Real Networks Hacks iPod; .rm & Real Store for iPod

alphakappa writes "According to Cnet, Real Networks is expected to announce on Monday that it has found a way to make its songs play on the iPod. Now songs bought from the RealPlayer Music Store can be played on the iPod. Earlier Real had made it possible for songs bought from iTunes to be played on RealPlayer by transparently starting the iTunes authentication in the background. However since Apple has not licensed the technology to make file formats playable on the iPod, the latest Real initiative could be construed as reverse engineering. How would this fare under the DMCA? Or is it just for the tiny ones?"

Comments

Get your IP law straight

[rice_web]

I'm glad I'm reading this stuff finally, and I recommend that you all buy a quick primer (if they exist) on intellectual property. If you had, you'd know that the DMCA only prevents reverse-engineering of copy-protection methods. It does not prevent reverse-engineering of patents, and it does not remove the originality clauses of older IP laws. Therein, the DMCA will still allow Real to do whatever they want with the iPod.

The only problem that I might see is a license violation for every user that installs these songs onto their iPod. After all, the iPod has a software license, I'm sure, that limits use, and it will be interesting to see if Real is breaking that contract. I don't know how they are binding the Helix copy protection to the iPod without installing software on top of the iPod, but if they have found a legitimate work-around, I congratulate them.

Re:The DMCA explicitely permits reverse engineerin

[GigsVT]

That's not quite correct. It only needs to bypass a copy control measure, and not fall under the interoperability clause.

Also from chilling effects:

The resulting program must only interoperate with the reverse engineered software, however, and cannot interoperate with the technologically protected content (movie, book, video game, etc.) itself.

Seems that Real must have run afoul of this at some point in their quest to work with Apple's DRM.

Re:Not Exactly Reverse Engineering?

[GigsVT]

That's a cleanroom implementation, and is usually used when you want to copy the functionality of someone's work and not run afoul of copyright laws.

The key in the cleanroom approach is that you already know how the copyrighted work... works. That would be after any reverse engineering, or if you happened to somehow have copyrighted sourcecode or schematics, etc.

For the uneducated and uninformed...

[GarfBond]

Real uses 192kbps AAC wrapped with their own Helix DRM (realplayer 10 says it's "RA10," but I don't think such a codec exists). Apple uses 128kbps AAC wrapped with their PlayFair DRM. Both places sell for 99c for each track.

Considering both use AAC, maybe it was simply a matter of fooling the ipod into thinking Helix DRM was PlayFair DRM. And even though Real's choice of AAC seemed strange way back when RP10 was released, I think now it's starting to become clear why they chose that... :)

Strategically, this doesn't seem out of place with what Real's been doing recently. They seem to want to become the endall beall solution for Internet media: releasing Helix Player under GPL, making RealPlayer able to play QT, ITMS, and WM in the same player, and now this.

Press release & Public Beta

[JaredOfEuropa]

Here's RealNetworks press release about this system (called Harmony). They also announced that a public beta version of RealPlayer 10.5, which contains this technology, will be available here tomorrow (Tuesday).

How this thing works...

[Otto]

Real sells AAC files using a slightly different DRM scheme. But the important thing here is how the iPod works for encrypted files.

Basically, it reads the AAC file to get a user identifier. This user ID is equated with a key stored in a file on the iPod itself. This user key allows it to decrypt the encrypted AAC file, which it then plays.

So if you have an encrypted AAC file (these use AES encryption, I believe), then all you have to do to get the iPod to play it is to a) put the key in the right place and b) suitably munge the AAC file so as to enable the iPod to work out which key it needs to use. Part A is simply a matter of putting the key into the right file, part B is messing with several key headers in the "M4P" file itself.

In other words, it's not particularly difficult to take an AES encrypted AAC file, to which you know the key, and munge the file to get it to play on the iPod without actually decrypting the thing and without transcoding.

That's if they wanted to preserve the file's encryption. If they didn't much care, they could just as easily decrypt the thing and write out an M4A file, unencrypted. The iPod could play that just fine too, without messing with the iPod keyring file.