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QTFairUse6 Updated Hours After iTunes7 Release
Nrbelex writes "Mere hours after iTunes 7's release, QTFairUse6 has received an update which enables it to continue stripping iTunes songs of their 'FairPlay' DRM. Some features are experimental but at least it's proof that the concept still works."
When third-party vendors start adding essential features like this, and on a timely basis, I start thinking about subscribing/installing/whatever you have to do to iTunes
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
So an update to the iTunes software just means an update to the memory address offset to read the data from. Piece of cake.
Does anyone know how much the iTunes DRM scheme changed with the new release?
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
Hopefully this keeps up. I used this to remove the DRM from the few songs I had to buy from iTunes (exclusive tracks).
will the iTunes people and the Media Monopolies in general learn that they will NEVER win the DRM war and all they are doing is costing themselves money and customers?
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Only a matter of time till both Apple and MS initiate lawsuits on those that cracked their DRM. No doubt aided and abetted by the **AA. The silver lining is that if this gets to the SC, the DMCA *might* get struck down as unconstitutional.
[Insert pithy quote here]
The free market has spoken: DRM is not wanted.
In a DRM system, the consumer's machine needs to get both the encrypted content, and the key to decrypt this content. Otherwise, the consumer cannot listen to the audio he just purchased. As long as we listen to music with our analog ears, and watch video with our analog eyes, this will be the case.
As any cryptographer will tell you: if you have the cyphertext and the correct key, you can decrypt the content. Therefore, DRM systems are, by their very definition, nothing more than security by obscurity. It is a cryptographical pipe dream.
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That was quick. Almost too quick...
Have you read my journal today?
I imagine that there whole business will solely become selling DRM data and DRM players/viewers.
The market of re-selling/renting disposible encrypted media is very large as long as it remains legal and the public doesn't figure out what is really going on.
impediment in the way of our pursuit of doing-whatever-the-hell-we-want-with-the-music-we- purchase
FYP
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Later in the thread they refer to a "fast dumping" feature which does not use real-time capture. Not sure how that works; in any case the fast dumping doesn't work w/iTunes 7 yet,
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
By listening to the rants around here ranting against DRM, you'd think all these folks also don't have locks on their doors or even use software (after all, both are imperfect and have security issues and software has stability issues not to mention usability, etc). Fact is, that the DRM does the job intended (really intended) in that it keeps the majority of users honest. OK, so there is a crack for itunes drm, fine, the majority of people don't know and don't care. They feel that they are getting fair value for their $.99, which in the end is all that matters. As another poster mentioned, the market has spoken, and it's overwhelmingly in favour of DRM (not directly of course).
Honestly, the reason people do this, is because most DRM, like [un-]'FairPlay', prevents a lot of valid and legitimate use.
I have well over 200 CDs in my CD cases at home, many probably have copy protection on them, though I've never done anything special to get around it (well, one CD crashes my Windows computer no matter what I do, so I don't put it in there). I have copies of all of these on my HD. Not so I can share the music with others online, I've never shared one song, but because I don't want the cpu hogging garbage the CP puts on my computer, and because I don't want to listen to one CD at a time, and switch every time I want a new song, especially since this risks damaging the CDs. On top of that, I want to listen to it on whatever device I have, be it my notebook, my desktop, my sterio, or my portable audio player. In this last case, DRM can cause major headaches and hinderances. Kein danke.
It restores my faith in humanity that there are people who willingly and freely help us preserve up our legitimate interests, when companies would try to take it away from us for a few extra bucks.
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Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
There is no legitimate reason to strip the DRM from iTunes Store purchases. Apple has made great efforts to publicize how products purchased can be used (up to 5 computers, any number of iPods). So, there's no reason someone who buys music from iTunes should be surprised that there is DRM attached to the file.
I contrast this with CDs that have attempted to prevent users from copying songs to their computers. A customer who bought a copy-protected CD could reasonably expect to be able to copy those songs to their computer, because that is the way that most CD's work. The record companies have made little effort to communicate to the public how these CDs can be used.
My other sig is extremely clever...
I hope Apple didn't spend too much time and effort on that, being that it only took a few hours for people to undo it. DRM is a pain. I don't particularily believe in downloading content I haven't paid for... but if I own something I should not be limited in how I want to use it. Kind of reminds me of Sony's shady DRM system on some of their CDs that you have to install their spyware to be able to use. And to think I'd purchased it and I still had all those restrictions on what I could do with it. I think that media companies don't seem to want to do themselves any favors with fans in all of this. At least it would appear so.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
They're capturing the unencrypted and unencoded audio stream? That means that they're transcoding if they store it as an AAC file, right?
