Slashdot Mirror
Napster Has Been Cracked
Sabathius writes "Users have found a way to skirt copy protection on Napster Inc's portable music subscription service just days after its high-profile launch, potentially letting them make CDs with hundreds of thousands of songs for free...""
Never saw that one coming.
Oh No...
Now the name Napster will be tried to illegally copied music... and after all the paid of the good number of that company...
Cruise TT
Oh this has been explained for a while: http://marv.kordix.com/archives/000400.html
All that is happening is that people are grabbing the actual output of the song, and dropping it into a wav file. This will ALWAYS happen with any kind of copy protection. If you let users actually hear (music) or see (movies/tv) the content, there will always be a way to get it. At the absolute worst, people can just set up a tape recorder and grab it from that.
Regardless, the point is that it is STILL ILLEGAL to abuse. Until you can get people to stop breaking the law voluntarily (via fair pricing and good business practices), all media/content companies will have to keep playing this game. What they need to realize is that they are always going to lose.
The jig is up. I was hoping I'd finish my 14-day trial before anyone found out about this. Oh well, I got 8 gigs already, and I can get more today.
I use a program called tunebite that plays the files back and records them to MP3, as well as copying over album/artist metadata from the tags.
Hopefully I can get everything copied before they fix it (if they ever can fix it).
"The DRM (digital rights management) is intact. Basically, people are just recording off a sound card. This is nothing new and people could do this with any legitimate service if they want to use a sound card," she said.
"This kind of attack has been around for a long time and it's just because of our higher profile that it has sparked such interest," she said.
But isn't this the point? All it takes a little software tool and suddenly everyone can do it. You can't just "ignore" attacks - because the attackers certainly wont.
Simon.
On linux, so long as you're playing via /dev/dsp you can always grab the digital signal, for example via vsound. I wouldn't be surprised if that's possible with MacOS X too, or even Windows.
Yes... OSX can do it too!
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I don't see why you couldn't create a fake audio driver for Windows that let you swipe the digital signal. Or a fake CD-RW to steal to the MP3s iTunes lets you download.
And of course the DarkNet paper showed us all what we already knew: With DRM, you have to give the user everything needed to play the file. That includes the cryptography algorithm and the key. Thus, all DRM is breakable.
so long as you're playing via /dev/dsp you can always grab the digital signal
Quiet you. If my next soundblaster comes with some new fangled Macrovision, it'll be your fault.
Or would that be Macroaudio?
Apparently, users have been sitting in front of their TV with a camcorder...
Hehe
iTunes: $0.99 per song.
Napster: 14 day free trial: All the songs you can download and copy to MP3.
Hrm... =)
Jason Lotito
Napster have already responded on their site (link in top right) and basically said the same thing. They also rightly pointed out (i think, as i've not tried) that this would be a 1:1 copy, so a 60 minute album would take you the same amount of time to copy - which isn't going to be much fun to do lots of.
Apparantly rumour has it that Steve Jobs contacted music executives, pointing them to the site and the Napster CEO countered by pointing out several sites which showed you how to do the same with iTunes files. I'm not sure how true this is.
Interestingly enough, the Winamp plugin required to do this - Output Stacker - was pulled from the winamp site. Which I find a little odd, since there are perfectly legal uses for the plugin - so I don't understand why they're playing censorer (to be safe?)
If anyone knows where to get it from, it would be appreciated since Googles cache shows no homepage and a Google search of the author gives only a set of links to a non-working winamp.com URL.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
..."we're powerless to stop it".
Don't think it isn't being worked on, just not by Napster. You can read more about Secure Audio Path here. Of course, the next step is a simple loopback-cable to another sound card (your input will be disabled while doing secure playback). The next step is to add a broadcast flag to the signal, only to have people circumvent it. Then they'll go for Secure Digital speakers. Then people will record with a high-fidelity microphone. And some time after they ban A/D converters, we will win (or the digital society we've made will collapse, whichever comes first).
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A response from the Napster CTO taken from the homepage of Napster.com:
----
It has come to our attention that there are a number of inaccurate statements posted by various sources on the Internet regarding the security of Napster and Napster To Go. As Napster's CTO, I would like to officially state that neither Napster To Go, Napster, nor Windows Media DRM have been hacked. In the interest of providing the most accurate information to consumers, the following is some background on the subject.
There is a program that allows a user to record the playback of tracks directly from the computer's sound card. This process can be likened to the way people used to record songs from the radio onto cassette tapes, but instead of capturing the music on a tape, the file is converted into a new, unprotected digital format. This program does not break the encryption of the files, which can only be recorded one at a time making the process quite laborious. It would take 10 hours to convert 10 hours of music in this manner. It is important to note that this program is not specific to Napster; files from all legal subscription and pay-per-download services can be copied in this way.
We hope that the information provided above clarifies the matter and puts questions regarding the security of Napster and Napster To Go to rest. Napster's mission is to provide consumers with a legal environment in which they can experience and discover the world's largest collection of digital music. We believe that artists should be compensated for their work and intellectual property rights should be respected. While we acknowledge there are always going to be those who do not share our belief, we remain committed to providing the most enjoyable and flexible digital music experience for those who do.
Before you criticise the craftwork, consider the medium.
You don't expect a pile of burning tires to be stacked neatly, do you? That's about the same as expecting coherence and grammar in a slashdot post.
Someone had to do it.
Actually, their drivers do contain something similar.
For instance, I'm in the pro audio industry and folks have always claimed that a soundblasters S/N and other specs are right up there with the big boys. Of course they are -- their team is comprised of greats from around the industry including their aquisition of Ensoniq a few years back.
What they don't tell you is that the digital outs and otherwise are disabled in the drivers. The claim is that you get 24bit in / out -- but the reality is that even if you are doing a pure pass through, that 24 bit randomly drops bits down to a signal of as low as 14.
The strange this is this doesn't happen with the free drivers that were available for Linux nor the Mac solutions. And then someone backported one of the Ensoniq proaudio card drivers after realizing the chipset was identical and was able to bring this back to the PC by doing a little hex editing...and the audio in phenomenal (although the driver is still a bit buggy and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone that needed a serious project undertaken).
But yeah, if Creative needed to make the industry happy, they'd throw in Macrovision in a heartbeat. Sad that your post is rated funny...
Note: This was true several years back...I don't deal with audio interfaces as I once did, so it may not be true any longer.
Also now, this is Off Topic, please rate it accordingly. I'm an AC and don't give a rats ass.
Get your Unix fortune now!
for audiophiles and perfectionists ....
:)
Turns out they don't care since they'd never purchase that low quality of music in the first place eh?
The only Virtual CD Burner software I've seen is called Original CD Emulator. It creates a fake CD Burner in the same way DaemonTools creats a fake CD drive.
If anyone knows any other software that can do the same things as these too, please post them here too.
This is only true for lossless codecs. This won't work for any lossy codec. You can't go from MP3->WAV->MP3 for example without quality loss. Same with WMA, AAC, and pretty much all the popular lossy codecs. For more information, see this discussion on HydrogenAudio.