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

So sue him?

[nsaneinside]

Oh, don't worry. They will.

Re:So sue him?

[ikewillis]

Jon Johanson has already been repudiated of any crime in Norway, a country which isn't part of the EU and doesn't have any DMCA-style laws.

He's likely acting as a front for another group doing the grunt work who doesn't want the legal exposure.

Given the current legal precedent he's acquired in Norway, it's highly unlikely Apple will be able to prosecute.

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:So sue him?

[Zocalo]

Is "sosume" really slipping into IT history already? For those that don't know, and thus get the in-joke, Apple Computers was once sued by Apple Music, the Beatles record label, over the use of the name "Apple". This was back when the Macintosh was still in the early stages of development, long before the much more recent legal spat between the two Apples over iTMS. Part of the settlement agreement that resulted was that Apple Computers would not enter into competion with Apple Music. When Apple shipped the Macintosh with audio support one of the included sound files was called "sosume" - a pun at the expense of Apple Music.

Re:So sue him?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it was sosumi, and it didn't show up until System 7 (at the same time as the ability to record audio via a built-in mic was added to the Macintosh line).

Re:So sue him?

[Lord Kano]

That's most of the story. The sound "Sosumi" was originally to be named "xylophone", but someone at Apple's legal dept thought that it could get them in trouble because of their agreement with Apple Music to not get into the music business. The developer of the sound suggested that they change the name of xylophone to sosumi, which HE SAID was japanese for "the abesence of all musicality". Apple legal agreed and a great "FU" was unleashed on the world.

LK

Re:So sue him?

[Junior J. Junior III]

DVDJon is like one of those martial arts masters who, no matter how you come at him, just makes a slight, barely perceptible move, and defeats his opponents.

DRM company: "Take that!"

DVDJon: "OK, I'll just try holding down the shift key, and..."

DRM company: "Damn, you're good!"

Re:So sue him?

[koehn]

That's a great story, pity it's not true, IIRC.

"Sosumi" was the name of the sound, and it came from the equally amusing battle between Apple Computer and Carl "Billions and Billions" Sagan.

It seems Apple code-named the Power Mac 7500 "Sagan". Not that they were going to call the shipping unit by that name mind you, but just internally they needed to call it something, so they named it after the great scientist, probably out of respect.

In any case, somebody with Carl's crew found out about it and got torqued, and filed a lawsuit. Apple, after an initial WTF? reaction, obliged, and changed the name to the supposedly innocuous "BHA". Turns out that BHA stood for Butt Head Astronomer, at which point more saber-rattling was heard in the Sagan camp.

In any case, the System Software released with the Power Mac 7500 included a new sound, "sosumi." I don't recall it having anything to do with Apple Music.

Re:So sue him?

[FuzzzyLogik]

The title of his blog has been "So Sue Me" for much longer than the release of this iTMS hack. it has nothing to do with Apple, all of his releases since the DVD Decryption hack have been announced on his blog "So Sue Me."

Re:So sue him?

[Anthony Boyd]

That's a great story, pity it's not true, IIRC.

"Sosumi" was the name of the sound, and it came from the equally amusing battle between Apple Computer and Carl "Billions and Billions" Sagan.

That's a great story, pity it's not true. The original poster was correct. Quoting from Macworld's "Mac & PowerMac Secrets, 3rd Edition":

The Beatle's lawyers claimed that Apple, in making a computer with sound capabilities, was trying to get into the recording industry, causing confusion in the consumers' minds.

And later, from the same page:

Some wily Apple engineer, recognizing the potential litigation, gave the alert sound a name that serves as a subtle tribute to Apple Records: Sosumi!

Re:So sue him?

[rootofevil]

sorry, thats completely inaccurate

the 7100 was "Sagan" (the 6100 was "Piltdown Man" and the 8100 was "Cold Fusion") [link]

sosumi the system sound was included in system 7, several years before the 7100 was ever created (that shipped with 7.5) [link]

Re:So sue him?

[mrpuffypants]

Interesting side note too: If you check the code for Apple's web pages, the CSS class for all of their tiny-text legal phrases is named "sosumi".

Check it out: www.apple.com -> view source -> search for "sosumi" :)

Re:So sue him?

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, this is Norway. Norway is notably short on laws with awe inspiring monikers. You don't see titles like "Digital Millenium", PATRIOT" or "Save The Children."

DVD Jon got off because the non-infringing use case was a clear slamdunk. It made it possible to play legally owned DVDs on a Linux PC. As a bonus, the software is of little use to counterfeiters.

Effectively, the DMCA criminalizes reverse-engineering. Since that's only against the law in the US (with the Queen apparently happy to send her own to Uncle Ernie) there was nothing to charge him with. The MPAA lobbied fiercely for extradition but the fact that what he did was no more criminal than chewing gum in LA kind of spoke against that.

I don't know enough about Jon's latest project or iTunes to know what the non-infringing or infringing uses are. He's definitely not getting charged under the DMCA.

On the political side, Okokrim, the white collar crime unit, played the role of Corporate America's frothing dog last time. They've obviously got one on for Jon but they've got to back off or come up with a rock solid case. The last investigation had to cost a bundle and if this one is at all close, it starts to look like they are spending a great deal of taxpayer's money to harass a prominent person.

Jon's been here before and he doesn't seem nervous. I'm guessing he's got his ducks in a row: a solid non-infringing use, maybe a method of capturing and playing back the actual packet stream, the analogue hole and unsuitability for commercial use.

My take is that Jon and his counsel believe that what he has done is legal in Norway and that they can make a solid case for it.

Re:So sue him?

[RenatoRam]

Most of the end user licenses of software and services are completely meaningless in Europe (and in Norway).

The laws protecting the customer are far stronger here, and the seller cannot impose rules on the buyer without explicit (hand signed) acceptance of EACH clause on a written contract.

Yes, you guessed it, even Microsoft's EULAs have been proved to be largely unenforceable (for example) in Italy.

Re:So sue him?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ha! Your Suffocating DRM technique is strong, but it is no match for my Flying Shift style..."

Re:So sue him?

[kyojin the clown]

To be fair, virtually ALL laws are largely unenforceable in Italy... =)

Re:So sue him?

[MadMoses]

DRMcompany: "Take that!"

DVDJon: "Your style is strong, but your chi is weak!"

Re:So sue him?

[misterpies]

"the seller cannot impose rules on the buyer without explicit (hand signed) acceptance of EACH clause on a written contract"

IAAL (in Europe but not Italy) and can state for a fact that this is not the case in all of Europe, and I very much doubt it is in Norway or Italy.

Think about it. What is a contract? It's not a piece of paper, it's any legally enforceable agreement between two or more people. Every time you buy anything, that's a contract. And any time you buy anything online there will be sellers' terms and conditions to agree with, regarding payment and delivery if nothing else. So either this person is wrong, or online commerce does not exist in Italy (and nor does any business not in which written docs are not exchanged).

I can believe that many EULAs are invalid under European consumer protection laws, but they're not invalid simply because they don't make you sign a document. (Indeed the point of most consumer protection laws are to protect you even if you do sign that document, since they recognise that the individual consumer isn't in much of a position to dictate terms to megacorp.)

Get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

A Name!

[kryogen1x]

At least they called him by his name, not just "The iTunes back door guy."

I wonder, did he work around it that quickly, or was he anticipating Apple's fix and already knew another way around it?

Re:A Name!

[ikewillis]

Apple merely locked out all clients not using the iTMS 4.7 protocol, which previous versions of PyMusique didn't support. The new version of PyMusique merely adds support for the new protocol revision. The unencrypted, DRM free songs are still sent to the client from the music store.

The only way for Apple to actually fix this hole is to handle DRM encryption server side, unless you consider the problem is unresolved due to the fact that DRM is a fundamentally flawed concept.

Re:A Name!

[RonnyJ]

It seems likely to me that he had already worked out the encryption for v4.7 of iTunes, but deliberately withheld it as he anticipated the forced upgrade to v4.7, and releasing such a 'quick fix' serves to gain him more notoriety.

Re:A Name!

[ikewillis]

Don't you get it? How does the server distinguish between a legitimate copy of iTunes or another program like PyMusick that talks an identical wire protocol? Various programs have attempted to block 3rd party servers and clients (i.e. AIM, Warcraft) and the only way they've managed to be successful is using the DMCA to prosecute the people doing the reverse engineering. There's no way to prevent a client or server from talking the same wire protocol.

PyMusick could send the same public key, iTMS would send it the same song, and PyMusic could decrypt the song with its private key, yielding the same unencrypted, DRM-free file. Adding public key cryptography does nothing to solve the problem.

They could use private key cryptography, but the key would have to ship with every copy of iTunes, where it could be discovered through disassembly of the encryption algorithm. This is the exact approach KaZaA used, and it was reverse engineered, but 3rd party KaZaA clients were halted thanks to the DMCA.

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:A Name!

[cduffy]

PyMusick could send any public key it wants, but if it doesn't know the private key it doesn't do it any good.

If you actually read the parent post in full and thought about it for a moment, you'd know that he supposed that the private key were reverse-engineered out of iTunes -- not exactly a hard thing to do, given that it's necessarily included in every copy.

Ok- now I see what kind of a moron I am dealing with.

One bad thing about ad hominems -- they tend to backfire.

Re:A Name!

[dmaxwell]

We keep posting that because it is fundamentally flawed.

The usual case for encryption is that Bob wants to send a message Alice and keep Eve from listening in. Assuming the crypto is good, this works because Alice at the very least possesses decryption keys Eve lacks.

With DRM, Bob wants to send Alice a message. He wants Alice to be able to read the message but not be able to share it with Eve. This is ludicrous. Alice has the cyphertext and the keys in her physical posession. At best, hardware DRM means the keys are glooped up in epoxy. DRM also assumes Alice has no technical savvy. Even expoxied chips will eventually fall to determined analysis. This is all true before the analog hole comes into it. Once protection from the analog hole is considered, the situation becomes surreal instead of just ludicrous.

You can chuck your fine moral arguments out the window because you've put the cart before the horse. They'll "hand us something even less comfortable" and it will be cheerfully broken in a handful of years at most. Weeks is probably more realistic. You might as well argue the Earth is flat.

If you insist on moral arguments then chew on this one: Any technological artifact I own will serve my intents and purposes and my intents and purposes alone. The xxAA does not get an ownership interest in my property. Period.

Re:A Name!

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

XOR is all that is needed to gain DMCA protection.

There was a product which used that, but I won't name the product or the byte it used - that might be illegal.

If this were Fark...

[bloggins02]

...I would be chastising you for inappropriate use of the "Ironic" tag. :)

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.

Thanks!

