist, hit apple-B or select Edit->Show Browser
The browse window that appears does all this for you.
Sapere aude!
Is suspect that Apple went after DRM remover apps just a show for RIAA. Apple depends very much on RIAA for iTMS content. It doesn't affect Apple much monetarily other than spending money to hire lawyers. Determined pirates will pirate anyway whether it's from iTMS song or other sources.
/.) keep making it a headline news, Apple will have to continue going after Hymn. Best if people just not talk about it.
Once things quiet down, people will 'forget' and Apple will let it go just like they let go other DRM removers. As long as media (including
I love Apple, although our relationship is a little rocky right now. Apple is a beautiful girlfriend, and she does her housework really fast and efficient, but there are problems. Namely, she won't let me listen to her sing. I mean, I bring home the bacon daily, but if I want to hear her sing I have to go in a specific room of the house. Pretty lame if you ask me. If I try to listen to her in a room of my choice instead of hers, she kicks me in the nads.
Ouch.
The girl I dated a few years ago - Napster - and the one after that - Kazaa - were much more trusting of me. But they were ho's and gave it up to anyone. Apple is much classier than those, but I miss being trusted. Heck, Apple even makes me wear a chastity belt because she doesn't trust me with myself.
Needless to say, Apple is making me pretty uncomfortable lately with this squeamish distrust. I thought the basis of any good relationship is trust and understanding, but apparently she thinks it's all about control and restriction. That's no way to live life. If she's not careful, she may end up a lonely spinster with no sustainable long-term relationships. Please Apple, I love you - don't treat me like a child! Give me the freedom I long for, and I promise I'll be faithful to you!
Even more trivial