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"DVD Jon" Reverse Engineers FairPlay
breun writes to bring us up to date on the doings of Jon Lech Johansen, known as "DVD Jon" after he cracked CSS encryption at the age of 15. As reported by GigaOM's Liz Gannes, Johansen has now reverse-engineered Apple's FairPlay DRM — but not to crack it. Instead Johansen's company, DoubleTwist Ventures, wants to license the tech to media companies shut out by Apple from playing their content on the iPod. And, soon, on the iTV. Johansen could end up selling a lot of hardware for Apple.
What's that smell..
Oh that's right.. a lawsuit.
Hold on to your hats boys and girls, its going to get fun.
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain Look for http://Thebar.steelbeachca
DRM will ALWAYS be able to be broken. The idea is to prevent casual abuse en masse and provide a show of good faith to content owners on the part of technology companies like Apple, both of which are exactly what it does.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, Apple isn't utterly retarded like Microsoft, doing things like making "PlaysForSure" content NOT work on their own devices, and doing other ridiculous and confusing things with DRM. Apple's DRM is unobtrusive enough to most customers that most customers DON'T CARE, and will NEVER "get screwed" by it. Period.
Note I said "most". And ultimately, that's all that counts.
Also, DRM isn't necessarily intrinsically evil. I know there's a lot of belief here that copyright law is hopelessly corrupted, content owners are greedy bastards, the laws surrounding DRM are horrid, and I could go on and on. And all of that may be true. But as long as there is some level of legal protection for someone who generates content and/or their agents, or their agent's agents, or trade groups that represent them, etc., there is nothing intrinsically wrong with using some level of technological means to protect that content from misappropriation under the current body of legal frameworks that cover such use. Everyone who buys content from, e.g., iTunes, knows exactly what the restrictions are. No one is forcing them to buy it.
DRM will never die. Shitty, overly restrictive DRM that pisses off massive amounts of customers will die. But "DRM" in general won't.
Hah. Nice comeback.
Hey, you were the one who made yourself look like a tool when you posted what you did...these issues couldn't possibly be more unrelated, and just as Apple did nothing to Real (because it can't), nothing will happen to DVD Jon. Sorry to disappoint.
He is so getting sued & this time his home country's laws will not protect him.
TFA does make an interesting point: he isn't stripping DRM, he's adding it... but isn't that exactly what Apple is licensing?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The author of this article seems confused, or at least implicitly blames Apple for "closing off" the iPod.
The iPod can play non-DRM'd media formats, in mp3, non-FairPlay AAC, etc...
If content from other music stores can't play on the iPod, it's not Apple's fault. It's their own fault, most probably because of the RIAA, for clinging to their own proprietary DRM.
On the other hand, it is Apple's(and the RIAA's) fault that iTMS content cannot play on other devices, and this is why we really need a way to strip FairPlay DRM.
It looks like this technology just benefits the record companies, who want to force all their music licensees into developing proprietary DRM technologies that make every single media device mutually incompatible with every other one.
Sigh.
Luckily, this is old news - Johansen had already circumvented the FairPlay encryption algorithm. He just wanted to develop something which was marketable to other music stores who want to compete with iTMS and who have the RIAA's proverbial gun to their heads. This seems like good news for everyone but the people who are buying the music, and (as I see it) the people who create it, who are tethered to an unfair distribution model.
This is yet another example of why DRM is nothing more than a snakeoil-based totally flawed concept. You CANNOT turn the concept of public key cryptography upside down like that.
Not just public key crypto, but crypto itself.
Cryptography is concerned with making it so that Alice can send a message to Bob, without Charlie being able to read it even if he intercepts the message en route.
DRM is concerned with the same thing, except Bob and Charlie are actually the same person.
In crypto, both the sender and intended recipient are assumed to be trusted (or more precisely does not try to deal with the case where they are not). In DRM, the intended recipient is assumed to be untrustworthy. DRM pretends to be an extension/application of crypto, but it fundamentally breaks the most basic assumptions of cryptography.
The enemies of Democracy are
Not because I agree with either side -- DVD Jon is a bastard for not simply releasing this to the public -- but it looks like it's shaping up to be hilarious and fun to watch in the same way the ending of Dune was. You think you have me surrounded? Beaten? Then, out of nowhere: "If I am not obeyed, the spice will not flow."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
All of those changes and restrictions are made possible only because of DRM. So it does actually have everything to do with DRM. Then there's the point that, regardless of what Apple has done so far, it is entirely possible and legal for them to add restrictions at any time on media that you have already purchased. So the GP post was correct that while you may know what the restrictions are now, you have no way of knowing what they'll be tomorrow.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Agreed. And this is why they're going to come down hard on Jon, not because they really care that much about the iTMS, but because it might encourage sales of other MP3 players at the expense of the iPod.
If Apple really was interested in running an online music venture and making their money there -- as in, really having that be their core business -- they would have tried to license out FairPlay as widely as possible and make it a de facto standard. (Which it already practically is, without licensing; given that the iPod is the de facto standard MP3 player.)
However, since the iTMS is really only there to grant legitimacy to the iPod as a device (does anyone remember how the music industry was screaming bloody murder about iPods being "piracy machines" back before the music store existed?), it makes no sense for them to share this "excuse" with anyone else's MP3 players. They benefit more from a consumer who buys an iPod than they do from a consumer who buys a few iTMS songs -- you'd have to buy a LOT of music to give Apple the same amount of profit that they get from a single iPod, and most people don't buy that much.
I think you'll see Apple go after this in the courts if it can, or just start a vicious cycle of "upgrades" and "enhancements" to the format if it can't.
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Nice try though.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Wrong. None of those changes had anything to do with DRM. They applied to the behavior of the software in general, regardless of whether files had DRM or not. These were intrinsic to the behavior and featureset of iTunes, and had nothing to do with, nor were they enabled by, DRM.
Yes, it is the iTunes software that has the behavior irrespective of whether the file has DRM.
However it is the DRM that prevents you from bypassing the iTunes software and its behavior by using some other software that does not have the same limitations.
Thus while the behavior is part of the software, it is the DRM that restricts you to using that particular software, and thus turns a behavior into a restriction. Thus any changes in iTunes behavior in the future is made into a future restriction by DRM and DRM alone.
I have a hard time believing you don't actually understand this.
So, we can only go on Apple's track record, which has so far been positive and has included negotiating aggressively with content owners for the least restrictive DRM possible.
Right, as I say in another post, they have found a very nice compromise. Who knows if this is temporary or not, and the whole point is that because of DRM -- and only because of DRM -- we are subsequent to any future changes thay make whether they are nice or not.
The enemies of Democracy are