[BinaryTao]

This is awesome, Jon is single handedly causing a pretty reasonable DRM scheme to rapidly degrade into something nearly unusable. Thanks man!

Re:Thanks!

[rpozz]

I totally agree. It's dickheads like him who are going to make the content industries look towards trusted computing. What's the fucking point of it if you can decrypt it later anyway? He's just trying to show off.

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:Thanks!

[cgenman]

What?

So you're saying that pointing out the fundamental flaws in DRM is being a dick, because other people have knee-jerk reactions to it?

Now the chip-in-your computer analogy is ridiculous. Nobody is going to force application developers to sign their executables. For one, they change far too frequently. For another, downloaded software would cease to function. For a third, it would be grossly anticompetitive in a way that even the US government would ignore. And if you don't sign your executables... what's the point?

Second, how would a secure computing platform work? You would still need virtualization capabilities. And once you can virtualize a platform, you can do pretty much whatever you want with it.

Third, how would a remote computer connecting to mine even realize that I was on a trusted computer or not? It's all information sent back over TCP-IP packets, packets that can be faked. If the key is in the hardware, and the hardware is running an SSH tunnel to the server, well we just hack the hardware, figure out what key it is using, and setup our own SSH tunnels in an application no more invasive than this one. Depending on the type of protection, there is a always a viable counterattack because information sufficient to decrypt the stream must be present on the host machine. Even if the host machine itself attmpts to deny access to itself it can be run virtually, and the important bits picked out directly. Even if it is hardware based you can listen to the pins. And ultimately none of this results in the end-user needing to do anything more than install a small piece of software to bypass once the protection system's keys are known.

DeCSS is exactly the same as you're proposing. It was a hardware implementation of trusted computing. And if failed miserably because even if you offload the knowledge to the hardware, the hardware still has to know how to decrypt a file or it won't work.

The fact of the matter is DRM in it's current incarnation is fundamentally flawed.

I work in an industry where DRM has been a fact of life for many, many years, and the best a DRM system can hope to do is delay the inevitable crack by two weeks. But that's enough for game developers, and we continue on. The music and movie industries will have to live with the idea that their content is going to be cracked, and that is just a cost of doing business.

Re:Thanks!

[nolife]

That is not a valid reason to crack a system which has been working quite well for a while now.
I am not for, against, justifing or promoting anything. I am simply stating a fact. When you build a system that is supposed to be secure, you better not rely on any type of obscurity or hidden feature because it WILL be found and it WILL be bypassed by someone.

I don't want to end up having to get a modchip for my computer just because dicks like him are circumventing existing methods.

Your anger is displaced. Hardware protection in computers will only be forced on you if it becomes a law. It will only become a law if the hardware and software companies lobby enough. They are the ones you should be angry at. The fact that you find a specific in use DRM system acceptable but decide that any further restrictions would be unacceptable is the exact point that people have been stating for years! Where do you draw the line? Many have stated they want no DRM, some are happy with a little, some have no idea what DRM is but eventually they will and they will be just as pissed off as you are now. For the majority, it will be too late.
For every dickhead you get pissed off at for cracking something, there are 5000 other dickheads that others get pissed off at for supporting companies that use any DRM systems at all like the one in iTMS. If no one supported DRM in any manner, companies would not feel inclined to continue to push it and expand it every chance they get. As the DRM gets more and more refined and restrictive, you will be trapped and stuck using that system as it gets worse. Wait another 10 years when regular old non DRM audio cds are no longer produced and you are forced to stick with one company or pay per play. People have been trying to point this out for years with DRM. Little by little, your rights to copyrighted material are fading away and you are supporting it.

Interesting

[mt v2.7]

1. Make software that breaks old version of iTunes
2. Make software that breaks new version of iTunes
3. Released version that breaks old iTunes
4. Wait for iTunes users to be forced to upgrade
5. Immmediatly release version that breaks new iTunes
6. Impress people
7. ????
8. Profit!

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"

[jimbolaya]

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.

In other words, your "rights" are not being violated by DRM.

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"

[aaronl]

Your comment on the music companies is absolutely correct. That is the problem, of course. We have rights guaranteed to us through the Constitution and through US and State code. In the case of Fair Use, this would be Federal code. These companies are attempting to prevent their customers from exercising these legally guaranteed rights, and that's a problem.

You're also right, unfortunately, about hte rest of the world only caring about getting their crap conveniently and nothing more. It's a real shame that they don't care about the foundations of their government and legal structure... how and why they came to exist. It would be wonderful if more people would stand up and try to fix things.

The offer shouldn't be either pay and deal with the restriction of rights, or STFU. Of course companies would love that: it gets them more profits.

As is said so many times, vote people that listen to the populace instead some artificial entity. Write your Congress-critters. Do *something* other than just accept things the way they are.

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"

[xkenny13]

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.

So what happens when someone gets an exclusive contract for a song that you want, and therefore it won't work on your iPod? Suppose Real or Napster secures the rights so you *have* to subscribe to their service just to get the song you want ... only now it won't play on your iPod?

Think it can't happen? Think again. MTV has obtained exclusive contracts such that certain music videos could only be found on MTV.

Well, back in the days when music videos were actually the primary content of MTV. :-)

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"

[jimbolaya]

Exactly what "rights," pray tell, are being violated? Chances are, the rights you think you have, you do not.

You have no legal right to "listen to the song on the device of your choice" (as others have posted that they think then do). Apple doesn't need to make it possible or easy for you to listen to it on a Dell DJ, for instance. When you purchase a song from iTMS, you are bound by the license agreement which you agree to buy using the store (though the law does limit what can be included in a license agreement, and at times, parts of these license agreements have been invalidated by the courts).

So if DRM prevents you from playing a song on your Dell DJ, your rights are not being violated because you never had such a right to begin with.

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

[ballantrae_j]

there are options. there's magnatune.com for starters. Look, there is "someplace else" to buy or download stuff. It drives me crazy that mostly everyone here bitches and complains about the Evil Music Industry, but no one is willing to try out alternatives. Guys there are alternatives. If we would all make use of them, then the artists would sign contracts with those alternates! Besides, it's honest. -ron

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"

[GlassUser]

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.


Actually I believe the acronym is DRM for "digital restrictions management". But the point is the same.

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

[Fulcrum of Evil]

MTV has obtained exclusive contracts such that certain music videos could only be found on MTV.

MTV still plays videos?

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

[Fulcrum of Evil]

You have no legal right to "listen to the song on the device of your choice" (as others have posted that they think then do).

Sure I do - I bought the song and I can do as I please with it, provided I don't redistribute copies.

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"

[radish]

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

Wow. All this brand new vinyl I bought the other day must be a figment of my imagination. Time to lay off the acid...

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"

[MoneyT]

How is it impossible to resell? It's a packet of bits no? You physicaly transfer the packet of bits, in it's original form, to a new owner no?

The problem you're running into is that the person you're selling it to can't use it. Is it a violation of your rights that a record company won't provide you a CD version of the 8-Track you bought so long ago so that someone can buy the song from you and use it today?

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

[andreyw]

No - the music I decrypted *using my own key* is forever decrypted and plays on any MPEG-4-capable player. If Apple feels like being an thorn for intelligent non-cattle, by switching to a completely different form of DRM for which there would be no currently available cure, then I'll simply stop using iTMS until DVD Jon makes them red in the face again. iTMS already has some strange design ideas behind it - why are the musical selections different for varying countries? I don't get it. I am a 1st generation European-American. As such, iTunes doesn't let me purchase Eiffel 65's Italian albums, which are clearly available to the Italian customers. Good luck finding anything foreign that hasn't been on the charts, although I am surpised I can find the majority of "Die Prinzen." Want something in Russian? Too bad, unless your tastes are dominated by TaTu (mine aren't).

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

[ebyrob]

buy.

You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means.

Now if you said "lend" or "lease" I wouldn't feel like you were trying to trick someone.

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

[Secret Agent 99]

iTMS already has some strange design ideas behind it - why are the musical selections different for varying countries? I don't get it.

This is a consequence of different entities holding/controlling music distribution rights for different countries. I'm sure Apple would like to secure the worldwide rights for all recorded music...but of course they can't. Hence the patchwork of different virtual "stores" divided along national lines.

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

[tshak]

So if DRM prevents you from playing a song on your Dell DJ, your rights are not being violated because you never had such a right to begin with.

Correct. But no company has the right to prevent me from modifying their product so that I can do with it as I please. If Apple wants to make it hard for me to play music on a Dell DJ, fine, but that doesn't prevent me from making modifications that allow me to do so.

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

[nametaken]

That's interesting. So I guess the big question is, "how do you distribute your copyrighted material in a manner that respects consumer's (former?) rights, but protects you from illegal redistribution of the material"

It seems to me that all the brains in the world (for all their efforts) haven't been able to solve this. Is it really impossible?

I try to imagine myself in the role of the record company or music retailer, and as the consumer.

The demands do seem mutually exclusive. As a company I would demand that my product could not be infinitly resold (or given away) by a consumer.

As a consumer I want the ability to lend my music to my friends or sell what I've purchased to someone else if I don't want it anymore. I also want the ability to modify what I've purchased in any way I choose.

The closest answer I can think of is swift and effective prosecution of illegal distribution, coupled with legal availability of unencumbered music.

Of course, there are all kinds of pitfalls here. For instance, how would they determine which forms of redistribution are legal and which aren't? How could they tell if my friend is borrowing my music and I haven't destroyed my copy? How could they tell if I've transferred my copy to someone else and destroyed my copy? With non-DRR'd formats, they can't... and DRR'd formats void the deal since I have to be able to modify my files any way I like (I want it to work on my xyz player!).

I don't know, can someone think of something better? If the constraints are those mentioned earlier, I can't.

If you can, I'll bet its a bajillion dollar idea.

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

[superdude72]

You have no legal right to "listen to the song on the device of your choice"

True. And they have no legal right to prevent me from doing so. However, they can put whatever DRM they want on the song. And if I try to circumvent that DRM, I'm breaking the law. In effect DMCA allows copyright holders to use technology to invent whatever rights they want for themselves and have that right become legally enforceable, whether it's in the public interest or not.

If this ever becomes the norm, it will lead to much more restrictive copyright law than we've had in our entire history, thus undermining a potential for information sharing that would be much more in the public interest.

For most of US history, copyright protection was limited to 30 years. If that copyright law had remained unchanged, we'd be getting close to the point where someone could release DVD versions of the original Star Wars movies, without Lucas's awful changes. Is that a bad thing? Has he made enough money off his creativity of 30 years ago?

Yes, I did just read Lawrence Lessig's _Free Culture_.

