Jon Johansen Breaks iTunes DRM Yet Again

ikewillis writes "Remember earlier today when Apple released an update supposedly blocking the hole in iTMS recently discovered by Jon Johansen? News.com reports that he has already worked around the update, and iTMS can now be accessed from non-Windows/MacOS X systems using the new version of his PyMusique software. You can view his blog entry on the issue (ironically titled So Sue Me). More power to you, Jon!"

Comments

Re:As a record store owner.

[Anonymous Coward]

You posted all that text just two minutes after the story is posted? I smell a troll.

Re:As a record store owner.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am proud to assist in bankrupting you sir, but the main reason I don't buy CD's is because they still cost almost 4 times the price of a DVD on sale. So, when the record companies get with the times and charge $5 for a CD, I'll start buying again. Till then, have fun trying to file Chapter 11 under the new Republican bankruptcy rules.

Companies won't let us "Get over it"

[VidEdit]

"If you don't like the restrictions set on the songs, then don't pay $0.99 to buy it through the iTMS. Buy it or download it somewhere else..."

In the long run, that is a false option. More and more CDs are copy protected and eventually there will be no more cds made, just as they no longer make LPs. Both the content industry and electronics companies have a vested interest in restricting you from exercising your legal rights under copyright law.

Digital Rights Restriction, such as Apple's ironically named "FairPlay," prevent consumers from exercising their right to copy their music to playback the device of their choice.

Consumers have a number of legal rights that DRR'd music prevents them from exercising, including the right to re-sell their used music. The Doctrine of First Purchase says that you can re-sell copyrighted material without needing permission from the rights holder. This is why used bookstores are legal. And this right to resell still applies to music and digital files, hence the reason that used CD stores are legal.

Consumers have a legal right to re-sell their downloaded music, too, but Apple and other vendors of Digital Rights Restricted music make it technically impossible for consumers to exercise their legal rights under copyright law.

So, it isn't a matter of "Just by a CD or get your music 'somwhere else' and shut up." Fighting the indiscriminate appropriation of consumers legal rights by companies use Digital Rights Restriction technology is an important moral and legal issue

Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it"

[VidEdit]

"The iPod is my playback device of choice. I buy songs that work with it. I don't go to Real or Napster, buy music, and then try to work around their DRM to strip it and make it compatible with my iPod."

Why not? Today, the iPod may be your device of choice, but what if, tomorrow, a company comes out with a much, much better device. Will you still be happy? You won't if you bought Rights Restricted songs from Apple. Your songs will live and die on that iPod like a caged animal and your investment will forever be tied to Apple's largesse--and the life-span of your iPod. Your argument is like a person in a locked room saying he chooses to stay in the room of his own free will, not realizing that he can't open the door should he ever decide to leave.

The term "Digital Rights Management" is a misnomer. It doesn't let you, the consumer, manage anything. The proper term is Digital Rights Restriction because the technology restricts the ways you are allowed to use your music in ways that copyright law does not allow rights holders to restrict you. You are legally allowed to resell copyrighted material, including digital media like CDs and DVDs. DRR prevents you from exercising your legal rights.

Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it"

[1lus10n]

Thats your choice. Whats the option for somebody who wants a plain jane high quality file without DRM so they can play it in their car, at home, at work, on their mobile device etc ???

Right now there is not a choice unless you want to pay thousands extra to purchase a single brand closed solution that might ultimately fail or be shut down which would lead to all that music being unusable. You can have the data, you just can have access to it.

I buy CD's because usually they are cheaper for me than buying indivdual songs (everything I listen too is worth buying the whole album.). I take them home, rip to a 256 or 320kbps VBR MP3 and stack the CD along with the thousands of others that I have. It sits there collecting dust because I have a harddrive player in my car, I stream whatever I want to work and I own a portable mp3 player. I have never used P2P to share my music, I checked out some of the stuff on napster about 5 years ago and it was all crap quality so it wasnt worth my time.

Now lets say they stop making CD's. Where does that leave me ?

Lets say they update the itms and/or ipod firmware to only play songs encoded with the "new" codec, where does that leave you ?

You wanna trust them with your data, go ahead. Me ? I am going to keep fighting. If I purchase something I own it and should have the right to do what I want with it.

I would also point out that Jon's work isnt to make the songs work on other mobile devices, thats a side effect. The idea is to allow people who dont use a corporate OS (Windows, MAC) to use the itms. To the best of my knowledge none of the current major label online soulutions offer a "plain jane" high quality mp3, or a way to work with linux. (I might be wrong since I have never tried)

Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it"

[VidEdit]

"Well, actually that's the doctrine of first sale. This doctrine prevents a copyright holder or vendor (such as Apple) from filing a claim against you for re-selling an item, but it doesn't say that the original seller (Apple, in this case) has to make it easy or possible for you to do so. They just cannot forbid you from doing so."