I really do fear that the future will be riddled with incompatibilities from DRM.
I'm an "Apple Fanboy" but have limited my iTunes purchases to a few albums. CDs are still considerably more flexible regarding how and where I can use the music. Sure I own an iPod, but I also own a phone and PSP that can both play music. I also have a device that will play MP3s through my TV. None of those last three will play my FairPlay music. While I accept the limitations of the player, it's simply frustrating at times.
Regarding the new Apple Movie Store, let me get this right... we pay $9.99 (to $14.99) for a movie... that's of a lower quality than DVD and can't really be moved outside of your local network (it's not like you can take it over to a friends house without unauthorizing their computer and authorizing their computer under your username). Just trying to explain this to my fiance made her eyes glaze over. Her exact words: "sounds compleicated... why not just go to the movie store."
Is that by stripping the DRM, they're actually supporting the iTunes model and therefore the record labels because people will continue to buy from them instead of switching to the non DRM competition.
It's the same reason MS don't come down too hard on piracy of their OS and office suites. It actually supports their business.
Deleted
Simple answer. Also a simple reason.
How many people use iTunes? How many of them know about and use the circumvention tool? No matter how many it may be, the answer is invariably "not all of them". I.e. some cannot copy their songs for friends. And those friends will thus also buy the songs.
Copy protection does work. Not flawlessly, not against everyone, but at least SOME people will be kept from copying. Whether those people would have copied altogether and whether inconveniencing your paying customers is a viable business practice is a different question, though.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
iTunes works not because you can't copy the song or because of DRM. It works because of two simple reasons:
1. price
2. easy to use
Fairly simple. 99 cents is a sum that convinces people it's more convenient to click and pay than to fire up a filesharing system or phone 'round with their friends. It downloads quickly and it's guaranteed to work with your iPod, no need to wonder what format or how to transfer it, the software is built to fit.
That's what makes it popular and that's why people pay for it. I bet a sizable sum that most of them didn't even notice yet that it contains DRM. Simply because nobody bothered to try to copy it instead of simply clicking and paying the buck.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
DRM has been a fantastic thing for me and my family. Just over a year ago, we were much like most other American families when it came to entertainment. We'd listen to a lot of music, and we'd rent and buy DVDs fairly frequently. We'd go to the cinema maybe twice a month. But that all changed quite rapidly.
About two years ago we had gotten a new DVD/VCR/TV combo. Off we went to the local video store, to rent some videos for our daughters. One of the videos happened to be on a VHS tape. We went to play it, but it wouldn't play right in the new VCR. It'd had lines running through the pictures, for some reason. It worked fine in our older player, so the tape itself wasn't damaged. We tried with some of our home videos, that we had taken with our own VHS recorder years back. Again, the same problem. They'd work fine in our older player, but not in our newer one. The only VHS video tape I could get to play was one of the James Bond movies we had lying around.
Several days later while talking to some coworkers, and they mentioned that it was likely Macrovision that was causing the problems. I wasn't aware of Macrovision at the time, so I asked them to explain it to me, and they did. Put simply, I was quite irrate after finding out that I couldn't play my home videos on my new VCR/DVD/TV combo because of this anti-piracy technology. We're not pirates. We weren't playing pirated media. We want nothing to do with that sort of junk.
Later on, my oldest daughter received an iPod from a relative for Christmas, and so we tried out iTunes. Long story short, we were quite disappointed with the whole system, and all of the restrictions. It reminded us of the Macrovision hassles. And we just got to the point where we didn't want to use the products from companies that assumed us to be criminals.
At that point, we decided as a family that we were not going to be victims any longer. We went to our local library, and each got library cards. Every week, we take out several books and read them instead of listening to music, watching TV, or going to the cinema. We have taken the money we saved, and invested it building a quality home book library. It's amazing how many great books you can get on sale at your local bookstore, especially when you don't spend money on mainstream Hollywood entertainment. Unlike DRM'ed media, we will be able to read these books decades from now. We will be able to let our grandchildren read and enjoy them, just as much as we can today. Just saying "No!" to this type of nonsense technology was the best thing we have done.
I'm supporting the digital distibution model. I buy m4p tracks and convert them to m4a.
Record companies don't notice, they got their money and I'm not sharing the unprotected files.