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

[crankyspice]

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

Note that even the page you link to notes that this applies only to computer software (and, no, the motion picture embodied in a DVD is not computer software; look at 17 USC 101 for the definition of a 'phonorecord' and you'll learn why just because something's digitally encoded and requires a computer 'machine' to make perceivable, doesn't make it software).

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

[16K Ram Pack]

The first time that someone has a file that they can't play somewhere, they will wake up.

Remember this is geek territory right now.

To give you another way of looking at it, a friend of mine is a biker and one day was telling me about how the bike clubs were protesting laws trying to protect bike companies from replica parts. Do I know about that? No, because I'm not a biker. Were I to become a biker, it would become an issue.

Right now, most people aren't using DRM and the like, or haven't been using it for a time. But, when someone finds that their download doesn't work elsewhere, or if their PC gets destroyed, that they didn't back it up or some such, it will become an issue.

It's a little bit like security. People are rarely pro-active about it. Only when they've had their machines destroyed by a virus do they start backing up.

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

[ebyrob]

Once again:

1) First sale: You agree it's usefulness is diminished by DRM.

2) Fair use: You are incorrect, DRM can (but doesn't in all cases) make it difficult or impossible to record an excerpt. Macrovision, for example, makes it more difficult to record analog video from certain devices.

3) Archival: An archive/backup is useless unless it can function as a replacement for the original. In many cases (like playstation games) this is not possible, so the usefulness is once again degraded or destroyed.

4) Reverse Engineering: DRM is the only thing that cannot be reverse engineered under the DMCA, so everywhere DRM exists, or is claimed to exist, is a decrease in the usefulness of reverse engineering. Since reverse engineering is (currently) a requirement to restore usefulness to all of the other rights, the DMCA becomes central rather than a seperate matter.

Note: I really don't have much problem with the DRM pre-DMCA, but post DMCA it becomes nasty in almost all cases. (Perhaps if there were an openly specified DRM which allowed open source implementations it wouldn't be nasty, but I've yet to see this and it doesn't appear possible.)

I've made this point several times, but it continually seems to be missed so let me try one more time: The rights you have regarding copyrighted works are, one, limited, and two, only protect you from legal action by the copyright holders.

You forgot three: "The only reason for a consumer to pay a producer of a work." If no rights are granted by forking over cold hard cash, why bother? You can argue till you're blue in the face that consumers don't have the "right" to do what they do in practice on a daily basis, but in common law (the original source of each of these exceptions) reasonable everyday actions become the law.

Neither the record companies nor the vendors (Apple, Napster, etc.) have any obligation to make it easy or possible for you to exercise those rights.

Yes, I don't see why I'd expect a corporation to exercise duty, responsibility or conscience in their interaction with users. That'd be just silly.

Note: Don't get me wrong, I'm not Apple bashing here, iTunes actually scores pretty well on this scale. I don't seem them sueing Jon or his users (yet), it isn't too hard to make excerpts, archival is fairly easy (well, yet to be seen for the long-haul, but it looks promising). 3 out of 4 isn't nearly as bad as it could be. Of course, violation of first sale alone can be enough to sour the whole deal... (And did for booksellers in the courts at the turn of the century.)

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

[ebyrob]

Apple is under no obligation to protect the value of the item for resale

DRM is not natural. It is an agent specifically designed to further the agenda of a particular producer in a particular market segment inside of someone else's computer. Further, that agent is legally protected from being modified, tampered with or even fixed if it is broken. If that agent causes damage or loss (like the lowering of resale value) shouldn't the party who's behalf it is acting on be held accountable?

If you don't like it, don't buy it.

Agreed on some matters, but as software and other digital goods become more a part of everyday life, this won't always be an option, especially as the DMCA begins doing real damage to interoperability. (Imagine trying to avoid using Word as a secretary in 1999. Imagine trying to get your kids not to want "pop" music just because it contains DRM.)

But just because you don't like the way things are run doesn't give you a license to steal music.

Making use of a product you purchased legally without asking permission is not stealing. Sharing with your 3 closest friends is not stealing. Sharing with your 1000 closest friends is not stealing. Even infringing copyright for financial gain is not stealing (though it does divert money so is the closest).

So which one of those 4 are you complaining about when you invoke the term "stealing"? And just why is it so important that it be "technologically impossible" for end-users to copy protected works without tight supervision? I can go out and buy a crow-bar without 24-hour surveillance making sure I don't brain someone. Is protecting copyright that much more important than protecting human life?

Hire they guy....

[thejuggler]

Maybe Apple should pay Jon to build a better DRM. At least he'd be doing something legal for a change.

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

Re:Best Solution ...

[RonnyJ]

Then ... Apple would be cool.

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

Blog Message

[Ken@WearableTech]

His server seems to be /.ed The blog entry is: The iTunes Music Store recently stopped supporting iTunes versions below 4.7 in an attempt to shut out 3rd party clients. I have reverse engineered the iTMS 4.7 crypto which will once again enable 3rd party clients to communicate with the iTMS.

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.

Yes, more power to you!

[bonch]

Let's do all we can to make legal online music downloading look like a shaky, invalid alternative to CD-buying, so we can ensure that record labels never change and embrace the new model. After all, we can't just NOT BUY THE SONGS if we don't like the DRM, right?

Every time this gets cracked, it hurts online legal music. The labels are already paranoid as it is, and this is exactly why. They know these kinds of people are out there waiting to crack it all. You're only hurting the iTunes music store and the business model as a whole.

Re:Yes, more power to you!

[Kiryat Malachi]

It hurts a ridiculously stupid model of online legal music.

I'm okay with that.

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:Yes, more power to you!

[Spankophile]

The sooner the labels learn that digitally distributed content shouldn't have DRM the better.

I hope people like Jon keep trying to teach them that lesson.

Good for him...

[Duncan3]

Good thing this was Apple.

Any other company would have just had him killed already.

Re:Good for him...

[bikerguy99]

I think they tried to do it to Newton years back...

Re:Good for him...

[Anonymous Coward]

any other company wouldn't have had a chance..
and others have already tried. it simply is legal for him to do what he does, end of story.

but real reality is: APPLE IS NOT FRIENDLY against perceived threats, friendliness is just an IMAGE they've managed to keep up and will keep up as a lot of their fans are in a reality distortion field where they don't see anything negative about Apple. Apple is just as sue happy and bitchy to 'steal'(clone) others technologies as microsoft is .

Re:Good for him...

[labratuk]

Apple doesn't have to - they just rely on their fanboys to do it for them.

Re:rant

[mp3phish]

Why is this guy annoying? He has legimitately gotten around the copy protection. It is even legal in the US because it does not circumvent digital rights management. No, it gets to the root of the problem before it is even encrypted. Smart move...

It is nobody's fault but yourself for installing software which you find annoying on your system. If you don't like the fact that you must update iTunes so often, then maybe you should use a REAL mp3 player which doesn't require proprietary software to load up your music. Ever think of that? I guess the iPod is too popular for the mainstream croud. The fad is in full force. Why do I even bother.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but I really find this kind of argument scary. Not to mention the fact that it actually gets modded up on slashdot. You're basically saying that we should all just agree not to make use of certain rights, because it might hurt a companies bottom line and they'll take away the goodies.

Consumers have rights for a reason. I should be able to do what I want with my own property in the privacy of my own home.

Re:An arms race

[FuzzzyLogik]

I'm going to mention it here but someone else has already brought up the so sue me title...

The title of the blog was So Sue Me long before Jon went after iTunes Music Store like this. It's not something he's saying to Apple, ever since the DVD DMCA thing he has had this blog titled that way. Don't get the idea he's got that title in there JUST to spite Apple.

Re:An arms race

[BlueHands]

So, you argument is that if the RIAA is demanding "protection money" they should GET IT?!?

Look, RIAA has a right to demand that of Apple. Apple has a right to put it in thier songs. And he, in his country, has a right to ignore it all.

And none of that even addresses how STUPID it all is,how broken most of the laws are..blah blah blah....

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

[natrius]

It's not that easy. iTunes on both Windows and OS X depends on Quicktime. Porting Quicktime would be a lot of extra work on top of the special UI things they already do when they port programs. They could use a media framework that is already present on Linux, but I doubt they would want to do that. In addition, to not have a half-assed port, they would have to support iPods and other MP3 players like they do on Windows. I think this part is the least of their worries, since most MP3 players use the USB Mass Storage driver (does iTunes on Windows even support those which don't?), and all iPods are supported in Linux. The main barriers are Quicktime and the iTunes interface.

The largest barrier is that they probably just don't want to do it. It doesn't seem economically sound to me to do so either.

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.

If you DRM-it...

[LokieLizzy]

they will come (together to bypass it)!

(TechnoPolitical rhetoric for the modern age).

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!

[mp3phish]

"you know, those people who actually have LEGAL RIGHTS to the content - don't intend to do that."

Maybe they should have encrypted the music before it got sent over the network... Or maybe they should figure out a way to save their business without lobbying congress to bail them out. Or MAYBE they should do something innovating to gain marketshare rather than lobby to change laws to put their competitors out of business? Guess they never thought of that. You probably didn't either. You were too busy listening ot U2 on your ever so popular iPod.

Get real.

Breaking the DRM?

[p0rnking]

If I remember correctly, he never did break the DRM, instead he captured the audio file before it went through the iTunes software, which puts the DRM into the audio file ... therefore there is no DRM to break.
And no, I didn't RTFA

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.

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

[ikewillis]

Hi, I submitted this story.

The music industry is plagued by an enormous problem of legacy. Creativity has been stifled by the labels' continuing drive towards commercialization. We have "artists" like Gwen Stefani releasing cover after cover, first covering Talk Talk's It's My Life then covering If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof, and both covers are atrocious. These are examples of an industry which is creatively bankrupt and where profit is the bottom line. It seems like nowadays the only place you can find creativity is in underground music, before the industry has commercialized and destroyed it.

Music needs a new distribution model, one where the artist is in the driver's seat and has complete creative control over their work. The Internet has rendered traditional music labels obsolete, they're aware of this, and they're fighting their eventual downfall tooth and nail. They will lose.

DRM is based around cryptographically unsound principles. In order to play DRM encrypted music you need the encrypted content and the key on your local system. Given this you have everything you need to unlock the encrypted data, it's only through obfuscation in the client that the key is hidden.

Eventually the industry will have to come to terms with this fact and the fact that their distribution model is antequated and obsolete. We need people to continue proving DRM is an unsound technology so eventually they give up on it entirely.

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

[daveschroeder]

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?

What about a smart card reader for accessing media content through some new video over IP content providers, or CableCard? Is that just "obfuscation", and since you have to have the key to view the content anyway, might as well just consider it worthless? That argument is disingenuous at best.

This isn't about a dying "business model" as much as you'd like it to be. This isn't tantamount to Congress legislating that every horseless carriage have a horse whip to save the horse whip maker.