Indeed that is one the problems with Digital Rights Restriction, and the DCMA. The DCMA allows companies to Rights Restrict copyrighted works in perpetuity, granting them an illegal end run around the constitutional limits of copyright terms.

In the mean time, it is important that traditional copyrights activists use the correct terminology to describe this restriction on consumer rights, Digital Rights Restriction.

Until we are able to discuss content control systems by an accurate name, we will never be able to have an honest discussion of the issues involved.

Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it"

[DavidTC]

Thanks to the DMCA, it is illegal to crack DRM songs.

With the copy protection, it is impossible to resell.

Ergo, thanks to the DMCA, it is impossible to resell in a legal way. Which is another way of saying that reselling it is illegal.

Saying our 'rights' are not being violated is crazy. The laws in combination with DRM have made it illegal to exercise our rights.

They can do whatever they want to make it hard. It's when they get the government to come in to make it illegal that is a violation of our rights.

And it's not just first sale...fair use is rather inhibited, also.

Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it"

[VidEdit]

"DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. That's what everyone who implements it calls it"

And before that, it was called "Copy Protection." The language we use to discuss the issue of content control frames the discussion. There is no reason to let the content industry frame the issue with the misleading term "management" just because it works for them. The Orwell inspired name for Microsoft's total system lockdown, "Trusted Computing" is a fine example--and it is the one that Stallman is calling into question with the counter term "Treacherous Computing". Tomorrow the industry may try to say their Rights Restriction technology is Consumer Media Choice technology, and we shouldn't let them get away with that, either.

However, in the case of content control systems Digital Rights Restriction more accurately describe the technology from a consumer perspective. This technology doesn't let consumers manage anything, it manages them by restricting their rights to use their digital media.

Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it"

[Doctor_Jest]

"it isn't a matter of "Just by a CD or get your music 'somwhere else' and shut up." Fighting the indiscriminate appropriation of consumers legal rights by companies use Digital Rights Restriction technology is an important moral and legal issue."

True. It is. Personally I couldn't care less if they locked up all the music in the world. I am much more worried about the bigger picture, as you say. I don't know if I fight enough. But I write, and I try to inform. But no one listens. Quite frankly, not many of us are fighting the onslaught. No one cares, because they can still sit back in their vinyl chair and watch boobies from satellite with their 55" TV they bought at 22% interest from Best Buy.

Ask anyone not a regular reader of Slashdot what they're doing to send Orrin Hatch a clear message to leave our computers alone. They'll look at you as if you're eyes just fell out. Ask them if they're fighting Trusted Computing. They won't have an inkling of what you're on about. Ask them if they hate the draconian licensing scheme of Windows XP. They don't care. Ask them what the perpetual copyright is doing to our Public Domain... Ask them why we are constantly giving up our individual rights for the rights of a faceless corporation. As long as the mob has their reality TV and buckets of beer, they won't lift a finger.

I wish more of us were proactive. I wish I did more, honestly. The world is in need of some no-doze because the planet's spiraling out of control.

I can only hope the line that wakes up the unwashed masses isn't too far down the road. But, in the smaller picture... it's just music. I don't necessarily give two monkeys about it anyway.

Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it"

[FuzzzyLogik]

Wrong. Part of the license agreement is not that you are "buying" the song, you're licensing the right to listen to the song. just so happens that you are limited to listening to it on 3 (or is it 5) computers, 10 (same playlist) cd's, or an unlimited number of ipods (that you own). i personally think that the itms license is pretty fair, as are the prices. but you AGREED to that license.. either fight it in court or go with it.

Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it"

[ebyrob]

Qaint. Pretend I don't have any rights so there's nothing to take away. It would be funny if it weren't both pathetic and threatening at the same time. (pathetic because it is so naive, threatening because day by day it becomes more of a reality...)

To turn it back on you (forwards to the rest of the world). Copyright's are exclusive rights of the copyright holder including the right to:

1) To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords;

2) To prepare derivative works based upon the work;

3) To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

4) To perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works;

5) To display the copyrighted work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; and

6) In the case of sound recordings, to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

So, anything not in this list I'm allowed to do no questions asked. In fact, the only way a copyright holder could (possibly) get me to give up further rights would be to get me to agree the work is being rented, leased etc. rather than being sold. (...A dirty trick if pulled off successfully...)

Consumer rights under copyright:

1) First Sale, the right to resell something once you're done using it.

2) Fair use, the right to freely use portions of a work for criticism, parody and the like.

3) Archival, the right to make backup copies of purchased works.

4) Reverse Engineering, the right to take apart and understand a purchased work.

Perhaps you can see why I think pretending these rights don't exist is coercive at best...