Only person that should care is Apple, as I can now shift from ipod when the whim takes me. Currently I'm not in a huge rush, I'm perfectly happy with it by and large, but I hated the feeling of being trapped.
Legitimate uses or not, Apple specifically states how these downloads can be used, and what restrictions are placed on them. If you buy music from iTunes expecting to be able to do the things you mentioned (copy them to a non-Apple MP3 player easily etc.) then you're a moron for not reading the terms of sale beforehand and you only have yourself to blame.
It occurs to me that right now the industry is being reactionary because of what happened when people started ripping and sharing files illegally. If people hadn't started ripping and sending through Napster their whole CD collections, the industry wouldn't have thought of "DRM" and perhaps instead their efforts would be focused on accomdating 'fair use' Instead we now have an arms race of people crying 'fair use' against an industry trying to stop people from doing things that in no way approach the idea of 'fair use'
you failed miserably
Besides, even when something is illegal, it does not mean that something is not a right thing to do.
There are a lot of arguments about how bad DRM is and why it is stupid and how it restricts one's fair use.
The arguments lack one perspective, that the purchase of music from iTunes, et. al., comes with certain conditions. There is no fundamental right to purchase anything free of conditions, so when music companies and online retailers decide that they will offer music that is ensconced in DRM, that is a business and marketing decision that they make, assuming that people will forgo some freedoms in order to have the convienience.
The sort of "active" protest over DRM that is represented by tools to strip the DRM merely confirms that the market for the music exists and offers no reason for the music companies to move away from DRM. A better protest would be to boycott the entire DRM scheme altogether and only seek music from outlets that provide it free of DRM.
Will you still be able to get all of the CCR and Radiohead from other, non-DRM outlets? No, but if you want to make a point with a corporation, you need to do it by removing yourself from the market. The problem that I see is that many people want to have it both ways; they want all of the convience of an iTunes or Rhapsody, or similar, none of the DRM and want all of this without any real sacrifice.
A major problem today is the erroneous sense of entitlement that pervades so much. Too many people think that they are entitled to market for products that suits their needs and are willing to resort to unethical, if not blatantly criminal, activity to create that market. The truth is that the online music market will only change when providers are losing money because their markets have shrunk and they must retool the offering. AS long as people buy the DRM'ed music, that won't happen.
I think it's a symptom of technology, personally. We love technology as good little consumer whores. Well, just so happens, so do the greedy bastards at record labels. Just as much as we like to use technology, in increasingly grave amounts to make our lives easier, faster, dumber, cheaper, smoother, so do they. Unfortunatly, it's become far too easy for them to screw with our lives as far as consumption of entertainment goes.
Perhaps it's time for them to be taught that their product is simply not as valuable as they think it is and try to sue us into thinking it is as well.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
I read that headline and thought that Trolltech had adjusted the QT license in response to the new iTunes.
Besides, even when something is illegal, it does not mean that something is not a right thing to do.
amen brother, lets go to boston and throw a bunch of AAC's in the harbor!!
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
As I see it (in my own cynical way) DRM is not really about copy protection, it is for profit protection. Many people absolutely love itunes, the interface is highly intuitive and it is a nice, easy, hassle free way to buy music. The caveat is of course you have to buy one of Apple's players to use it, and of course when your player dies, or when new content comes out your player can't handle you have to use - another apple branded player!!
It boils down to the fact that once you have bought into Apple's DRM you are stuck having to either stick with apple branded players for the rest of your life, or resort to something like hymn or QTFairPlay to listen to your music, and end up breaking laws. Plus of course most people won't bother with the hassle of decrypting music and just buy another ipod anyway. Either way the upshot is, the industry wins the customer loses.
Apple does not care one way or another about how the RIAA/MPAA view DRM as long as they can get content. Apple wants to keep DRM so you have to buy iPods. If you could easily strip iTunes DRM and put it on any player then Apple's bread and butter high margin hardware business has to deal with much more competition (their margins on media sales are garbage). Right now if you like iTunes - you either only listen/view on your Mac/PC or iPod. Apple owns the DAP market and has a small though not completely insignificant workstation and laptop market percentage.
Sorry, but QTFairUse6 does NOT break DRM in the same way that Hymn, et. al. do it. Hymn breaks DRM by getting the keys and decrypting the files itself. What QTFairUse does is... use iTunes to break it (relying on the fact that you have ciphertext, a key, and a black box (iTunes) that can take those two inputs and produce unencrypted audio).