Sure, it's going to have to change. But even in this brave new world you envision, we'll still have concepts like copyright and ownership. Some may choose to distribute their music freely and widely. Others may decide they'd like people to pay for it. What you're really saying is that you'd like the "business model" we call, you know, "paying for things people want you to pay for" is "dying", and you're muddying the waters with your own personal dislike from artists you consider too "commercial".

Has it ever occurred to you that if you consider the entire industry and its artists creatively bankrupt that you don't have to patronize it in any way, shape, or form? After all, it's the commercial tripe that's on the iTunes Music Store anyway, right? If it's so horrible, it seems that you shouldn't have any problems not using the iTunes Music Store, eh?

And how do content owners using DRM prevent you from patronizing and supporting your underground artists? What's that? They don't get the attention they deserve because the music industry is monopolized by people you view as money grubbing fat cats who don't care about quality? Hm. I don't quite see the problem there.

"The internet" hasn't rendered music labels and their functions obsolete. What it's done is made it infinitely easier to instantly violate content owners' rights, and then do the mental gymnastics to justify not paying for things that don't belong to you (or support subverting content owners' or distribution mechanisms' legitimate protections in the name of some righteous mission that some equate to the civil rights movement).

Does this mean there will be a paradigm shift and that the industry will have to respond? Sure. But when all is said and done we'll still have property, copyright, and rule of law.

And we'll still have freeloaders and a modern, Internet version of Peter Pan who says it's all okay.

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

[daveschroeder]

Note I didn't say that DRM - neither the concept of it, nor the spirit of it - was perfect. All it is is a catch-all term for an imperfect mechanism to protect the rights of content owners. I'm also aware that things like DRM, copy protection in general, the Broadcast Flag, etc., only hinder and inconvenience legitimate, honest users, while only acting as a minor roadblock to pirates.

However, there is nothing about the digital realm that negates the rights that content and copyright owners have had all along. It does, of course change things: it makes things much easier to duplicate, ad infititum, perfectly, and distribute globally almost instantaneously. Things aren't necessarily represented by a physical manifestation. Does that reduce their value? Are you arguing their value in the "old" world was artificial? As a content owner, how can I be sure you've deleted the copy you owned when you "sell" it to your friend? YOU may, but if the digital world has proven anything, many people wouldn't. And indeed, many people would think it's perfectly okay. In fact, they wouldn't even be selling it. They'd just be downloading it for free in the first place, regurgitating something they read on slashdot about a "dying business model" justifying their behavior.

And in the case of iTunes Music Store, you can

- copy for personal backup, including burning to CD in an uncompressed, non-DRM format
- "timeshift" the content (which is admittedly meaningless in this context)
- however, iTunes Music Store's license (fuck the DMCA) prohibits reverse engineering

I guess what I'm getting at is: why patronize this store?

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

[iCEBaLM]

I guess what I'm getting at is: why patronize this store?

I personally don't for various reasons, however you shouldn't rail those who do for standing up for their rights. That being said, on to the show:

As a content owner, how can I be sure you've deleted the copy you owned when you "sell" it to your friend?

You can't, however if you suspect me of breaking the law on your copyright sue me. Innocent until proven guilty my friend.

They'd just be downloading it for free in the first place, regurgitating something they read on slashdot about a "dying business model" justifying their behavior.

In the states this is a big issue and I agree it is morally wrong however where I live, in Canada, it's a bit different. I pay a levy on all my blank media to prop up the dying recording giants. I figure if I'm going to have to pay them so I can back up my hard drive and burn linux distro ISOs then I'm going to get a little something from them. You can try to argue this point with me all you wish, but if I'm giving them money for essentially nothing then I want something in return.

And in the case of iTunes Music Store, you can

- copy for personal backup, including burning to CD in an uncompressed, non-DRM format
- "timeshift" the content (which is admittedly meaningless in this context)
- however, iTunes Music Store's license (fuck the DMCA) prohibits reverse engineering

Since you're able to copy for personal backup to an unencumbered format I don't really have a problem with iTMS as the rest of the rights can effectively be done from that unencumbered format. Right to Timeshift means more than just playback at a later time and does apply here. It means allowing playback on other devices, for example: CD music copied to cassette tape for play in non-CD equipped cars.

Right of reverse engineering for interoperability means the interoperability of the copyright work, not the distribution medium. In this case interoperability for the music to play on non-ipod/non-itunes players. I'm not sure if Apple is legally allowed to restrict interoperability of the iTMS protocols or not as IANAL.

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

[Chris Burke]

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?

Why do you see those two things as even being related, other than they both involve encryption? Are you missing what the fundamental difference between encrypting for privacy and DRM is?

When I send a private email, I'm encrypting it so that during transit to the receiver it cannot be intercepted and read or modified. With DRM, I'm encrypting it so that the intended, legal recipient cannot read it or modify it without my explicit permission.

It's the difference between keeping privacy and keeping control.

And further, why is DRM not okay simply because you have a key embedded in software or a device for playback?

That has nothing to do with DRM's "okayness", it just means DRM will never be a feasible way to stop actual criminals.

This isn't about a dying "business model" as much as you'd like it to be. This isn't tantamount to Congress legislating that every horseless carriage have a horse whip to save the horse whip maker.

Right, right, DMCA and endless copyright extensions aren't gifts to the biggest media companies. The DMCA makes the very breaking of encryption illegal, even if what you are doing with the file once decrypted is perfectly legal. Even if you just talk about breaking encryption. So without actually legislating away our rights under copyright law, they allowed those rights to be stripped away and made regaining them illegal.

But in a way you are right. This isn't about protecting a dying business model. This is about killing a business model. The business model where you can keep something until it breaks or you don't want it anymore and then you can sell it. The model where you can take damaged products to anyone to fix them. The model where you can protect your investment by making copies. Microsoft and Columbia will love it. No more upgrading at you leisure, no more giving half your cd collection to a friend when you move. More sales, less effort. Everyone (who is already getting crazy rich of the current system) wins!

The fact that DRM is flawed as a concept and can't stop criminal behavior isn't a problem for them because they're getting the benefit they want anyway.

Sure, it's going to have to change. But even in this brave new world you envision, we'll still have concepts like copyright and ownership. Some may choose to distribute their music freely and widely. Others may decide they'd like people to pay for it. What you're really saying is that you'd like the "business model" we call, you know, "paying for things people want you to pay for" is "dying", and you're muddying the waters with your own personal dislike from artists you consider too "commercial".

Oh please. Jon didn't make iTunes free, did he? If you're a freeloader pirate, there is absolutely no reason to use iTunes in the first place.

This is about using the product one has paid for. I obtain a legitimate copy of a song, I am going to use that song in any way I see fit that doesn't involve violating the copyright owners rights. Those rights are limited and don't involve things like stopping me from playing a song on a Rio instead of an iPod.

"The internet" hasn't rendered music labels and their functions obsolete. What it's done is made it infinitely easier to instantly violate content owners' rights, and then do the mental gymnastics to justify not paying for things that don't belong to you

That's true -- well, they are obsolete, but "obsolete" and "still making gobs of cash" aren't mutually exclusive. Similarly with massive copyright violation, it seems. No, that doesn't make it okay. Yet it's also pretty hard to feel too bad about it. At least not bad enough to think I should have to give up the right to reverse engineer.

But when all is said and done we'll still have property, copyright, and rule of law.

DRM isn't needed or justified by any of those.

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

[shark72]

"Creativity has been stifled by the labels' continuing drive towards commercialization. We have "artists" like Gwen Stefani releasing cover after cover, first covering Talk Talk's It's My Life then covering If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof, and both covers are atrocious. These are examples of an industry which is creatively bankrupt and where profit is the bottom line."

90% of commercially released music has always been crap. Some younger Slashdotters may think that they're the first people to discover this, or that it's only in the 21st century that music has become awful. This is the power of nostalgia in action.

"The Internet has rendered traditional music labels obsolete, they're aware of this, and they're fighting their eventual downfall tooth and nail. They will lose."

I've seen this claim a lot over the past several years, since the days of the original Napster. The Internet is going to put the traditional record labels out of business, yet Apple and the record labels have sold tens of millions of tracks online, while "new model" companies like Magnatune are struggling to find an audience. It appears that the traditional record companies get this Internet thing just fine.

But as I was saying, the "imminent death of the record industry" prediction has been going around for a while, but I rarely see somebody actually put a timeline to it. What's your personal estimate of when the record industry will breathe its last? No right or wrong answers, of course... I'm just interested in your estimate.

"Eventually the industry will have to come to terms with this fact and the fact that their distribution model is antequated and obsolete. We need people to continue proving DRM is an unsound technology so eventually they give up on it entirely."

This sounds a bit tautological. A small group of people keep working hard to break DRM to prove that DRM is unworkable, yet meanwhile, millions of consumers are gobbling up DRM-laden tracks. iTunes' success has been nothing short of phenomenal. It is neither "antiquated" nor "obsolete" by any rational standard. To be fair, you've made it clear that you'd rather that iTunes didn't use DRM, but choosing "antiquated" and "obsolete" to describe it is tilting at windmills. If you know of a better way to do it, why not start your own music distribution company? If you're right, you could be bigger than iTunes. That is true innovation. Don't try to crash the party -- throw your own.

How about...

[MistabewM]

Instead of suing this very smart individual... Pay him. He knows more about what you are doing then you do.

Re: Apple won't let you "buy" songs

[VidEdit]

"Back when Apple introduced their iTunes Music Store, they offered something unique: one could buy a song for 99 cents no subscription, unlimited CD burns."

Apple's Terms of Serivice say they don't even "sell" songs, instead you are offered the chance to pay for a license to use the song. --And as for that great deal for $.99, well Apple has used it's ironically named "FairPlay" Digital Rights Restriction system to continually erode the value of your purchase by taking away the rights they promised you when you bought it. They reduced the number of times you can burn a playlist from 10 to 7, they shrunk the network you can share music on, and now they have reduced the number of listeners from 5 simultaneous listeners to 5 daily listeners. Tomorrow, who knows, maybe you'll only be allowed to listen to a song a certain number of times per day. The DRR allows Apple to control your purchase, even after you have bought it. That is just plain wrong.

Back in 1984, Apple leveraged the imagery of "1984" in an ad featuring a Hammer thrower taking on Big Brother. Now Apple has lost that sense of perspective. They are part of the establishment now.

Re:More power to you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, to be fair, that's the poster's refrain. And possibly the editor, since they didn't bother to point out the problem with DVD Jon's dumbass actions.

Many other posters agree that this is only going to destroy the useful iTunes service, and give ammunition to all the major record labels to pull out of iTunes and instead insititute their own heavily encumbered and more costly systems.