Re:Best Solution ...

[RonnyJ]

Then ... Apple would be cool.

Then ... Apple wouldn't be allowed to sell music anymore.

Re:As a record store owner.

[ari_j]

Even if every person who downloaded music from the Internet did so after paying for the music, such as through iTunes (I don't know if this hack involves circumventing the payment system or only the DRM attached to paid-for songs; I presume that it is the latter, because if it were the former then Apple and others would have a case against Jon for contributory copyright infringement and would have filed that suit already), your store would be suffering just the same.

Your problem is a business model that is becoming increasingly obsolete. Your solution is not to blacklist pirates, but rather to adapt to a market where people legally buy and download music from the Internet rather than purchasing it at physical record stores. If you can't compete in that market, then it's nobody's fault but your own that your business fails as a result.

Failed businesses are nothing to be ashamed of. But you need to do a cost-benefit analysis of each option in front of you. Among them are continuing as you are, adapting to the new marketplace, pursuing your blacklisting system (which only affects pirates, not lawful downloaders), and bailing out.

And remember: Shit happens.

An arms race

[Space cowboy]

This isn't going to be popular with the 'no DRM is good DRM' brigade. So Sue Me.

So Jon's done it again. Well, the man has testicles of steel because Apple are currently taking legal action against another single person. Making the blog title 'So Sue Me' is just asking for it, IMHO. Even if (and I say *if*) Apple haven't a leg to stand on, they can afford far fancier lawyers. Rather him than me.

What's the knock-on effect ? Apple have to have some DRM in place to keep their corporate music-land clients happy, or the contracts they've signed will be revoked, and they'll lose loadsamoney. This is just a guess, but I'm pretty sure the RIAA/whoever wouldn't have given Apple carte-blanche to sell their music without some degree of "protection" (whether required or not is a different argument).

So, Apple will have to respond. Off the top of my head, I think they'll be forced into making the iTMS contact Apple regularly for a right to play the library (similar to Kerberos). The right to play will be governed by whether the library is "legal" or not (ie: if any tracks have the same signature as on the iTunes website, but no DRM, prevent playback of either the entire library or just those songs.

Or they could do DRM management completely on the server, change the file format to heavily encrypt the system, change the OS, hell, change the machine hardware if necessary.

The point is that none of this is good for me, or in fact for Apple, but they'll be forced to go down this road because their clients will demand their "protection", and people like Jon will keep on breaking anything too lenient. So, in the end, Apple either lock the system down completely using hardware, or they drop the music business. Well done guys, now everyone's happy.

Simon.

Re:An arms race

[Endareth]

<snip>The right to play will be governed by whether the library is "legal" or not (ie: if any tracks have the same signature as on the iTunes website, but no DRM, prevent playback of either the entire library or just those songs.<snip>

Signature? Off the top of my head I can't think of any way to force a signature that can't be easily bypassed. First thing I thought of when I read this was when Metallica got the original Napster to prevent anyone sharing files with the word "Metallica" in it... kind of like a signature really. So people just changed the names, putting 1 instead of i, and the signature check was bypassed.

Any signature on a music file can be trivially bypassed by flipping a bit, thus rendering the any signature system useless.

There may be other ways to implement some sort of music check, but they would all be just as easily bypassed. How can a server possibly determine whether an mp3/aac/whatever is one that has been ripped from a cd, or downloaded/bought from iTunes, or from somewhere else completely?

Re:An arms race

[seanadams.com]

Apple have to have some DRM in place to keep their corporate music-land clients happy,

Will you please stop propagating this nonsense?

The DRM is not about placating the music companies, and it never was. For Apple, it is about platform lock-in. The DMCA gives Apple the ability to lock out competition by a means that, although technically trivial to circumvent, is now illegal to hack in any way. At least in the USA, land of the free, where you can't do certain things with stuff you've paid for.

Just develop a Linux version

[__aaxpkq8573]

of iTunes and see if this is all he is after. That is what he says anyway.

Re:Just develop a Linux version

[dr.badass]

Everything Apple needs to port iTunes (or at the very least, a stripped-down version) to Linux already exists.

Except for that pesky "economic incentive" thing.

You're suggesting that Apple port iTunes to appease...
1) Linux desktop users, who...
2) aren't buying Apple hardware or Mac OS X or iPods, and...
3) are willing to accept 128kbps AAC files with DRM, and...
4) are already openly and actively circumventing said DRM,and...
5) are already using pymusique to buy from them.

In other words, an absolutely tiny market that is basically opposed to everything else they do, that is already buying.

There's just no reason for Apple to care, no matter how "easy" you seem to think it would be.