If you examine the source code, you'll see why it hasn't been ported to Mac - it isn't portable. It relies on the fact that for a brief period of time, there will be a frame of decrypted AAC data. It first attaches to the iTunes process, then it attaches a breakpoint inside of iTunes. You play your audio, and when iTunes finishes decrypting a frame of m4p, it hits the breakpoint. Then QTFairUse, acting as a debugger, grabs a copy of the AAC memory buffer, and writes it to a file, which is (surprise) unencrypted. (This was how the first iTunes hack was done, too).
What QTFairUse6/MyFairTunes does is make it entirely automated by faking out a debugger. If you knew where to set the breakpoint, and where in memory to find the unencrypted data, you could basically do the same thing with your bog-standard VisualStudio debugger (albeit more slowly).
The iTMS 6 format wasn't broken, just an alternate attack vector was found. And it might be more difficult in OS X, since a process can prevent itself from being debugged by setting permissions to do so.
That's why QTFairUse is version specific - it needs to know where to find the memory buffer, and where to set the breakpoint.
Thanks, that explains it.
To say the DRM has no legitimacy is just plain stupid. Reminds me of the similarly moronic 'All music should be free' line around in the Napster days. Apple was the first company to give us a decent model of legal music downloads. I'm happy that Apple instituted something that prevents(or at least slows down) music from appearing on P2P networks. People have a right to be paid for their work. I understand that people want to put their music on whatever they want and they should be able to. But technically iTunes isn't selling you that. You are allowed to authorize 5 computers, burn it 5 times (or something like that), and put it any iPod you want. They tell you that. None of that is hard to read fine print. If you don't like it don't buy it from them. DRM, or something like it, is a necessity in preventing the average person from being able to share their whole library with the world. Anyone here could get around it. Many outside of slashdot cyberwalls can't. At least not without effort or help. DRM isnt perfect and apple should improve it. But eliminating it completely just isnt the answer.
www.unofficiall.com
Actually, mad props...
Slashdot crowd unanimous in praise of the GPL. All proclaim that the GPL is still the best thing ever to hit copyright law. By protecting the rights of content producers, the GPL ensures that people will still put time and effort into creating products that people want to use. "Hooray for the noble programmers!"
In a related story:
Slashdot crowd unanimous in condemnation of Apple's DRM. FairPlay seen as a way to punish people from lawfully breaking the copyright laws that keep them from distributing music for free. Musicians' rights seen as quaint and outdated. "Hooray for the noble hackers!"
Correct, there is no right for a consumer to purchase free of conditions.
But the seller is also not free to restrict purchaces in ways that are illegal or immoral.
DRM attempts to enforce an infinite copyright, and will eventually lead to lost information and art, when the encrypted information is no longer profitable.
"A major problem today is the erroneous sense of entitlement"
And of course you should view this statement for companies as well.
A company is not entitled to hoard infinite publishing rights for no other purpose than profit.
Consumers need protection from corporations, not usually the other way around. The trend to view corporate rights to profit above individual rights in dangerous.
"Fascism ought to more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and corporate power." Benito Mussolini
Use iTunes to make an audio CD, then rip that CD to whatever form of digitized audio you want. You'll also have created a backup in the process. If you don't want any quality loss, rip to PCM or lossless format. If you're willing to sacrifice a decrease in quality similar to when you rip standard CDs, then rip to MP3.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Can someone please explain why this is necessary? Can't you still just play the song with itunes and record from the wav source with a tool like Audacity?
Maybe I'm missing something.
Even if you have the artists' permission in writing or by email.
iTunes is an end-consumer content delivery platform. Its not meant for people who want to do anything beyond just playing the piece.
I podcast so the contents is useless to me.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Nah. I think you're the moron for adhering to anything that restricts fair and honest use of something you've paid for. Me? TOS or not, if I'm gonna use iTunes (which I started doing since QTFairUse6 came out), I'm going to do it freely.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
Well, if you were using BitTorrent you were also uploading to others, not all of whom necessarily have paid for that episode. That's pretty clearly against the fundamental tenet of copyright law - you don't have the right to distribute that episode (this applies even if you do have the right to download it). So, cutting off your internet access was pretty reasonable in that case.
P.S. Don't take this as an indication that I personally approve of copyright laws. Sneakernet FTW!
is why won't iTunes let you copy music from the iPod to the computer? - It's insane!