What is it with people like him (even if he is just a frontman)? Why don't they take just a minute to think about the consequences of their grandstanding?

Some geeks are their own worst enemies. And ours, unfortunately.

Re:As a record store owner.

[portwojc]

Funny this was posted back in 10/22/2003

Here you go:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=83129&thresh ol d=1&commentsort=0&tid=141&tid=188&mode=thread&cid= 7278955

Re:More power to you, Jon!

[Monkelectric]

Then why, pray tell, would you ever patronize a store like that to begin with?

Because its yuppie-chic?

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:More power to you, Jon!

[isometrick]

Even without regarding the issue that some legit customers are unnecessarily restricted by the DRM, all flawed technology should be exposed.

Now, there are nice ways to expose it and not so nice ways to expose it. The best way is to contact the developers privately at first. Then, and *only* if the first method does not work, release the information to the world. I don't know if that is how it happened here, but either way I think Apple now knows about the problem. And they probably have for a while.

When a problem like this is brought to light, then it should be fixed. Furthemore, if the person who exploited it tried the nice way first, I think they should be thanked ... not litigated against.

Re:More power to you, Jon!

[tomstdenis]

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

It's a good thing NONE of that is actually true. You can sell "your copy" of pretty much anything. It is afterall your copy.

By your logic used book sales would be illegal because the owners of the rights don't want you to publish the same book in your own name, etc...

I'd think once you buy a track you should have a right to transfer it [permanently] to someone else. Provided you respect the property nature [e.g. remove your copy after the transfer] what's the harm?

Tom

Re:More power to you, Jon!

[aussie_a]

Then why, pray tell, would you ever patronize a store like that to begin with?

Because I'm able to legally reclaim my rights they attempt to take away from me. More and more mainstream music is being DRM'd no matter how you get it. They can try to deny me my legal rights, and I'll continue to reclaim them. They don't have a legal leg to stand on and people like this guy will be more then happy enough to go to court for me to protect my rights.

The Slashdot Refrain

[SuperBanana]

and the Slashdot refrain is what? 'More power to you.' That's just beautiful.

Notice it's in italics. Given the editors can't be bothered to vett articles (remember the "battery booster sticker" article a few weeks ago?), it's not really the editor's opinion.

Given all the disgust lately (comments grumbling about stories is nothing new, but it seems unscientifically at an all-time high) I would say the majority of in-story commentary doesn't speak for Slashdot readers at all. In fact, a lot of commentary offered up by story submitters is poorly worded, shoot-from-the-hip crap that would get modded "troll" if it were a comment.

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:More power to you, Jon!

[iminplaya]

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.

Only because the gov't says so. Copyright is not inherent!

If you don't believe in copyright, licenses, or "trade secrets", then kiss work on open source or other original work by yourself, things the GNU General Public License, and your own privacy goodbye.

Privacy is already gone. There is none. Copyright is not needed to stimulate innovation. In reality it encourages speculation and hoarding. Without copyright, we won't need GPL.

Apple is well within its rights to sell the music in the ways it sees fit on its own service.

And we're well within our rights to do with whatever we want with our purchased goods. So yes, Thank you, Jon and more power to you. The authorities need to know that we will not be denied. PERIOD!

Jeez...

[sethadam1]

Ok people, let's review the facts, since most people don't seem to know or read...

1. DVD Jon lives in Norway, where the majority of this stuff, including the release of DeCSS which breaks DVD encoding, is illegal. The court case failed.

2. Nobody broke Apple's DRM. All this does is retreive the music before the iTunes client adds the DRM. How is this possible? Apple's iTunes client adds the DRM because it needs the client to generate the key. Doing it any other way would likely be a tremendous processor increase on the iTunes servers.

3. Apple can sue DVD Jon if they choose, but it will likely do no good.

The way I see it, there's only one safe path for Apple. They should release an iTunes client for Linux along with a statement that any further attempt to block their DRM will be followed up with a lawsuit. Sure, the lawsuit part is either a bluff or a waste of time, but at least they eliminate the "It's just so we can run on Linux" argument.

Re:Jeez...

[sethadam1]

YOUR reasoning is faulty, I'm afraid. Linux has significant market share. None of the others do. If I wrote my own OS today, would I expect Apple to write a client for it? No. But I might expect to write a client for an OS gaining market share rapidly.

I know a LOT of people who use alternative OSes. I know NONE who use HP-UX, OS/2, Plan9, or GNU/Hurd as their OS. Shit, why not add in IRIX, Dynix, VMS, AIX... I think even RMS uses Debian. If you said SkyOS, Syllable, ReactOS, etc, maybe I'd buy that, but even those aren't excluding a large customer base. Anyone using BeOS or Solaris knows there are certain things they have to go elsewhere for.

For the record, a Linux client could be made to run on the BSDs and Solaris too (like XFCE does).

Re:Jeez...

[argent]

Apple's iTunes client adds the DRM because it needs the client to generate the key.

It needs something derived from the key to do the encryyption, you mean, and the key lives in the client.. so the design is slightly easier this way.

Doing it any other way would likely be a tremendous processor increase on the iTunes servers.

Other DRM schemes, including all the eBook schemes I know of, do it in the server. And CPU time is cheap: I'll bet there's more CPU use in a gooogle search, and that's "free".

The way I see it, there's only one safe path for Apple.

Do the encryption in the server.

Like I said before, if they do it right, Jon can't 'break' them. That's apparently too big an 'if'.

Re:Why are we proud of this guy?

[SteveXE]

Who said he ever agreed to the Itunes TOS? Nobody, he isnt breaking any law, and IF --- violating the Itunes TOS was the worst he did who cares, all they can do is cancel his account.

Rock on Jon

[Logicdisorder]

I have to say is one of the quickest hacks for a software update I have seen in some time.

Props Jon you never know you might get an job offer from Steve himself :)

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:More power to you, Jon!

[jimbolaya]

You have no such rights. When you purchase a song from iTMS, you agree to their terms of service; your rights a limited by the terms of service which you agree to. You may WANT to listen to the song on the playback device of your choice, but what makes you think that you have the "right" to?

Regarding sale, the doctrine of first sale (sale, dammit! not purchase!) prevents copyright holders from pursuing legal action if you resell the work, but it does not mean that Apple, for instance, has to make it possible or easy you to resell the item.

If you think that your rights are being violated, you're simply wrong.

Mirror?

[kyhwana]

Anyone have a mirror of the source for 0.4?

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.

Hmm... site down.

[Doyle]

Perhaps he should have titled his blog "So slashdot me"

iTunes homebrew?

[Anonymous Coward]

People arent using his stuff to 'pirate' music, they are using it to develop... um... homebrew games... on their iPods... yeah, thats it!

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: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:iTunes homebrew?

[The-Bus]

(not to mention the number of new CDs released is dramatically falling)

Care to back that up with any statistics? The past couple of months has seen releases numbered in the hundreds. Has there been a significant decrease in the number of titles released? If anything it seems like more are being released, because more and more reissues are coming out, both of old-stuff already on LP (The Talking Heads' The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads) and of old-stuff already on CD (NIN's expanded edition of The Downward Spiral).

If including DVDs stops piracy...

Did people still pirate Dave Matthews Band's Busted Stuff?
Or Les Savy Fav's Inches?
Or Coldplay's Live?

If including shirts stops piracy...

Did people still pirate Gwen Stefani's Love Angel Music Baby?*
Or Rancid's Indestructible?*

If including video clips stops piracy...

Did people still pirate Fiona Apple's Tidal?
Or Dizzee Rascal's Boy in Da Corner?
Or Madvillain's Madvillainy?

If including video clips AND a bonus disc of B-sides stop piracy...

Did people still pirate Royksopp's Melody A.M.?

If including free poster stops piracy...

Did people still pirate Björk's Medulla?*

If including a $20 off coupon for Reebok sneakers on a $10 CD stops piracy...

Did people still pirate 50 Cent's The Massacre?

If an album is of staggering artistic achievement...

Did people still pirate the Stone's Exile on Main Street?

Nothing, and I will repeat, nothing will stop piracy. Fugazi is one of the most anti-RIAA, anti-high-priced-CD bands out there, with their MSRP / list price being a mere $10.98, and you can still find their stuff on file-sharing networks.

Piracy != Bad
Piracy != Lost Profits

Piracy will always exist. Have a good product, have good value-added stuff on your CDs, don't gouge your consumers, don't expect to make millions and millions just because you have a CD, and you'll be OK.

---
* This was done, regretably, at a premium price.

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?

Re:More power to you, Jon!

[aussie_a]

You have no such "rights". But you sure do like to sound sanctimonious about your make-believe reality.

False. That's what the RIAA wants you to think. I have the right to re-sell products I have bought. There's no getting around that.

DRM makes it impossible for me to re-sell something. That's okay, I can just break the DRM. Oh wait, because of the DMCA I cannot break DRM once it's put in place. Thankfully I'm not breaking the DRM. The DRM just isn't being put in place. Once they start putting the DRM server-side, I will be forced to either break the law or do my business somewhere else. I'll be doing my business somewhere else, but if they're going to infringe on my rights, I'm going to make it difficult for them.

Jon rocks and the nay-sayers suck.

[NicerGuy]

It's NOT a possibility that record companies will back out of the downloads market - they have no choice, it's here to stay. Apple is only stands to gain popularity with something like this; if people can download legit software without the risks their player and REAL growth potential, OSX & friends - as long as they convince record companies that they're doing the best they can to thwart these hacks they can continue to benefit from the bait that is the iTMS and from which they make little direct profit.

There needs to be this competition. If a better music player comes out or if iTunes introduces annoying "bonus features" (privacy invasion, advertisements, etc.) just because they've been able to force users to stick with what would become a music platform, iTMS customers users would be screwed. With this healthy checks and balances system of hackers vs RIAA, RIAA and service providers will not be so smug as to take advantage of us, knowing we might pack up our tunes and leave.

Also, I don't want to hear any arguements about how this fight should be fought in the court room because nobody has the kind of money that the record companies do. Another important distinction between good and evil sides is that the record companies won't stop at a compromise, their thirst is never quenched. This is evident in the large number of personally verifiable legit music lovers that don't irresponsibly share their music collections out. We just want to be legit ...

oh shit, dinner's ready

Jason

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.)

Re:Hur Hur Hur, private key="secret"

[ebyrob]

you're impeccably correct;

Hmm... why do I feel like I've been vaguely insulted? :-P

such as M-Audio, RME, and other companies

Thanx for the new audio keywords. Gotta keep my google primed at all times.

yes, i talk like this when i've been drinking.