Re:rant

[Wordsmith]

Well, there are those of us who think that no DRM is acceptable - and furthermore that no DRM is unbreakable, and therefore futile. DVD Jon's done a great job demonstrating the latter with iTMS, and previously DVDCSS.

This isn't about getting free music. It's about removing restrictions that traditionally haven't been in place on consumer media. DRM of any kind can become an obstruction even during benign activities traditionally protected under fair use. Sure, i COULD burn my DRMed AACs to a CD then re-rip to an MP3 to get my files onto my NOMAD or CD-MP3 player, but it's a pain in the rear and I'm going to lose my tag info. If there weren't restrictions on the files, that would be a non-issue.

Yes, Apple's DRM is less obtrusive than most, but it still locks you out from things you've traditionally been allowed to do. And that's simply not OK.

Better story

[NanoGator]

Yahoo ran this story as well. I found their version of it a little more interesting:

"The goal with DRM systems, Gupta explained, is to make it more convenient for music downloaders to pay the fee than to spend time searching for the song for free."

I'm no fan of DRM, but it's about time SOMEBODY finally has the right goal in mind. Make legitimacy more convenient. I've been paying $10 a month for nearly 2 years now to Rhapsody. Since then, I've made 0 (zero, just in case any of you thought it was a typo.) MP3 downloads. Why? Their subscription service is significantly faster and easier. Okay, subscription's not for everybody, but the price is right and the service beats P2P.

Believe it or not, the *AA can compete with free. I'm looking forward to the day that this is more widely understood. I really want the instant gratification of buying content on-line.

Re:Better story

[Forgotten]

You're on the right track here, but the logical extension is that the DRM is unnecessary - what keeps people buying is the better and more consistent experience of buying from a place like the iTMS (and perhaps a mild warm fuzzy of doing things the legal way, and/or paying the companies and people involved). It's not the stick of DRM, but the carrot of a well-designed service.

As you say, the ability to conveniently obtain the music you want has driven your MP3 download count to nothing. Removing the DRM from the bought tracks would only strengthen that impulse, as well as extend it to people like me who won't buy unless there is no DRM (though I also won't be buying until the price is at least halved - the current rate remains exorbitant, even compared to CD prices where I live, and downloading shared music is legal here).

Re:More power to you, Jon!

[Tony Hoyle]

And those of us who have *paid* also have the right to remove the DRM once it gets to us. Sounds fair to me.

If you don't want to then fine... wait until you upgrade your computer and find that DRM has locked you out because you 'copied' the files to the new one.

Maybe Apple doesn't really care if DRM is broken?

[frdmfghtr]

Just some food for thought...

If Apple really doesn't want to have to use DRM on it's iTunes downloads, and they write patches that are supposed to fix loopholes and these patches are easily defeated...

Is it conceivable that Apple doesn't care if the patches are easily circumvented? "Yeah, we'll fix something we don't really want, and if you happen to break it, you outfoxed us *wink wink nudge nudge*

Just a thought.

Re:More power to you, Jon!

[aussie_a]

Their DRM infringe on my right to:
* Copy music to the playback device of my choice.
* Re-sell a product I have purchased (selling a book second hand is legal. Selling second-hand music is also legal. See Doctrine of First Purchase for more details).

Anyone that gives me back my legal rights, is someone who deserves encouraging.

Re:More power to you, Jon!

[RodgerDodger]

Um, wrong...

RTFA: the "back door" doesn't strip out the DRM. It merely lets you play it on Linux - if you want to get it, you need to buy it.

As iTunes already allows you burn purchased tracks to CD (allowing them to be ripped into MP3s according to the article), all this does is allow you to play music you purchase. After all, what are the odds that the music you steal is DRM'd when there's so much un-DRM'd music to steal instead?

All this is doing, as far as I can see, is filling a hole in the market by producing a player that works under Linux. Heck, they're not even releasing a Windows version - Windows already has a free-as-in-beer player in iTunes.

Re:Why are we proud of this guy?

[Cheeze]

let's see:

1. bring up some other hero to make the topic of this story seem insignificant? CHECK
2. act unimpressed by his hack? CHECK
3. try to make a metaphor relating computer software to killing people? CHECK

and finally...
4. try to impose your rules on others based on wild assumptions? priceless /cliche

Re:So sue him?

[SilentChris]

Because, of course, the court cases that Jon went through (DMCA infringment involving DVD encryption) relate directly to DMA involved with iTunes. After all, DMCA is DMCA, right? Let's lump all the cases together.

In other news, I will no longer be going to court for any speeding tickets I get. Since I already went once, and was cleared of charges, it obviously means I can do so again and again.

Re:This Is NOT to Be Applauded

[Dachannien]

Creating these hacks is really like taking the silverware and plates out of a restaurant when you know you are really paying just for the food.