I have had an iPod for quite a while now, and have always used gtkpod. I wanted to purchase an audiobook s oI installed iTunes to get the audible file onto my iPod. Well since I now had it, although on a windows prtition I never use, I fiugred I would give it a shot, maybe buy a game and take advantage of the album art feature for the albums I dont have art for, well lo and behold I can't seem to population my iTunes library from my iPod.... the most assinine thing I've ever seen, its a basic feature why wont it do it?
People are not buying that audio excrement because they are stealing the music,
they don't buy most new music because it sucks.
They can keep adding more DRM to their product,
what the market want is added talent!
I didn't miss the "without hassle" part. I made the obviously incorrect assumption that since you post to /., you're competent and proficient in such things. Maybe you can have your mommy do it for you.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
To quote myself:
DRM, lack of WMA compatiblity, ITMS files can't play on other players, "this here no name plastic player from China is cheaper and plays Ogg and... yadda yadda yadda".
OK, sit down, shut up and pay attention.
The overwhelming majority of people who buy iPods and KEEP buying iPods don't care a fat rat's ass about ANY OF THAT. Not one little bit do they care.
They want something that simply works. They don't care about ITMS DRM. They DO care about the fact that they can get music they want right now for a modest sum. They know they'll get a quality file.
They buy iPods because the interface is simple and it works well.
They buy iPods because they are small, sturdy and hold an amazing amount of music.
The overwhelming majority of the buying public is who Apple is targetting the iPod line to.
Not you smelly Linux hippies with your handmade machines and having to config it. And then you have to write some shell scripts. Update your RPMs. You have to partition your drives. And patch your kernel. Compile your binaries. Check your version dependencies. Probably do that once or twice.
Just to install an MP3 player. (and after all that, you STILL won't have more friends!)
You are not the consumer Apple cares about.
You have never been the consumer Apple cares about.
You will never be the consumer Apple cares about.
Get over yourself and welcome your new, Jonathan Ive designed, overlords!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
...no need to burn iTunes purchased music to a CD and then rip to MP3. (if you're using OS X, that is.)
Audio Hijack intercepts the audio stream, stores it, and then gives you the option to safe it in diverse formats, including MP3 or a lossless format.
It also does the same thing with any streaming audio source, as well. Real, WMA, et al.
US$16.00. Worth every cent, in my opinion.
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> Kein danke.
{\nitpick Actually this means Not a thank you!. You likely wanted to say Nein, Danke! (No, thanks!).}
"Yours to Keep"
How ironic!
Quality would be the same, too.
If you think the 2-minute snippets of news you get from PBS (or any other TV news service) are more informative than a multiple-page article in almost any major print publication, that's just nuts. Despite disclaimers to the contrary, public broadcasters are just as much in the "business" of drawing eyeballs as commercial stations, with the concomitant bias towards cheap sound-bites, pandering to the bread-and-circuses crowd, and pop-psych "analysis." They may not be drawing money from traditional advertisers, but their revenue stream is at least partly based on market share; how many people are listening during the next funding drive and if big sponsors think getting their name attached to a show is likely to help their public image.
At no time has television news (of any kind-public or private) appeared interested in or able to expend the time necessary to give background information and in-depth coverage of complex issues. This is especially true when it comes to situations where there's some horrific video to show. You'll find the PBS cameras pan the carnage just as lovingly as the cameras of "commercial" organizations, with the same cliched phrases and the same trite wrap-up.
While not every printed news source does better (USA Today is like a printed version of TV news) far and away the majority regularly bring a depth and breadth to news that television news just doesn't match. In my opinion, this is likely to continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
What I'm saying is. Tough cheese.
Deleted
Secondly, obviously you've never seen programs like Frontline, the McLaughlin Group, or Now, or seen the surveys about how well-informed people who take in different sorts of media are. Take, for example, this survey, which found that viewers of PBS and/or listeners of NPR are less than half as likely as readers of print media to have misconceptions about the Iraq war (and less than a quarter as likely as FoxNews viewers). Newspapers and magazines are usually corporate media, and as Goebbels said, a great propaganda news organization should give viewers less and less of a sense of what is going on the more they engage it. I can't tell you how many times I've seen absolute lies spawned or repeated by supposedly progressive and reliable newspapers such as the NY Times and the Washington Post (to which I subscribe). Occasionally, a retraction is later issued, but by then the damage is done. I also can't tell you how many times those newspapers have been complicit in burying or not following up on important stories.
Public broadcasting is only as good as the government will allow it and fund it to be, so it isn't perfect--but it's a damn sight better than any corporate media, print or otherwise, in the US.
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