Well don't just stand there, pass one over. It'll loosen up the works for this code-merge I have to get through tonight. (...must quit reading slashdot...must work...*urgk!*)

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!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

This is complete fiction and bears no resemblance to reality. Copyright holders have a right to:

• be identified as the author,
• restrict copying, and
• restrict broadcast

They do not have the right to control how something is used. Whether you like it or not.

Re:Then Apple will release another patch...

[jimbolaya]

More likely, Apple will do what they should have done in the beginning: Apply the DRM on the server side, rather than relying on the client to do so. Hymn or JHymn may then be able strip the DRM, but that's a separate issue (and a much clearer violation of DCMA and other copyright laws).

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:More power to you, Jon!

[Spoing]

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

A tip for you and others just in case you didn't know about this company.

Adapting to the digital age

[swedd]

Whenever there is a story about the RIAA and DRM, I always read hundreds of posts about how the RIAA needs to adapt to the digital age. How they can't live in the past, and their business model needs to adapt to the future of music.

And hey, in general when I read this I have always thought "Hell yeah!"

What I find interesting is now I am seeing posts saying the DRM is bad because it "erodes the fair use rights we have always traditionally had when we purchased music on CDs".

This just got me thinking. Maybe the adaptation to the digital age has to be a two-way street? In addition to the RIAA needing to rethink its evil ways, maybe we also have to consider that the world has changed since the days of CDs. And not all changes are good for everybody.

Perhaps our "traditional" fair use rights also need to adapt with technology. Remember that with power comes responsibility (no Spiderman references please. I know, I also winced when I typed that). We now have the power to digitally transmit music anywhere in the world for close to zero cost. Unfortunately there will always be a few people that will abuse this power. Maybe something does need to change?

Not saying I agree with that idea or not, because I haven't really had time to think it through yet. Just putting it out there for consideration.

Getting technical with the law...

[julioody]

Why are people associating the fact that he's publishing "exploit" code with a crime? It's a crime to use it, to cause damage (which in most cases it's assumed, not proved), not to have or publish it. Or am I wrong? What's the difference between his site and, e.g: packetstorm? Isn't it numbers? Last time I checked, France was doing this kind of thing. I didn't know that USA was doing the same. I sell a licensed gun to you in a shop, taking all the necessary legal considerations. You go out and shoot somebody. Who's the criminal? (and who's to tell that the analogy is incorrect? it's not illegal to download code)

Re:More power to you, Jon!

[idlake]

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

It has everything to do with Congress. Copyright is a right Congress defines. It defines it not as a basic property right, but it defines it for the purpose of encouraging the creation of good content.

And, traditionally, it has always been a limited right. For example, content is supposed to fall into the public domain after some time. You are supposed to be able to resell it. Those are restrictions that have always existed for content.

Now, with the technological possibility of DRM, content "owners" have attempted an end-run around the conditions under which Congress originally granted copyright in the first place.

If you don't believe in copyright, licenses, or "trade secrets", then kiss work on open source or other original work by yourself, things the GNU General Public License, and your own privacy goodbye. Oh, I forgot, those things only apply to the things you want it to, not corporate interests

I am a strong supporter of copyrights. But granting copyrights on content that is also subject to DRM is a mistake. Companies should choose whether they want to rely on copyrights or whether they want to attempt technological solutions. They should not be permitted to have both.

And, yes, abolishing copyrights altogether would be better than the current situation. But the best solution would be to return to the original idea behind copyright law: limited term protection (maybe 20 years) for content, but only if the content is actually published (i.e., not subject to DRM or other technological restrictions).

Re:More power to you, Jon!

[nathanh]

Yes, yes, I'm sure it would be wonderful if Apple wanted or intended to sell music without DRM.

Jon doesn't stop Apple from selling music with DRM.

And it's their service and their content.

That's right. And once Jon has paid for the download they're Jon's files.

DRM threatens everybody

[idlake]

Every time this gets cracked, it hurts online legal music.

No, it only hurts schemes that rely on DRM. It doesn't hurt on-line music sales that don't rely on DRM.

After all, we can't just NOT BUY THE SONGS if we don't like the DRM, right?

The existence of DRM still threatens me because as long as people erroneously believe that they can make DRM work, they will be trying to put all sorts of bogus technological protections in my hardware.

So, I don't buy DRM'ed music, but I still consider it very important, and applaud, that people break the hokey DRM schemes that companies try to build business models around.

The Traxsource.com Approach

[Luke Psywalker]

I just started to buy house music from http://www.traxsource.com/ as a replacement of vinyl now that I have my digital 1200's: http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/tech nics_dj/video_flash.asp?/

Traxsource uses an inaudible signature key inside the waveform but the files are DRM free. You can use the files as you see fit, however if they find a file with your signature on it (they can identify you by analysing the file with their software) in the P2P networks they will crack down on you and probably sue if you can't explain yourself (they are a friendly bunch of music lovers after all). You can even burn the file, rip it, re-encode it and the signature will still be there.

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

This is the only way.

[Fahrvergnuugen]

I have been reading a lot of comments on here where people are bitching about the fact that the system was hacked. "if you don't like DRM, don't use iTMS" - things of that nature.

WTF people. How is corporate america going to learn its lesson unless we teach it to them? Are we just going to bow down to them and do whatever they want us to do? Or are we going to have to prove to them that DRM is pointless and will never work?

We are telling them that we don't mind paying for music. That the rise of illegal file swapping wasn't because it was an easy way to steal music, it was simply a better way to acquire and listen to music. That DRM is just a false sense of security for the RIAA and really is unnecessary (see my previous post here)

I hope every DRM everywhere is broken. What are they going to do? Stop selling media?

Re:This is the only way.

[slim]

I have been reading a lot of comments on here where people are bitching about the fact that the system was hacked. "if you don't like DRM, don't use iTMS" - things of that nature.

WTF people. How is corporate america going to learn its lesson unless we teach it to them?


(tangent: why do you restrict your argument to America?)

Quietly working around DRM doesn't teach that lesson. Withholding our custom does teach them, to some extent.

Now, what should happen according to Free Market models, and if the average geek assumptions hold, is that commerce learns that there is a bigger market for non-DRM content than there is for DRM content. The drop DRM and everybody's happy.

The problem with this assumption is that it assumes a perfect information flow: that commerce magically knows who would buy what and for how much.

By cheerily buying DRM content, and stripping/sidestepping the DRM, we send the message "you're doing great"

By withholding our custom, we send the message "something about your product does not appeal to me". ... and at the top end of the scale, with something most people probably wouldn't bother to do: By sending an email or letter saying "I would use your service if it weren't for the DRM", you give the company clear information to use for decision making.

OTOH is it our job to do companies' market research for them?

Re:This Is NOT to Be Applauded

[superdude72]

If you don't like their terms, simply don't shop there, and don't buy Apple's music.

It's not just that I don't like their terms for myself. Copyright law has been completely hijacked by corporate interests to the point where it goes far beyond what the public good requires. Our government is corrupt and doesn't even pretend to do anything on behalf of ordinary people anymore. The DMCA is bad law which came into being by illegitimate means, and if it's necessary to break the law to undermine it, so be it. I feel like this is the only means ordinary people have to fight back in a game that has been rigged against them on a massive scale.

If they looked at it sanely

[Chuck Chunder]

that wouldn't be the case. After all it's not as if other sales channels (ie physical CD's from physical stores) are or ever have been magically immune to copying.

The key advantage to online sales is cutting out a lot of middle men and the convenience to customers that allows them to buy when the desire is there rather than having to go to a shop. IE they can reduce the cost of distributing their merchandise and increase it's accessibility and value to customers.

The labels are insane for buying into this DRM snake-oil. It will never be significantly effective and the degree to which it is defective inevitably makes the very product they are selling less valuable to the paying consumer.

On average I used to buy 3+ CDs a month. When they came out with "copy controlled" CDs that would not work with my Network Walkman (or laptop, or Xbox etc) I simply stopped buying any CDs thus afflicted (with the single exception of Radiohead's "Hail To The Thief" as I was seeing them in concert and thought it would be good to know the album properly beforehand). Fortunatly there are still some labels who haven't gone down this road but I am buying far less now.

T'is a sad day when DRM is compared to racism

[Anonymous Coward]

And Rosa Parks knew what she was getting into when she refused to give up her seat on the bus.

It is a sad day that a comparison is made between DRM and Rosa Parks.

Rosa Parks was a revolutionary in the sense that she made a bold statement against racism. Racism is an institution that evolved from slavery, the ownership of another human being. It was government sanctioned in the South and enforced by law. It treated individuals as second class citizens based on color. Lynch mobs killed black people for looking at whites the wrong way and justice turned a blind eye.

DRM has never killed a single person and I doubt it ever will.

I urge you to pay more respect to the dead in our history instead of trivializing them or their cause to be on the same level as free music. DRM is nothing...open up your eyes to the magnitude of the true evils of this world and the horrors that this piece of work called man can accomplish.

ed

Re:This Is NOT to Be Applauded

[jmv]

When you're distributing GPL software without the source, you're violating copyright law. When you're listening some song you purchased on your Linux box (despite Apples attempts to remove your fair use rights) you are *not* violating copyright law. You're just working around (De-DRM) a workaround (DRM) on the copyright law.

FOUL: "Boxen"

[Anonymous Coward]

Two-minute penalty.

Dudes named Jon Rock!

[NotQuiteReal]

I don't even care what the story is about, this is totally OT.

It's just that "Jon" is, like, a 25% optimization over "John", with the same information content! (Maybe a 33.333% improvment, depending on your point of reference)

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

[soft_guy]

WIndows buyers can already purchase songs from ITMS using iTunes for Windows.

What he is doing is helping people bypass Apple's terms of service on iTMS (i.e. no Fairplay DRM, no restrictions to 3 machines, etc.)

That's how most encryption systems are broken.

[PxM]

Most systems are mathematically sound, but there is always a flaw in the implementation that allows someone who is clever enough to sneak in. For example, SSH as a protocol and encryption system is secure, but some implmentations had a small flaw in them that allowed them to be cracked. All the headlines yelled "SSH broken" when the reality was that an implementation was broken. In this case, the DRM algorithm is secure (AFAIK) but the implementation is broken because the music is sent in the clear to the computer since the client needs to individually encrypt the music file with its own key. The only way to get around this flaw is to have the server encrypt it which would take a lot of CPU power (maybe grid computing of custom FPGA chips would help here) or to have the client run a TCPA system so that a 3rd party can't tweak the client. This sort of flaw is exactly why MS et al are pushing Trusted Computing.
However, this still won't stop the analog hole of plugging a wire into the output and input of the soundcard until the media is encrypted all the way to the speaker. At that point, the only way to get past this implementation would by to have a mike set up next to the speaker (or spliced between the analog amp and the magnet) and then filter the signal to try to get rid of the analog noise.

