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MySpace Music Player Hacked
Roy van Rijn writes to tell us about a little program called MySpace MP3 Gopher, with which you can download any song from MySpace as an MP3 even if it is marked to disable downloading. MySpace MP3 Gopher is a Windows program requiring no installation, and for those not on a Windows box the author offers an online version that anyone can run. It is hosted on his home computer so it is bound to get slashdotted rather quickly. All you need to grab a MySpace song is its "friendID," which is in every URL as a parameter. Tech-recipes has step-by-step instructions.
"It is hosted on his home computer so it is bound to get slashdotted rather quickly."
Ok, who on slashdot uses myspace? Ok, now how many use it for music? Alright. Lemme recount.
I sense a lot (more) myspace bashing. Otherwise, it's a cool program.
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
But in all seriousness, this is going to bring the "web-rip" scene of trash on P2P networks to a whole new level.
Tested and working :)
I have no doubt this project was funded, in whole or in part, by Universal Music group to support their BS crusade against MySpace and YouTube.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
This is just another example of Web 2.0 security, or the lack thereof. Too much emphasis is placed on what amounts to useless functionality and appearance, rather than to security, efficiency, and reliability.
At the place where I work, one of the managers recently pressed for the use of Web 2.0 technologies for a new product we were going to start working on. Our development team had to basically shut this manager down, since we were not prepared to put out a piece of software that relied on such shoddy techniques and tools.
We went above his head, and explained to upper management that those technologies are inherently flawed. They do not provide a suitable level of security, and the minimal benefits they offer can, for the most part, be duplicated using far more mature and secure methods. From legal and PR standpoints, the insecurity of many Web 2.0 technologies could lead to very serious problems. Thankfully, our manager was overruled by upper management in this case.
But I'm still concerned with how other sites and services are implemented. This example just shows the flawed nature of the Web 2.0 ideas, where in many cases the security of the system just isn't considered. If this private MySpace music data can be accessed with apparent ease, what is to suggest that their other data isn't vulnerable in such ways? I've done my best to avoid sites and services that use extensive Web 2.0 functionality, because it has a very poor security track record, and my data is far too valuable to fall victim to their shitty implementations.
2 songs on this friendid: 71848725 doesn't appear to work.
I've ripped music from MySpace pages, but I did it using a recording program like Total Recorder. Basically it creates a virtual audio driver, records using that, then sends the audio to your regular driver. The only downside is that it does so in real-time, so you'd have to wait for the song to play.
Unfortunately MySpace music is only 96kpbs MP3s (AFAIK), so it's gonna be low quality, but lots of artists have MySpace exclusives or live songs only available there, which leaves it as the only choice.
No existe.
it is rumored that the Americans in Guatanamo Bay in Cuba downloaded this program and used it as part of their "alternative interrogations" program. Quoth an anonymous source "Not even the most devout person in the world can withstand a constant barrage of myspace musical selections"
Monstar L
Why would anyone download a song off of Myspace? Honestly, i'd really like to know. Wouldn't it be easier to stick your head in a toilet and start screaming about your ex?
Am I missing something? It fails to grab any listings from any artists. Even the one used in the screenshot. Thats the web version and the desktop one.
1. Wait for 0-day news of product.
2. Create a trojan with adware.
3. Post a link to a "mirror" with the trojan. Bundling the original program is optional.
4. Sit back and earn 0.25 per install.
Caveat emptor.
I just tried downloading off my buddies band page, just to see how/if it works, and nadda.
So.. move along, nothing to see here.
LR
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
Any crusade against MySpace is a worthy cause, in my oh-so-pretentious opinion.
I dislike Myspace as much as the next guy, but Universal is just playing dirty. I mean, just days after they threaten to file suit against Youtube and Myspace, a piracy tool written to exploit myspace just happens to appear on the internet.
give me a break. It's pretty clear that a) MySpace and Universal have been in contract negotiations, b) those negotiations have broken down over fee structure, and c) Universal is doing its hardest to set precedent so that if MySpace doesn't come over to their side of the table, they can sue MySpace for as much money as possible.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
As a musician with his songs on Myspace, I think this is completely unjust and horrible. I'm sure many musicians, artists and bands would agree with me when I say that if I wanted my music to be freely distributed, I would make it available for download on Myspace. This take the notion of "stealing" music to the next level; it really is stealing. Music isn't free. Live with it.
mund freud.
...Why do we need a whole program for this? It seems like the kind of thing you could easily do manually. Or better, a Firefox extension.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
You can use SWFTools to do this too. Nothing new...
I tried it on four or five differnet artists, none worked.
Maybe MySpace devs fixed the hole
My posts are definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
ARTS (Arts? ARts?) already allows you to do exactly what you just said, without downloading anything extra. I imagine other *nix audio technologies probably offer similar functionality ...
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
If you are going to illegally download a song, why use backdoors like this, when they are all available on the p2p and bittorrent networks?
If you are using a Mac, Audio Hijack (http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/) records live audio from any application (such as Safari) and saves it in whatever format is convenient for you. It's not as easy as this posted program since it is done in real time, but works with more than just MySpace.