Or perhaps it's more like bringing your own tupperware with you when you go to the restaurant, so that you can take the food with you and eat it anywhere you want.

Re:A Name!

[finkployd]

There is nothing flawed about DRM.

Allow me to give you a quick refresher on public key encryption. With public key encryption Alice has a public key and a private key. Anything encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the private key. So Alice keeps her private key private and allows Bob to have her public key.

Now let's look at how DRM tries to turn this upside down and fails. With any DRM, the basic concept is that Bob is going to give Alice her private key, but try to keep it totally private from her. By definition it needs to be stored on her device (PC, ipod, whatever) to decrypt what Bob sends her, but he does not want her using it in any way that he disapproves of. So convoluted schemes of symmetric encryption and security by obscurity are developed to store this private key in such a way that only certain programs on Alice's device can access it, but nothing else can (nor can Alice access it directly). However, since the machine is under Alice's control it is only a matter of time before she finds it or figures out how to use it to decrypt data as she pleases. This is why nearly every DRM scheme in history has been broken.

It is a fundamentally flawed concept.

Re:Whack a mole

[LocoMan]

Of course, unless the record labels's answer ends up being:

[Record Labels, to Apple] Sorry, you can't guarantee security with your store, so we won't license the music to you anymore.

Re:Yes, more power to you!

[NEW22]

Why do we have to treat the music labels like some kind of poor skittish fawn in a petting zoo? I mean, you say they are scared of offering online music because it may be, um, cracked. The big news flash is this: If you buy the CD, it is already "cracked" so to speak. Did they forget about CDs? Should we help the music industry lock down CDs somehow so they don't get so scared they stop selling us music all together?

Like I said earlier today, I could buy music from the iTunes store, which comes in a mediocre sound quality (compared to DRM-free CDs), in a format that doesn't work with my portable music player. Then I could burn it to a CD, then rip the CD into another lossy format to lose even more quality, all just so I could use the music like I want to. Honestly, it would be a lot easier to just obtain the music illegally, because I'm not gonna run out and buy an iPod or sit at my computer all day. To be honest, I've decided to stick to CDs for now.

To keep the ease of use and freedom we already have with music, we have to recognize this DRM for what it is: a power grab. Anybody with half a brain can see it is pretty much just as easy to share music you rip off a CD as it is to share music you've downloaded. Whether you consider the DRM a hassle or not, there is no doubt that you are losing control you once had. Why would you want to pander to these people and their anti-consumer goals?

The way I see it, the music labels themselves are hurting online legal music, because I would be buying singles and so on, if I didn't get less rights and more hassle out of it. As far as I'm concerned, they can just not have my money, you know? I'm not going to encourage what they are doing. Hurting the iTunes music store or this kind of locked up DRM business model doesn't seem so bad.

As for the people cracking these DRM schemes, well, its not necessarily illegal, depending on how free of a nation you live in. It's hard for me to see it is inherantly unethical either. It's not like the music is being being taken without paying.

Re:Hire they guy....

[finkployd]

DRM is a cryptographically unsound concept. Flawed at its very core. Nobody who understands PKI (and is being honest) actually believes in it, just clueless media providers (and the techies who take advantage of them by building DRM).

Finkployd

Wow

[ad0gg]

This is simply amazing slashbotters saying this guy shouldn't be a hero because he violated a EULA click license. Is it april 1st already?

Hur Hur Hur, private key="secret"

[ebyrob]

...The client could then decrypt the song using its private key...

And uh, where exactly is this private key going to be hidden on a users own machine that they can't find it? This is exactly the fundamental flaw of DRM everyone keeps talking about. If the client can decrypt it, the client can be hacked. For software clients this is no longer even a question. For hardware clients, we're just not sure yet ... but the cost would be significant even if it did work.

Note: Things like Palladium which would try to take away a user's "root access" to their system *might* create a platform that could make hard DRM possible, but that's all thoery until it hits the field. (And it's questionable whether customers will swallow that particular cactus bulb. Some folks speculate the only reason many products *cough*DVD*cough* survive today is because customers know they can get around supposed restrictions.)

I'll bet they do

[flimflam]

I doubt that they really care that much if you rip off the RIAA or whatever, but what they do care about is getting you to build up a library of music that can be played back on your iPod and no other portable player. They have always said that they didn't expect to make money on the ITMS, that it was to encourage people to buy iPods. Well, what better way to encourage them to let them build up large libraries of music that must be played back on an iPod?

Well, that's my theory, anyway.

And I'm never wrong.

;-)

Re:As a record store owner.

[Max Threshold]

And if you're smart, you'll even buy it back from him after he uploads it!

The used music store in my town is thriving. People buy used CDs, "listen to them" for a while, and then sell them back for a fraction of what they paid. The store makes money over and over again on the same merchandise, and even more money when people find music they like and keep the CD. And it's all perfectly legal! For the store owner, anyway. (And for now...)

