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New iPod Firmware Locks Out RealNetworks Music

Posted by michael on from the providing-negative-customer-service dept.

rishimathew writes "Apple Computer has quietly updated its iPod software so that songs purchased from RealNetworks' online music store will no longer play on some of the Mac maker's popular MP3 players." You may remember the backstory: Real found a way to allow their DRM-restricted music to play on iPods, Apple protested, and there was a little back-and-forth. You asked Rob Glaser about the situation, and he said Real had a "comprehensive plan", whatever that means.

2 of 718 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What about Hymn? by Slack3r78 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I wouldn't think so. Hymnn strips the file of all DRM; what Real had done was essentially finding a way to get the iPod to play *their* protected files, just like files you bought off iTMS. Apple has evidently changed up the way their authentication behaves so this no longer works.

    Since there's no DRM in a file that's been run through Hymn, there's no reason they shouldn't still work.

  2. Re:What about Hymn? by MORTAR_COMBAT! · · Score: 5, Informative

    You seem to be confused about both the iPod and Hymn.

    1. The iPod will play unprotected AAC and MP3 files.
    2. Hymn produces unprotected AAC files.

    For Apple to disable the ability for the iPod to play files produces with Hymn, they would ostensibly have to either (1) remove unprotected AAC playback or (2) (a) watermark their AAC files prior to encryption and (b) update the iPod firmware to check for such a watermark for unprotected AAC files before playing.

    However such a watermark would likely be a prime target for a reverse engineering and removal tool, hey why don't we just build it into Hymn in the first place?

    Besides, updating iTunes, Quicktime, FairPlay, and iPod software from Apple doesn't force the end-user to update that software on any or all of their machines. So the most Apple could really hope for with the best possible solution would be to create an un-removable watermark (very, very, very hard), non-trickable FairPlay libraries (somewhat hard but then again it seems they're not really trying at this point), and even then there would be huge gaping holes w.r.t. the million or so songs already downloaded without the watermark technology.

    --
    MORTAR COMBAT!