The "hack" worked when it was posted to digg about 2 days ago. Looks like it was fixed early this morning.
Hmmm.
It doesn't work, and I'm glad. Giving alot of morons an easy way to get a song isn't that productive. If anyone really wanted the song, they'd record it or create a virtual audio driver that writes to a file as mentioned above, but morons are too lazy to do that.
I actually work with a lot of MySpace artists with my site (I have a MS account, but I mean popexperiment). Ya, ripping off 96Kbps @ 22050Khz will really help you satisfy that need. Nothing like kicking back and taking in the hiss.
The only thing I really don't like about this is a lot of musicians and labels have come to depend on MS (say what you like, I work in a web-services company, I know Coldfusion and MySpaces scales poorly) and they might start pulling content. MS is actually the best resource out there right now for finding new work (since mp3.com really, which is shit now). Thats a simple fact. And artists can be very, very sketchy about 'lossing control' of their content. Another fact I have to contend with regularly (I run an internet radio channel/show on the previously mentioned site).
Lets hope they plug the hole quickly before knees start to jerk.
More interesting is the pending MySpace downloads. Assuming they don't build it out themselves (which the article seems to suggest isn't the case) this could be great for a lot of independant/international artists and even better for the listeners. Because MS encoded files are great for a quick taste but garbage to really listen to.
Anyway, as usual, we'll see how the chips fall. The net is pretty orgainic.
Quack, quack.
The MySpace player encodes at a pretty crappy quality. If it's a major label act whose music you're trying to get, there are a million other places you could get it (and the rest of the album it's on) at a much higher quality.
... and if it's an indie act whose music you're tryin to get, why not buy their freakin' CD instead of trying to rip them off?
That leave indie artists
Who doesn't like free music?
Why would anyone want to download music from MySpace? It sounds like ass. Seriously, what is it, 32kbps? I realize that some bands post music on MySpace before they release it (like Weird Al), but I think I'd rather chop off my ears with a rusty knife than listen to those songs on anything other than some crappy CompUSA speakers.
The music, in essence, is mostly a tool to promote the band as an act and/or live show.
That has to be some of the stupidest shit I've ever read. No, you moron, it's the reverse. There's a good reason that most bands launch their big tours shortly after the release of an album.
Open Audacity.
Set recording to stereo mix.
Turn off or silence all other programs that might make a sound.
Hit record.
Open the myspace page with the music I want to "download".
Wait until it's finished.
Hit stop recording on Audacity.
Cut out the beginning and ending dead air.
Save file.
Duh.
For some reason I thought this hack would be a mozilla plugin that would automatically disable the myspace player when visiting a myspace page. Unfortunately, this hack doesn't protect web users from annoying music, it causes them to copy the horrible audio to their local computers. What's the phone number for DCMA enforcement?!?
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
everyone alredy now myspace was fucked everyone needs to go on hi5!!!
I post my songs on Myspace, and with my high-quality sound system there is not a single bit of artifacting that I can hear, and I upload all of my songs at 192 kbps. Thank you.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I think its a poorly designed service (part of why its so popular actually, lots of bugs (css expliots, less sanitising) that let users take more control, for better and worse.
:)
The catch with those great digital download sites for the small artists is you need a LABEL. They don't deal with artists directly. Which was great news for me, I was preparing to launch a 'virtual' label for artists who needed help with that part. But thats on hold now with MySpace's plan. I'll see how it works out.
Anyway, I agree about the great DRM free sites and believe me, I use everyone of them (you left off indie911, check my resources page for some more, foreign, etc). Magnatune I have mixed feeling about because while its a noble effort I don't think it gets enough exposure to actually help. While sites like the previously mentioned 911 (I promise, I have no affiliation) offer roughly %70 per track, which to me would sound a little more tempting (that and they are actively trying to gain more attention, we'll see how far they get).
Anyway, the downloads aren't quite the windfall to a lot of the artists who post their work there. Even if their reasoning isn't perfect (its their music, so its their call) a lot of artists really don't want their music freely available and for a variety of reasons. It'll probably get fixed quickly then they can play cat-n-mouse, who knows.
Quack, quack.
I thought gopher http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1436.txt died a slow lingering death...
http://signup.myspace.com/index.cfm
Quack, quack.
Coukld be worse. :P
Honestly, I thought about it and decided to abbreviate despite the similarities, simply because the post was about one company. Seems you managed and we've had a conversation despite this decision which leads me to the only logical conclusion: I was right (its always the same conclusion, I might have to re-evaluate my sample data, but I won't be telling my customers).
Ciao!
Quack, quack.
And on pirate bay you'll get mp3's with a usable sample and bitrate. 96/22050 is really only useful for previewing music ... like MySpace does. Anyway, it appears the hack is fixed. Now if they could just get their application to scale we'd have something to talk about.
Quack, quack.
I'd call it Musicians Rights Management. Which I feel more fuzzy towards they the stodgy old corps.
What were we talking about?
Quack, quack.
This program also downloads a dl.exe from the web. Pretty sure that's a known worm. Don't believe me, open the executible in a hex editor and search for "dl.exe".