Re:More power to you, Jon, and I stand by that!

[iCEBaLM]

Look, I understand these arguments (and have for a long time). But I can't help but consider that your arguments invalidate something else which you no doubt support, which is encryption for your own personal privacy. Why is that "okay", and DRM isn't? And further, why is DRM not okay simply because you have a key embedded in software or a device for playback?

Because encryption for my personal privacy doesn't infringe on any of your rights whereas DRM infringes yours, mine and everyone elses rights to copy for personal backup, right of resale (doctrine of first sale), right to timeshift and right to reverse engineer for interoperability.

Your arguments and contrasting of issues are not congruent.

Re:This Is NOT to Be Applauded

[Belial6]

"You know what you are getting when you buy songs from iTunes, DRM encryption that ties the song to you."

And Rosa Parks knew what she was getting into when she refused to give up her seat on the bus. Knowing that your are going to have your rights violated by a business does not mean that you have no right to complain. Your not suggesting that Rosa Parks should have moved to the back of the bus because |She knew what she was getting into| are you?

"Creating these hacks is really like taking the silverware and plates out of a restaurant when you know you are really paying just for the food."

No, it is like taking the onions off your burger when you know that the menu shows the burger WITH onions.

"It's so hypocritical how slashdot really realy really hates GPL violators, but cheers something like this."

This is nonsensical. Most people that hate GPL violators, hate them because the GPL violators are performing the same act as the DRR (Digital Rights Restriction) groups are doing. Building their projects on the shoulders of those that came before, then trying to stop anyone else from doing the same. It's not about honoring or breaking a license. It's about submitting an idea to society, then trying to control the idea, even if it means that part of our culture is lost to future generations.

Fox Movie Channel tells why DRM/DRR is a catastrophy in the making.. "Sadly, 90% of films made during the silent era are gone, due to neglect or chemical decomposition. 50% of films made before 1950 have suffered a similar fate." Much of our cultural history was lost. Now that we have ways for millions of people to help stop this from happening again, DRR shows up, and we are faced with it all happening again.

Re:More power to you, Jon!

[rokzy]

>Whatever happened to not patronizing companies/vendors/services you fundamentally disagreed with?

people have been broken. they are weak and without principles.

that's why most refer to themselves as "consumers" these days.

Re:Thanks!

[ad0gg]

Yeah reasonable like being able to sell the music your purchase, or running on any other device besides an ipod. Thats fair and reasonable. If apple goes bankrupt, there will be no way for me to get my music onto another computer,ala all those guys who bought DIVX movies. Thats very fair. I love all these post supporting apple, but when Napster gets cracked there was not one highly modded post saying what the guys did was wrong. You apple fan boys are a bunch of hyprocrites.

Re:More power to you, Jon!

[Kadin2048]

If you don't like the terms music purchased on the iTunes music store is sold under, don't buy it, don't use it, and don't subvert it.

You certainly don't have to buy it, nor use it (especially since using without buying it would be stealing it), but frankly I don't think it's your place or anyone else's to tell people not to subvert it. People have a moral right, and perhaps a duty, to work to subvert things they think are unjust. And while I personally don't really feel that FairPlay is terribly unjust, I have a certain amount of understanding for those that do. If you want to argue morals, fine--but as someone who otherwise agrees with you, I take offense to the suggestion that people should not actively work against causes they find repressive.

If people think it's wrong, they're going to do their best to subvert it (regardless of what 'it' is). And as long as they're doing it from countries where this subversion is legal (ones without DMCA-like laws, in the case of DRM) then ... as the article says, more power to them.

Re:Maybe Apple doesn't really care if DRM is broke

[Zork the Almighty]

Yet another round of the "Apple is secretly good" theory. Apple doesn't give a fuck about you, your rights, the RIAA, or anything else. They are interested in a business model which makes them money. They say bullshit to you (Rip, Mix, Burn, just not more than 5 times), they say bullshit to the RIAA, and they keep everyone satisfied enough to make money. If you think they are on your side then you are hopelessly naive.

Re:Apple is the least of his worries...

[1u3hr]

The RIAA AND any band that is affected will gladly take up suit in their defense. This guy likes playing with nitro.

Johansen's app doesn't help to steal music, but allows non-Mac users to BUY it from iTunes. Apple doesn't like it, but it's debatable if even they have been injured in a legal sense.

Re:More power to you, Jon!

[Gigs]

This has nothing to do with "Congress" saving a business model.

Yes it does. Their business model is based on "First Sale Doctrine" and that model is moot in a digital world where the cost of reproduction is esentially zero. And so they are attempting to create new laws in congress so that they can sustain their business model. I believe Robert Heinlein put it best:

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit.

