Slashdot Mirror
FairUse4WM Breaks Windows DRM
An anonymous reader writes "FairUse4WM, according to engadget, "can be used to strip Windows Media DRM 10 and 11". What does the slashdot community think of this development in the ongoing cat-and-mouse game going on between big media and what is available online?"
They've already written a follow-up: An open letter to Microsoft: Why you shouldn't kill FairUse4WM.
This whole thing reminds me of Cory Doctorow's DRM and MSFT: A Product No Customer Wants.
basically with Apple DRM *I* can do whatever *I* want to do
Well good for you, but please don't generalize your own situation to the rest of the world. I happen to have a Linux machine, and as such I can not (legally) do whatever I want to do with music I've purchased from iTunes.
But that teacher isn't. Educational use is enshrined in the Copyright law as an allowable use. DRM that refuses to allow this is illegal, as it infringes on a legal right.
Similarly, commentary, parody, and many other "Fair Use" exceptions exist, none of which the current DRM regime respects.
The iTunes music store is quite clear that if you accidently delete your iTunes downloads, you're SOL. There are plenty of accounts of people who've lost iTunes downloads who've had Apple tell them to repay to redownload or fuck off.
Plus, once you've gone past five times that Apple's decided your computer is different, you also lose all your music. Gone. Locked out.
Apple is just as evil as the rest of them. At least the "rent music" places are telling you up front that you're just renting and that you can lose the ability to play your downloads at the drop of a hat.
Have you ever taken a language class? EVERY language class I've ever taken (Hebrew, Spanish, and French) have all had sound clips (CDs and/or cassettes) and video. I have yet to see a language class have anything but supplimentry material posted online (and 98% of the time that material is text). I don't know where you go to school, but here the teachers have to follow copyright so in almost all circumstances would not be able to provide online copies even if they wanted to (if the material was a recorded broadcast this would be differant, but fair use doesn't work the same for non-broadcasted material - last I looked using more then a minute of non-broadcasted material was getting close to the line).
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Haven't tried them myself, so watch out for viruses etc, but here's a coral cached forum post @ doom9 linking mirrors etc: Download mirrors
Let me speak to the "stupid enough to buy DRM encumbered content" market...since I *was* stupid enough.
I subscribed to Yahoo! Music Unlimited, upgraded my Windows Media Player, installed all of the patches and purchased a brand spanking new Creative Zen Vision last year.
The whole setup process was about two hours after the litany of patches and firmware upgrades, but it worked...actually very well...
Then one day, about 7 months later, it failed.
For no explainable reason other than "DRM is garbage", my player decided to play only the first song downloaded, and then claim that every other song was unlicensed thereafter. It didn't matter which track, the minute it skipped to the next one, everything was unplayable that was DRM'd.
You can imagine how abundantly helpful Yahoo!'s tech support was (not at all). So I cancelled my subscription.
Lets add up my total costs:
1-year Subscription (at the time $4.99/month, now $9.99): $59.88
New media player for subscription content: $399.99 (somewhere in that range)
Number of tracks effectively "rented" for seven months: ~150
Total Cost "the day the music died": $459.87 or >$3.00/tracks I didn't get to keep.
Sure, I factored the player into the cost and maybe that's not fair since I still use it for videos and music (and I would buy it again, today, if given a choice), but the fact remains that I had to buy a new player because only a select few are subscription compatible.
I won't resubscribe now that this tool is available because my guess is that Microsoft will have this hole patched before the week is out (Here's betting they don't wait until "Patch Tuesday" for this update, we all know where their priorities are).
So I have access to less music (legally) "at my finger-tips", but at least I get to enjoy the music on all of my PCs, my stereo, my two players, and wherever the heck else I can adapt the unencumbered tracks to.
It's amazing to me that something that was "standard" 100 years ago (unencrypted/encumbered music) is now the first feature I look for in music I buy.
"God is dead!" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" - God