Slashdot Mirror
"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
Why do I have the feeling that somebody is going to turn out like Dmitry Sklyarov?
This has already been done with Real's Harmony.
With each successive iPod update, Apple can keep breaking Harmony. Sure, they can come back and "fix" it again, only for it to be broken again.
Besides which, anyone can sell or deliver content on Apple's iPod now:
- They can deliver it in any number of media formats without DRM (since DRM is so evil, right?)
- If they really want DRM, any music provider not currently affiliated with a major label can distribute on iTunes to iPod via services like this
So, if we're to believe the putative reasons that FairPlay has been "reverse-engineered", it is actually to specifically enable and further the usage of DRM.
Is this what the people who would applaud DVD Jon actually want? More DRM, and DRM that won't be guaranteed to work (in fact, will almost be guaranteed to NOT work) the next time an update comes out from the vendor, at that?
So, DVD Jon is going into business to *sell* DRM?! And possibly at the expense of Apple?
That sound your just heard is thousands of Slashdotter heads asploding.
The drama abounds... Who will Apple sue first? Will anyone be brave enough to buy a third-party implementation of FairPlay? Will Apple try to thwart this by monkeying with FairPlay to cause compatibility problems, leading to a game of cat and mouse?
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
Yeah, you missed something. The implication is that Apple will sell a lot more hardware because Johansen will increase the amount of Fairplay protected content available.
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
Johansen could end up selling a lot of hardware for Apple.
I'm sure Apple will see it that way.
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. All DRM does is have you create a keypair (or create one for you and send you the private key), then it encrypts media using your public key before it gets to you. Great, except they have to (1) keep the private key accessable to their programs/devices that need to decrypt it and (2) keep it completely away from you (the "owner" of the key) and any other programs that could use it to decrypt media without following their silly restrictions.
Keep trying to hide it in software, keep trying to hide it in hardware, as long as debuggers, logic probes, and soldering irons are available to the general public, someone will always get it. And it only takes one to make it completely pointless. After that there will be a software or hardware solution available to anyone to do the same thing. Or more to the point, the un-drmed media will be in the wild.
Close the analog hole? Trying to force everyone to upgrade to monitors, sound cards (and speakers), TVs, etc. just to restrict what they can do will backfire as well. Eventually people will figure out that there is no benefit to upgrading all this stuff. And let's be honest with outselves, most of the really cool features of Vista have been canceled, it is nothing more than XP + DRM with some OSX eye candy thrown in to make it seem different. OSX is not much better, try loading a debugger while the DVD player app is running. Or even taking a screenshot.
Nobody is waking up going "geeze, my PC, Tivo, DVD burner, and VCR can do way too much, I really wish I could pay a lot more for devices that prevent a lot of the use that is available to me now".
Wow, I guess I really needed to go off on a DRM rant. I feel better.
Finkployd
Currently if I want to get my music on iTunes, I can approach apple with it, and get it DRM'd and then sold on iTunes.
Talk to me when DVD Job offers other MP3 player manufactures that ability to use a FairPlay DRM'd song on there own MP3 player. That is the lock in I would like to eliminate (and apple wants to keep).
Apple doesn't make a boatload of money on the hardware (why else are they able to effectively price-match other MP3 players), but a huge amount from Itunes.
You have that completely backwards. Apple's profit margin on the iPod is huge compared to what they're making on iTunes downloads...
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.
DVD Jon, didn't break the FairPlay, he emulates it with his software. So he's not in violation of DMCA I think. Just like the Samba project reverse-engineered the SMB protocol, they did the same. So he's going to talk to Steve in January and has at least one (1) customer (Microsoft? haha)
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
If only 1% of people know how to break it and it generates more than that in sales then we actually save money. Esepcially since the cost of the DRM system is more like a capital cost that is amortized over all product sold.
Apple will snarl and bite yet another hand. Anyone that thinks Apple is consumer friendly is an idiot.
They'll do more than snarl and bite. I just saw a bunch of sinister looking stealth UAV's loaded to capacity with Norvegian-nerd-seeking lawyer-missiles and Apple logos painted on their wings jetting off from our local Air Force base. They were heading in the direction of San Francisco.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I believe this saves Apple from the anti-trust case in France that was considering Apple as monopolizing the market. As other vendors can now sell to the Ipod this technology saves Apple from that lawsuit.
Just look at his business name and you'll understand. DoubleTwist. He's backed Apple into a corner where they are screwed no matter what they do. Fighting his app could require them to change their DRM such that it breaks for existing media which would alienate customers, stir up tons of bad press, and further expose the downsides of DRM. OR They can let his application survive, some music companies will license it, build their own alternative distribution online stores probaby in highly specific niche music markets, and slowly chip away Apple's hegemony.