The copyright owners own the content, period, and get to decide how it's used, by whom, and under what conditions, whether you like it or not.

Wrong! Try reading the Constitution sometime. Once a work is published it is by its very nature a public work. They government grants the origiator a limited time copyright and with it come certain restictions and allowances. The inablity to resell or otherwise use the work in personal ways is beyond the scope of the granted copyright. These technologies are attempts to add restrictions to these works so that they become the sole distributor and "Second Sale" and personal use become impossible.

They don't have to encrypt the music. Apple is well within its rights to sell the music in the ways it sees fit on its own service.

Yes they are, and I am well within my rights under the constitution to place that music on phonogragh, tape, eight track, cd and any and all music playing devices I own.

Additionally, this argument is worthless, because even if it was encrypted, you'd be on the side of arguing that it's ok to break the encryption.

If GM sold cars with that only accepted gas from GM gas pumps and I removed their gas tap and replaced it with a standard gas tap, would I be breaking the law?

If you don't believe in copyright, licenses, or "trade secrets"

This isn't about doing away with copyrights and licenses completely. Its about returning to what copyright laws original intent was "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" and not to line the pockets of the middle men over and over again.

Oh, I forgot, those things only apply to the things you want it to, not corporate interests.

Please read the eighth section of the first article of the constitution I don't see anything in there about corporate interests. What I do see is the promoting of scientific progress and useful arts which are clearly public interests.

Re:Counting coup.

[finkployd]

The problem is not one of absolutes. 2048 bit RSA is not unbreakable, but as there are no known attacks other than brute force, the prospect is quite daunting, when the keys are handled properly.

In DRM, the keys are not handled properly, making the prospect of compromise so laughably simple one wonders why even use RSA (I suppose to pretend there is some teeth to it).

It is not a problem of computation, so Moore's law and large key spaces don't really apply. It is simply security by obscurity. Where did they try to hide the private key on my machine?

Palladium actually gives DRM some teeth, assuming it really is tamperproof.

The tit for tat can go on forever, but the companies may begin to question why they are blowing so much money on something so easily broken.

Finkployd

I also support Jon, but this is basically Offtopic

[cgenman]

I don't think Gwen Stefani is the fault of legacy in the recording industries. Gwen always said she wanted to be rick and famous. And when she was poor and playing small groups in clubs and fairgrounds, it was cute, sad... she said she wanted to be one of those annoying and famous people with her name and lights, but she basically lived out of the back of a van playing crappy gigs in traditional musician fashion. You had to empathize with her, because everyone knows musicians in that situation. And you have to admit, Tragic Kingdom had some original and interesting tracks on it.

But Gwen is now exactly who she wanted to be. She has become the rich, famous, self-centered girl she always was, only now she's actually rich and famous. That which allowed her fans to empathize with her, and her with her fans, is gone. And in it's place are terrible covers of If I Were a Rich Man (I didn't think It's My Life was that bad), and vaccuous cameos in Kid Rock videos. I don't think this happened because she lost control over her music, so much as the change in lifestyle which comes with money made her lose connection with her audience.

A similar problem struck Alanis Morisette. Radio overplay aside, Alanis had always composed music because she was unhappy. And her audience responded to this. Enough people responded, that soon she was rich, successful, and gave her the power to solve her problems and make herself happy. Which she did. And she lost the drive to make music. Eventually she found it again (she gives a great interview about this), but because she was no longer singing about being tortured, she lost the audience that had that connection with her.

Most artists don't survive the transition from poor no-name slob to rich superstar simply because they sing about their experiences, and their experiences go from things everyone can relate to, to experiences very few people on the planet have. What would Bill Gates sing about that any of us here would connect to? Compiler woes? Kobain was highly relatable up until the end simply because he suffered the entire time. Dr Dre still raps about the kids in the hood and yelling at his grandma on the front porch, despite the fact that he owns million dollar mansions and essentially lives like an investment banker for talent.

The point is that the problems with the music industry that you had pointed out are not so much with legacy, but money. Too much money and too much success will destroy pretty much any artist. Even overthrowing the big 5 wouldn't change that.

Re:iTunes homebrew?

[Baricom]

I know the AC was being funny, but he has a very valid point. People are not pirating music with PyMusique.

Our friends at the RIAA want to stop the rampant copyright infringement, right? Here's how:

1. Stop suing the people you want as your paying customers.
1a. Stop suing little old ladies that may not be your customers, but generate massive public sympathy when covered in the media.
2. Change iTMS and friends to do digital watermarking, instead of digital restrictions management.