Re:Umm I payed for the song

[MoneyT]

No, you paid Apple for a specifc file, with certain electronic restrictions on it, and you recieved that file, paid for, under certain conditions, outlined in the CONTRACT you AGREED TO before you purchased anything.

If I pay you for your house, for a certain price and sign a contract saying that I will not burn the house down, and I burn the house down, I'm violating the contract I signed. I payed for the house, and can do what I want with it, but I also signed a contract.

Don't like the contract, don't buy iTMS

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:Apple is the least of his worries...

[Loonacy]

Yes, of course! Non-Mac means Windows. And since Windows users can already buy from iTunes, then why do we need more non-Mac iTunes software?

Yes, let's lump them together.

[Kjella]

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.

Using this tool might be a problem with Apples ToS and whatnot, but creating the tool is purely a legal issue. And that issue has been clearly settled under norwegian law. There is currently no norwegian law prohibiting you from creating a tool to break any copyright protection mechanism. You have the right to access any "secret" key in your hardware or software. That is why he can do so with impunity. Apple could sue, but they would lose as the law stands today. The public prosecutor knows it and won't do it.

Kjella

Re:Yes, let's lump them together.

[jpetts]

Then why did they do it in the first place?

Because it took the first case to set the precedent. Until then the law hadn't been tested. Now it has.

Re:Yes, let's lump them together.

[Ryeng]

"There is currently no norwegian law prohibiting you from creating a tool to break any copyright protection mechanism. You have the right to access any "secret" key in your hardware or software."

That might be about to change. A new law has been suggested in Norway, making it illegal to copy protected cds. Copying non-protected cds would still be legal. However there has been a lot of heat against this law; politicians have protested against it, consumers have protested against it, and most of the major labels operating in Norway have stated that they do not support such a law.

Re:Yes, let's lump them together.

[RenatoRam]

Except in most european countries "the precedent" is not binding at all for future rulings. Don't know the norwegian court system, but it sure isn't in italy.

Still, the judges DO take precedent rulings in consideration when deciding.

Re:Yes, let's lump them together.

[motherball]

yes, I have several sticks of PC133, but why the hell would anybody want them?

This is the most classic display of public 'Disobeyance of Authority'. DVD-jon is like an evangelist or something. iTunes, I dont believe is the target, nor were the MPAA when he cracked DeCSS. Its more of classic CIVIL DISOBEDIANCE. I mean, something has to be done here. I'm not talking in the near future, but the slightly more distant. People have to stand up against the copyright enforcers. I mean, that's what we're here for right? We love linux, We love not getting told what to do constantly because we are smart enough to think for ourselves.

DRM and iTunes or Microsofts or anybody's is becoming a ****ing nuisance. Digital technology just enables people to do this stuff. Its the way things are, and there will come a time when we are really going to have to confront intellectual property and its owners instead of just pissing around and wondering if Apple Legal are going to send him a letter tommorrow or not.

He can get away with it, so he's doing it. To force their hand. To force all of our hands eventually. I mean, checkout what Lessig is doing. Checkout the Creative Commons and what it really means. We have to be free to do this stuff eventually.
Or else the world is going to fall into contradiction.

which I spose it is, .. or isn't in any given period of time....

read this site:

http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes

Re:Yes, let's lump them together.

[tuxette]

The Norwegian courts' decision-making system/process is not based on precedence, as in the US. The results of earlier cases my be used, but current interpretations of the law along with the law's intention (as indicated in the preliminary documentation before the law is in place - forarbeider) is the main basis.

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?

Re:Yes, let's lump them together.

[agpenm]

Just to add another perspective to this debate, I think something very different is going on here from what happened with the DVD Jon software. Unlike software which breaks the encryption on something you already own, this software prevents the encryption from being put on the music file in the first place. The difference is that you are not accessing or changing something you own, your are changing the terms of a sale without the other party's knowledge. It would be one thing if this software broke encryption on tracks you bought, but as i understand it thats not what happens. What Apple has agreed to sell you is a DRM'd music file, and making any change to that file before you complete the purchase seems like agreeing to by x from a vendor, and then swapping it out for y without telling the vendor, and still paying for x. I think Apple might have a real legal case here where the MPAA did not.

Wrong cover

[extra88]

We have "artists" like Gwen Stefani releasing cover after cover, first covering Talk Talk's It's My Life then covering If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof, and both covers are atrocious.

I like No Doubt and Gwen Stefani but I don't care for either cover. However "Rich Girl" is actually a cover of a minor Nineties dancehall hit of the same name by Louchie Lou and Michie One. I like the original "Rich Girl" quite a bit. Obviously it's derived from the song from Fiddler but I wouldn't call it a cover of it.

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.

BHA SAGAN?!?! NO! Crystal Quest Sound EFX !

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true at all!

Sosumi PREDATES system 7,and predates powerpc "BHA" sagan, in fact it is from a system 6 3rd party video game apple stole it from !!!

If you read all the posts in the thread before commenting you would have learned that!

Poermac 75000 debut !?!? No!

The powerPC mac that shipped well after Sosumi debuted in system seven and years after Sosumi SHIPPED in "Crystal Quest" game for Mac !!!

Sosumi was a sound resource stolen from a game released over a year earlier called "Crystal Quest" a game for system 6.

http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/the_fairwa y/ game_pages/crystal_quest.html

The sound was stolen by apple and then renamed Sosumi and placed into System 7.

Facts are facts.

And dirty lies are sometimes trivial to prove. Any copy of Crystal Quest will show how correct I am.

Patrick Buckland never did sue apple over the sound effect. (He was the game author)

That game had lots of cool sound effects by the way.

The best was the sound for winning a level it was a comical "Ahhhhh!" sound.

Why is it that 6 people posted five different fake origins of the Sosumi story tonight and I alone seem to know the damned truth? Sheesh! At least i TRIED to educate people this time. (six times no less). Someone else will have to carry the torch. I am getting tired of trying to correct all the misinformation and anon posters have a limit to how many factual corrections they can post in 24 hours (10 corrections maximum).

The only reason I am trying to educate people again and again is becasue NO ONE is reading the -1 posts and some fool keeps modding these facts down for no reason.

Re:BHA SAGAN?!?! NO! Crystal Quest Sound EFX !

[wattersa]

> The best was the sound for winning a level it was a comical "Ahhhhh!" sound.

I always thought the sound was orgasmic, because the level exit gates were shaped like labia, which the player had to penetrate to go to the next level. The exit is at the bottom of this picture, but it's shown closed before killing all the enemies (cherry, anyone?).

Re:BHA SAGAN?!?! NO! Crystal Quest Sound EFX !

[JReekes]

in fact it is from a system 6 3rd party video game apple stole it from !!!

Dear Anonymous Coward,

"Stolen" is a strong word with specific legal meaning. If the sound originates from the game (and I'm not actually questioning it), I can readily see it as fair use, considering the related lawsuits and legal precedence, but I'm not a lawyer. Janet Jackson sampled my Mac system sound, and used it in one of her songs. My startup sound for the Mac was also used in the movie Jurassic Park (when they rebooted the park's computers).

Furthermore, if my ears are correct (and they usually are) one of the sounds in that game was "stolen" from Peter Gabriel.

And dirty lies are sometimes trivial to prove

If you weren't being so juvenile, you might be more persuasive. Try removing the hyperbole and begin using proper grammar.

I alone seem to know the damned truth?

You, alone, know the truth? Well, I'm responsible for Sosumi, the System 7 beeps, and the startup sound (which all remain in use today). I don't actually remember where or how I obtained the original sound. Most of them I created such as the startup sound and others, some I obtained such as the monkey sound that made by a friend's wife.

Personally, I felt having my startup sound used (or "stolen" in your words) by Steven Spielberg to be a form of flattery.

Are you a representative of Mr. Buckland? What is your interest in this matter? I'd like to hear from him instead.

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

[copper]

According to a CNET article I read on this, only a linux version will be released (see last paragraph here. They are explicitly NOT releasing a windows version this time, presumably to minimize any antagonization of Apple by limiting it to such a small target audience that doesn't have "sanctioned" options to shop on iTunes.

Uh?

[Kjella]

Before the DeCSS case, it wasn't really clear. They thought they had a paragraph they could twist into applying, even though it was never designed for such a case.

They got struck down in court. Twice. Didn't even try to argue their case before the Supreme court. That is why they won't try prosecuting him over anything he does with Apple's DRM now.

Re:Umm I payed for the song

[ad0gg]

So what your saying is I don't own any of the software on my computer, i just have a license to use it the way they deem fit? And if it would be wrong to violate their EULA? Forexample writing negative reviews on certain software because its implicity stated in the EULA? Or benchmarking the software as stated in the Microsoft .Net software? Or what about the spyware EULAs that say I can't run a AdAware to remove the software? Whats scary is if we keep up this attitude, we won't own anything, everything will be licensed to us. So businesses can lock us into their monolopy and limit our freedom of choice.

Interestingly enough

[Andy Dodd]

Prior to the iTunes 4.7.x breakage (I don't mean the recent breakage, I mean the anti-Hymn breakage), Hymn would leave all identification info in any files it unprotected. In essence, the files were (lightly) watermarked.

With iTunes 4.7, Apple changed it so that watermarked but unprotected files wouldn't play.

The solution? Remove the watermark.

By breaking the ability to use iTunes music fairly (for example, in a device other than an iPid), Apple essentially forced the authors of Hymn to make their software more suitable to piracy.

Re:Interestingly enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, while there were some discussions on whether hymn should do that, hymn now can create decrypted, watermarked, and playable-on-4.7.x AACs. The watermark is still there.

Re:Interestingly enough

[bwalling]

By breaking the ability to use iTunes music fairly (for example, in a device other than an iPid), Apple essentially forced the authors of Hymn to make their software more suitable to piracy.

Do you only listen to things you want to hear? You can burn your iTMS music to CD, and then you can do whatever the hell you want with it, including play it on something other than an iPod.

Besides that, it's not your "right" to violate the terms of service, violate the DMCA, and do what you want with the file. If you don't like the file, don't buy it. Maybe if enough people don't buy it, they will change the way it works because it's not working out for them. If you really want change, there are better ways to go about it than to break the law. Breaking the law will cause most people to think that your point is not valid, and you will not be heard.

Re:Better story (but a largely incorrect one)

[Fletch]

The Yahoo story is full of incorrect information. Engadget did a good job of pointing it all out.

Rip, Mix, Burn not limited

[SuperKendall]

You have Rip, Mix, Burn (which you can do as long as you have CD's) confused with Download, Mix, Burn - which you can actually do TEN times. Except that it's really unlimited because the limit is on a playlist, not per song!