As you noted if you try to compete with tht eipod then apple can just change the encoding of the music so it breaks on your harmony player. But the reverse is not true. If I am selling songs I can encode them so they play on apple ipods yet are drm protected. Once I manage to emulate that for any given edition of the DRM format, the apple can't change the protocol because it would mean old songs won't play.
that is you encode the songs such that if old itunes music stroe songs play then your songs must play too.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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 he's done is reverse engineer for the sake of interoperability. Now you'll be able to download songs from, say, Walmart for 88 cents and play them on your iPod.
The next step would be to reverse engineer the iPod, so that you can play iTMS tracks on your Zune or iRiver or whatever other device is out there.
As long as the DRM on these other players works just as well as the iPod, the only thing that changes is that the single-vendor lock-in that Apple has worked so hard to create gets shattered. This is good for the consumer, and may perhaps be what finally moves DRM from the "evil" category over to "annoyance" in the mind of consumers, thus increasing the market size.
Only an idiot would voluntarily lock themselves in to a single vendor (Apple, Zune Marketplace) if they had the choice. PlaysForSure was Microsoft's shot at creating an open marketplace for players along with an open market for media players, which, if DRM must exist, is the best market situation from the consumer perspective: you get to pick the best music store (or several of them) and the best player (or several of them). Music and players are interchangeable commodities.
I still don't like the fact that downloaded music is licensed in stead of purchased (as with a CD), but if all DRM were made interoperable (as France recently tried to do), the difference would be tolerable.
I still plan on purchasing CDs for the foreseeable future, but this developement is definitely welcome.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Just because he cracked the fairplay scheme doesn't mean he has seen the code.
You seem to think that "cracking" something of this sort doesn't involve reverse engineering it. In fact, all of the "cracking" that I can recall DVD-Jon doing (CSS, FairPlay) has been the result of him reverse engineering available implementations.
Here's what I don't understand: why would a record company pay for DRM that's already been broken, when they can release their music without DRM for free?
The idea is that Sony or someone wants to sell their music directly to iPod owners through www.sony.com, instead of having to go through the iTunes store and pay Apple for the privilege.
But there's no way they'll just sell plain MP3s, because they want to keep people from sharing the songs. So they want to wrap their MP3s in DRM, but Sony-brand DRM won't play on iPods, therefore they need some way to wrap their files in an iPod-compatible DRM without having to pay Apple. Enter DVD Jon.
In my opinon, it's a fairly neutral contribution to the fight against unfair DRM. Yes, I guess it harms Apple's monopoly on the iPod, but mostly it just increases the ability of companies to apply DRM-restrictions to your music.
Is it just me, or does "DVD Jon" look A LOT like Bill Gates? I mean... whoa, freaky, eh?!
how is babby formed?
IANAL. However:
DVDJon and his company are not just circumventing DRM. They are eviscerating meta-DRM:
On one hand, they are circumventing FairPlay's copyright protection technology. Seems like a clear-cut violation of the DMCA, doesn't it?
However, as long as they don't publicize their circumvention method, but instead make it available under NDA to legitimate customers, they are providing an avenue for Apple's legitimate competitors to enter the iTMS market. Competition has been explicitly protected w.r.t. the DMCA.
DVDJon &co. are "crossing the streams" and make DRM itself the subject of competition. DMCA may make circumventing copyright protection illegal, but the 6th Circuit said that you can't use the DMCA to stifle competition. So, can you use the DMCA to stifle DRM competition?
If the court says that DVDJon can't [enable someone to] make a legitimate iPod clone, the DMCA is set up for a major anti-competitive argument, complete with precedent, all the way to the SCOTUS.
If, one way or another, competition (legitimate, not free "competition" from unauthorized downloads) is upheld over this meta-DRM that DVDJon is attacking, then any DRM moves closer to commodity status. That reduces the incentive for tech companies to invest in DRM - a Very Good Thing by itself. But it also opens holes to, hypothetically speaking, the MPAA members' wet dream of having your HD-DVD/Bluray player ask the mothership for permission before it plays the next episode of The Sopranos.
All in all, very well played.
What is not clear is how the reverse engineered FairPlay will be marketed. If it is marketed to the online music retailers so they can offer iPod compatibility, then Apple probably doesn't really care enough to take action. If it is marketed to the portable music player hardware manufacturers, then Apple will definitely care because the iPod sale is its bread and butter.
The first scenario makes a lot more overall financial sense because the iPod dominates the market as an end user device. The reason that other portable players have been crushed in the market is not because there is a lack of online music retailers who sell content that is compatible with those devices. It is actually the opposite - there are tons more online music retailers who sell content for non-iPod devices. The reason is that the device of choice is the iPod, and the only online music retailer who sells content from the major music publishers that can be licensed for the iPod is iTMS. If the other online music retailers could also license DRM'd music from the major music publishers for the iPod, then the only threat is to the revenue stream of iTMS - not the iPod.
In fact, it looks like MS isn't supporting much at all:
10 iPod vs Zune Myths