All of a sudden, everybody's happy! The RIAA keeps their income and can still go after the worst copyright infringers (after politely asking them to cease and desist), Apple sells more iPods because people like me are less worried about draconian DRM methods, society gets the fair use rights they are owed, and judges can finally focus on dealing with white collar criminals rather than thousands of 13-year-olds who are nothing but music fans.

Re:Umm I payed for the song

[morcego]

Looks like people really doesn't understand Copyright.

You didn't pay for the song. You didn't buy the song. You payed for the right to listen to it, one the media/format provided.

Several people have quoted the "First Sale" right/law. Guess what ? When you buy a CD, you are not only paying for the songs, but also for the physical media. You buy the media, and pay for the right to listen to the music (that is why you can't give copies to others). Since there is no way to sell the media (CD) without the music, the first sale right applies, indirectly, to the songs. Erasing the midia or changing it in any other way will decaracterise(?) the product, changing it into something else.

I hate the DMCA, RIAA and DRM as much as every other slashdoter, but barking at the wrong door isn't helping.

A lawsuit for what?

[SuperKendall]

Basically the worst they can do is claim a TOS violation and not let him (or anyone using standalone clients) use the server.

You can't sue someone for connecting to a public server, especially if the intent of use is perfectly legal. You pay for a song, then what does it matter how it is transferred?

exactly true

[ArbitraryConstant]

Moreover, and this is nearly as bad as the practical difficulties of dealing with "secure" hardware the user has complete access to, it's designed by a company with a timetable and a budget.

The best minds in the world fuck up cryptography and security when they have decades of time to work and peer all the review they can handle.

Along comes a company that wants to do DRM. They could do use a very strong cipher but the chip that does that costs $0.05 instead of $0.03. They could open it up to peer review but they want it secret and they want it by the end of next quarter. They could have the code audited for security but that would take an expensive consultant.

Whoops. Now the cipher can be brute-forced a few years down the road. Whoops, their implementation drops bits of the key when the user does a chosen-plaintext attack. Whoops, there's a buffer overflow in in the firmware of the DRM chip. Now it can be reprogrammed to dump the unencrypted audio stream onto the hard drive.

Big business is never going to change the way it thinks. Their decisions will be based on what will give them good margins this quarter and next, not what will keep them secure for years to come. DRM is in a terrible position because it has to go in consumer electronics, where these pressures are at their worst.

Re:iTunes homebrew?

[mvdw]

To stop piracy, the RIAA has to add value to the CD. For example:

Include with the CD a one-time-use download link for cell-phone ringtones.

Include with the CD a DVD of video clips.

Include with the CD a CD of watermarked MP3s, at high bitrate.

Include with every purchased CD a sticker of the band or whatever.

The question is, though, does the RIAA want to stop piracy, or does the RIAA want to sell more records? The RIAA should be concentrating more on the latter than the former, IMO. That's where the money is; it doesn't really matter from an economic standpoint how much piracy there is, as long as they are selling the records, however from a dogmatic and philosophical point of view RIAA is in the business of "protecting its product". Where portection equates to restriction on consumers, and they wonder why consumers don't buy as many CDs as they used to (not to mention the number of new CDs released is dramatically falling).

Re:Yes, let's lump them together.

[BobTheLawyer]

But he isn't just "attacking" his own hardware or software; he's logging onto iTunes through his own software in violation of the terms of service which he agreed when he created his account. Most jurisdictions have a criminal offence covering "unauthorised access to computer systems" - does Norway really not?

And he is surely acting in breach of his contract with iTunes, albeit this would be a civil rather than criminal matter. Would Norway not consider this a contract law claim?

He doesn't access the system nor has he a contract

[bterzic]

Ah but he doesn't. Log onto iTunes that is. Someone logs on with a legitimate account and then he reverse engineers some protocols/crypto/specs producing a tool that is _capable_ of logging onto iTunes.

Assuming (and I wouldn't even dare to hazard whether this is or isn't so) it is illegal to acces iTunes with "unauthorized" software they'd need to have a log of _him_ connecting to the service. As for "breaching" his contract with iTunes, who says he actually engaged in one by making use of their services.

It's like someone built a very large wall with 1 door in it, offering a service to people who want to look at what's behind the wall and making those people use that door (i.e. Apple). Then someone else comes around, looks at the wall (or listens to stories of people describing the wall) and says: "Well, here is this periscope like contraption, that you can use to look over the wall if you should choose to."

But of course, IANAL.

Re:Except one thing...

[freerangegeek]

Stop supporting? Lock out? The old versions of iTunes still play music no problem, they only wont' allow you to buy new music at the iTMS. The updates to iTunes are free. The visible interface wouldn't change, and it's a desktop app not the OS. Need I go on?

Re:iTunes homebrew?

[ManxStef]

To stop piracy, the RIAA has to add value to the CD. For example...

How about just selling it for a reasonable price to start with?