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."

Comments

How it works (why it's easy)

[BadAnalogyGuy]

From the linked site:

the program attaches itself to the running itunes process and intercepts the decrypted stream as the song plays. It needs to know where in memory to grab the stream from and this is different depending on which itunes you have. It cannot just decrypt a file on its own.

So an update to the iTunes software just means an update to the memory address offset to read the data from. Piece of cake.

DRM is a cryptographical pipe dream

[ControlFreal]

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.

Re:At what point...

[goMac2500]

I don't think "the iTunes people" really care. But they don't have a choice if they want to sell music. It's all about what the record labels want, not Apple.

Re:Let the law suits begin

[xtracto]

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.

Cracked DRM? where? What this program does is something similar to dump some part of the memory in your machine into a file. It does not cracks anything, it does not modify any program, it is not any key generator, it just dumps a section of your computer memory into the disk.

Guess what, Microsoft Office does exactly that when you click the "save document" function. =o)

Re:This is wrong

[jimstapleton]

So, I could download something from iTunes, and without hassle, put it on my non-apple MP3 player, have a copy on my work (windows) PC, my home (Windows) PC, my notebook (BSD), and use it on my Audiotron player (MP3 and WMA compatable) that pipes it through my sterio?

Somehow I doubt it, yet those are all legitimate uses.

What the authors don't get

[Colin Smith]

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.

Why iTunes works

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:Why iTunes works

[AhtirTano]

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.

I can give anecdotal support to that (for whatever that's worth). Everyone in my work group uses iTunes to manage their music. Some of us use the iTunes store heavily, some of us only use it for free stuff. A couple weeks ago we decided to make a master playlist so all of our musical preferences could be equally represented in the shuffle. Some people were quite shocked and a little angry to find out that some of their favorite tracks could not be put in the mix. A couple people swore of iTunes forever. (Though I have real doubts that they'll stick to that.)

Re:Why iTunes works

[shark72]

"finally, the russians do claim that they are sending a percent of the fees to the artists. I can trust that as much as I trust the riaa sending its 'cut' to its artists."

The licensing fees that the Russian sites pay are estimated to be on the order of a few hundred bucks a month. Divide that by the tens of thousands of tracks they sell per month, and it's hundredths of a cent. However, the Russian sites refuse to divulge which tracks are being downloaded. Some indie artists have asked. They refuse to tell.

By comparison, an iTunes sale will net the artist around $0.15. And, yes, iTunes reports and pays. Sell a thousand tracks a month and that's $150 per month, vs. zero for sales on the Russian sites.

Now, you might think that $150 means nothing to your average recording artist, and that they can easily eat this loss. But the reality is that the typical recording artist has a standard of living that's much closer to your own (and quite likely worse) than the image you might have from watching MTV. If you would miss that $150 a month -- or, better put, if you would be angry if somebody cheated you out of $150 on the rationale that they thought you didn't need it -- then it's a safe assumption that your favorite artist would, too.

Make no mistake -- it's perfectly acceptable to say something like "I don't give fuck all if an artist makes $15 or $150 or $1500 a month. Just give me all the DRM-free music I can handle, baby!". As the Electric Company pointed out, the most important person in the world is YOU, and not some random artist. Pirate all you want if that works with your moral code. But it is intellectually dishonest to state that you use a Russian site for your music because it is no worse a deal for the artist than buying it legitimately.

Re:I'm almost ready to buy

[Intron]

It's called slashdot. It's a self-regulated forum of intellectuals who espouse fairness, rational discourse, wit and good fellowship above all else.

Re:So basically...

[TortiusMaximus]

iTunes unencrypts the m4p file to AAC, then transcodes the AAC file to .wav before sending to the sound card driver. QTFairUse6 just intercepts the AAC datastream before it gets transformed to .wav and writes it to disk.

Re:Let the law suits begin

[Jerf]

When you play the law game, the argument of the form "Look, there's a definition of X in the dictionary, under which X didn't happen. Therefore, I didn't do X. Ha-ha! Got you!" works about as well as I've made it sound. You really don't get to pick definitions; you can do some limited advocacy if you can find some evidence, but you aren't going to get away with arguing that because one of the definitions of murder is "something very difficult or dangerous", you therefore didn't commit murder when you shot that guy that was annoying you, on the grounds that it was quite easy and involved no danger to you.

The DMCA is pretty clear on what it means by circumvention:

`(3) As used in this subsection--

`(A) to `circumvent a technological measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and

`(B) a technological measure `effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

If you think you can convince a judge that this isn't textbook circumvention, hey, go for it. But saying it'd be an uphill battle is putting it lightly. Especially if you go in there claiming that it's somehow impossible for a "mere memory dump" to constitute circumvention, when it is clearly one of many types of transform wherein you put a protected work in one end, and get an unprotected work out the other.

(Do not confuse this post with DMCA advocacy. I strongly disagree with outlawing technologies and actions; I think the law in this area should merely concern itself with results. But I also think you can't fight against something you don't understand; you just make yourself sound like an idiot. You need to understand there is a distinction between what the laws says and what you wish it said. Understanding the DMCA better is a necessary step in fighting it.)

Re:Apple - "whoops"

[misleb]

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...

Slightly off topic, but I wonder how you feel about downloding content that was on broadcast TV. Take the show "Lost" for example. Lets say you missed it when it was broadcast. Now, you could have recorded it for free and stripped out the commercials. But you didn't for whatever reason. You could wait a year for the DVD to come out, but you don't want to wait. You could pay some "legit" online service for the convenience of downloading, but why should pay for something that was broadcast for free just yesterday? Is there anything wrong with downloading it or getting it from a friend?

-matthew

Why you are all wrong

[rockhome]

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.

Re:Why you are all wrong

[ambrosen]

Actually, the European Comission does consider that there is a right to purchase things free of conditions, and in the case of any transaction that looks like a sale, it is a sale, and the constraints the seller can put on the purchaser are very limited.

QTFairUse6/myFairTunes does NOT break DRM!

[tlhIngan]

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.