Tell my why, when it is so technically simple to do so, iTunes does not store a burn count on a single song. That doesn't seem to help the bottom line any.

Maybe, just maybe, some businesses actually do care a little about the customers - you know, the ones you have to constantly convince to give you more money? That's hard to do when they are all angry at you because you keep chipping away at what they can do and throwing arbitratry roadblocks at them.

people like you simply do not get business. It's far more than just money, it's SUSTAINABLE cash. Any business that wants to last longer than it takes to pull away from the curb in the pickup has to give people what they want in order to get money from them in a cycle. So the truly smart run businesses understanding they are there to serve you, not control you.

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.

It's "mix, burn, rip"...

[argent]

Rip, mix, burn is what you do to a CD. Get it stright. :)

And as someone else commented, it's not limited to 5 times.

That SHOULD be all the nudge-nudge-wink-wink you need, sheesh.

Obligatory "All your bases..." remark

[Lead Butthead]

Steve J.: What happen ?
iTune Dept: Somebody set up us the PyMusique
iTune Dept: We get signal.
Steve J.: What !
iTune Dept: DVD Jon website turn on.
Steve J.: It's you !!
DVD Jon: How are you gentlemen !!
DVD Jon: All your iTune are belong to us.
DVD Jon: You are on the way to bankruptcy.
Steve J.: What you say !!
DVD Jon: You have no chance to survive make your time.
DVD Jon: Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
iTune Dept: Captain !!*
Steve J.: Break out every 'LandSharks'!!
Steve J.: You know what you doing.
Steve J.: File suit.
Steve J.: For great PROFIT.

Re:rant

[andreyw]

May I recommend you to look at JHymn and the Hymn project, in general? These will strip the DRM from your files (and your files only, btw). Since they only perform the decryption and do not re-encode anything (the output is an unprotected AAC file, m4a), there is no loss in quality :-))))

Automatic updates please

[magi]

The PyMusique software definitely needs some automatic update feature. People need to be alerted of new interoperability threats when Apple changes its protocols, and when a new workaround patch is available.

Otherwise people may pay Apple for unusable music files. Well, selling something that has been intentionally made unusable should be illegal anyhow.

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

[masklinn]

No, they are releasing only Linux version because the current PyMusique needs a C++-coded library (linked to the base Python code) and since they're dev'ing under Linux they don't want to bother making it compile under windows (looks like the guy who's doing that lib didn't manage to).

So they're basically telling everyone "we're not releasing a Windows version, if a Windows hacker finds what we did wrong with our C++ code, no problem with us and more power to him"

There is no antagonization issue here, they just don't care about that

So Gandhi was wrong...

[commodoresloat]

There actually *is* civilization in Europe!

Precedent and common law

[sangdrax]

To elaborate on this, the 'precedent' system in which past rulings form a legal ground for deciding future cases is part of common law, which as the link indicates is generally found in English speaking countries.

The rest of Europe, including Norway, basically uses civil law, in which in the end only the written law counts.

Re:Precedent and common law

[jaoswald]

There's nothing "cheating" about the use of precedent.

It simply embodies the principle that the court system ought to be as consistent as possible. Decisions that are made once should be made the same way if the same situation arises again. To come to a different decision would create chaos, where every court case would be a chance to potentially revisit every decision that was ever made in any court and second-guess it.

The law, to the extent possible, ought to be "knowable" in advance, not made up fresh by every judge with a gavel. On the other hand, it ought to be flexible enough to deal with new situations. That is where we rely on judicial discretion, generally to extend previous precedent in a logical way.

woooo

[otterpop378]

hell yeah, more power to you.
lets show them why they shouldn't ever try and make a business model succeed! Lets show them that all digital users reject the idea of obeying any kind of license. woooo!

that's sarcasm by the way. If you want to ruin the party, do it in your own back yard, not ours. (the people who actually pay for songs / respect the fact that they are -allowing us- to participate in this, and that its not some diety-given right to get music a la carte.

Re:As a record store owner.

[Funksaw]

First off, Christian rock sucks. Manson, from time to time, rocks. (Christ is okay but he's so unlike Christians.) That may be a part of your declining sales.

Secondly, fewer and fewer customers are entering your store to buy CDs because the costs of CDs have gone up during an economic downturn where OTHER electronic media are becoming cheaper and cheaper. Mass-market DVDs cost the same price as mass-market CDs - how is the price point not broken on this? You are losing money because you are paying too much wholesale for music, and because of that, you have to put your retail price points up way too high for people to buy them. This would be happening even without peer-to-peer.

Guess what, though. Peer-to-peer was helping you out, even if you didn't know it. From 1998-1999, didn't you have a great year? That was Napster. People were "trying before they buy" with Napster and becoming more informed consumers. They were also exposed to new artists and new music that isn't played on the radio, and went out and bought it.

But then the RIAA shut down Napster and started suing students - right when your business took a downturn, I'm guessing. Personally, I stopped buying RIAA CDs (which, let me guess, are just about all your store stocks.) I still buy music, but I buy it from places like www.cdbaby.com - indie music only. (And not Indie the style, but indie the business model.) Locally, I buy from places that stock local artists and local music - Encore and Waterloo in Austin.

Anyway... your plan to stop piracy is to prevent people who download music from buying music legitimately. Which means that instead of going with piracy as a model of "try before you buy," you're going to force them to go either to your competitors or to the Internet. Now, can you tell me why this won't work?

You may have felt morally justified in kicking out that "pirate," but the guy was just about to make a sale when you kicked him out. Not to mention the future purchases the kid would have made. Not to mention the kid's friends' who have now heard this story and have considered you - rightfully - an asshole and will not shop from you.

Finally, don't give me a sob story about your goddamn kids. You started a store based on one type of product from an industry dominated by a monopoly trust supplier. The monopoly trust is now screwing you over and screwing itself over. You didn't think to diversify your selection with DVDs, or with video games, or t-shirts or something so that you didn't have more than music to sell. Well, whoop de doo, I wonder why your kids have to have ragged haircuts. Maybe it's because your business model is horribly flawed.

From the "Christian Rock" to the "War on Drugs fought with skill" (ha) comments, to the way that you treat your customers, I'm willing to bet you voted for the Republicans last election cycle. If that's the case, I extend no pity when you try to declare bankruptcy and find out that you can't. I love small businesses but only when they treat people like customers rather than consumers - something you've long since forgotten.

You are confussing things.

[jotaeleemeese]

Books are easily copied (copy machines, handwriting a copy, etc).

But they are still copyrighted material.

Digital music could be exactly the same, easily copiable, but that would not give people the right to make millions of copies.

DRM has a completely different agenda that is to rent you the music, or pay per play. I am amazed how many peoplr just don't see that simple fact and are not up in arms against any move in that direction.

Re:Wrong about the EUCD

[ecki]

Right. But if EU member countries don't implement it in a law, the directives themselves become binding.

/. effect - google text cache.

[goon]

here's a link to the google *text cache* of the blog (www.nanocrew.net/blog/ ). Yeah even the normal google cache is slow.

Yeah sure.

[jotaeleemeese]

And if they made you sign a contract giving yourself as their slave, that would be also enforceable for sure...

There are certain things that even if signed with blood, can't be legally binding.

iTunes "region coding"

[Danj2k]

Now that he's made his own iTunes client that doesn't add DRM, the next thing DVD Jon ought to turn his attention to is finding a way (if it's at all possible on the client side) to break the artificial regioning that exists in the iTunes Music Store. I'm in the UK, but I'd love to be able to buy tracks from the US or Japan or places like that. Seeing as how the record labels and suchlike don't seem to be inclined to let this happen any time soon, maybe DVD Jon could figure a way of doing it, unless it's all handled server-side.

To be honest, I've always wondered why they let you BROWSE other-country iTMS stores? I mean, what's the point? "Hey, here's a whole bunch of stuff that YOU CAN'T BUY! Sure, you can listen to previews and run searches and everything but we're not gonna let you buy the track! You'll just have to hope we added it to your own country's store, otherwise you're SOL!"

Re:iTunes "region coding"

[johnbeat]

>'ve always wondered why they let you BROWSE other-
>country iTMS stores? I mean, what's the point?

Probably some naive idea that music fans would: complain to their lawmakers about the stupid laws that require Apple to make separate stores for each country, even in the EU; rather than just post complaints about Apple on discussion groups.

Jerry

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.

Except one thing...

[sethadam1]

That means everyone has to update their client software...AGAIN. They just forced millions of people to upgrade, and now they do the same thing...again!?

How come when Microsoft tries to stop supporting, say, Windows 98 or VB6 like 8 years after release, everyone goes nuts, but you'd easily suggest Apple updates a core app used by millions of DESKTOP users TWICE, both times freezing them out of the service in the meantime, without batting an eyelash?

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:So now Apple will need to..

[polyp2000]

"Perhaps the next step, apple will have to put the DRM on before it sends the file?"

This is the obvious next step i'll agree. But as i understand it. I thought about this when I read the article the other day, but this might be an even greater hole that the current one. DRM is tied down to your computer in some way. In order to DRM a tune your computer would have to send some information about itself to the server which DRM's the music file before sending it back. That is something you can easily control. Herein lies the problem with this method. Given a known "data set" (info about computer) used to DRM music , it would be trivial to create a known "data set" and using something pyMusique ensure the music files are encrypted using a data set key that can easily be shared / cracked.

Badly explained - i know - but hopefully you get the gyst.

Re:He doesn't access the system nor has he a contr

[Grayputer]

Ahh, NO. Someone may have to connect but it does not have to be him.

Let's say I connect to iTunes with Apple's software and I pay for stuff as a normal user. While I'm doing it, I capture network traffic logs, debugger output, etc. Then I write a spec and hand it to Jon. He writes the code and hands it back. I run his stuff and the 'real' stuff and issue change requests. He implements the change requests and we iterate. His hands are clean (mine may be dirty but his are clean). He never connected to iTunes.

Or, I could reverse engineer it, build the server (as you mention) and let Jon code against my server.

The whole clean room reverse engineering methodology is more complex but similar in intent to this (you'd REALLY like both sets of hands to be clean).

Re:As a record store owner.

[cheesybagel]

Wrong. Selling records is the way the producer/record company make money off music. Most artists get their money from doing tours and live concerts. Only a small minority (like Madonna) get any actual cash from selling records.

Re:He doesn't access the system nor has he a contr

[h4rm0ny]

Very similar to someone who provides a cable decoder, you mean?

Well assuming that it was a cable decoder that still required you to pay for your stations just like the companies one, then yes. The difference is that I can connect his cable decoder to my Linux TV. So I'll finally be able to start buying songs from them again.