"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.

Comments

*sniff*.. *sniff*.

[Sassinak]

What's that smell..

Oh that's right.. a lawsuit.

Hold on to your hats boys and girls, its going to get fun.

Re:*sniff*.. *sniff*.

[roseblood]

Indeed. Apple is not going to like the fact that some other company is going to sell their technology. Thats what patents are for right? Wait... there is plenty of prior art for cryptography (thats all DRM is, crypto for media, when you're given the right to play the media you are allowed to decrypt it.)

How will it work here? A court says DVD JON stop it, that's apple technology they worked hard to make. A court says APPLE CHILL OUT, DVD JON is going to let other MP3 players play FAIRPLAY files and non-Ipod owners will spend their money on your iTunes store.

I'm sure apple would love to sell more iPods, but then again, they could end up selling more music.

I predict lawsuits myself, the legal department will feel the need to get them going if only to prove to the bosses that they are doing productive work for the company.

Re:*sniff*.. *sniff*.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does nobody remember the landmark Sony vs. Connectix case? A company can reverse engineer proprietary software and implement software that replicates functionality learned from said reverse engineering in their own devices in order to create compatibility between devices.

Re:*sniff*.. *sniff*.

[Moofie]

"and iirc DMCA was innacted under Clinton, not Bush"

Golly. It's almost like neither political party has our best interests at heart. Who'd a thunk it?

Real already did this

[daveschroeder]

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?

Re:Real already did this

[daveschroeder]

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.

Re:Real already did this

[daveschroeder]

Close: they know what the restrictions are right now. They don't know what the restrictions will be tomorrow or next year. Apple has, in fact, issued updates to iTunes to tighten the restrictions on music that had already been purchased, and they may very well do so again in the future.

Um, examples, please? Are you talking about things like being able to burn one playlist 7 consecutive times instead of 10? (Even though you can just make one change to the playlist, change it back, and then burn again?) Other than that, I am not aware of any changes that makes Apple's DRM more restrictive, unless you're talking about the waaaaay-old changes to iTunes that disabled the ability to do music sharing via IP (as opposed to only on your local subnet, the way it is now), which had nothing to do with DRM, or the syncing changes in iTunes 2.0, which again had nothing to with with DRM, or disallowing music from easily being downloaded by others (as opposed to streamed) via iTunes, which, again, had nothing to do with DRM.

As I said in another post, Apple has actually been making their DRM more lenient: you can now two-way sync any iPod with any iTunes libraries on computers that are authorized on the same iTunes account (and you can have up to five computers and an unlimited number of iPods, which is how it's always been). Previously, you could have an iPod associated with only one music library; now you can easily keep all libraries in sync across multiple computers and multiple iPods.

While your point stands in general with regard to DRM, Apple has not introduced any new restrictions that fundamentally limit what you can do, and instead has removed limitations that previously existed.

Microsoft has done precisely the opposite, even introducing a new music player that doesn't play its *own* ironically-branded PlaysForSure content. (And to others reading this, no it wasn't just a rumor or misunderstanding...Zune really won't play PlaysForSure content, and vice versa: http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/14/the-engadget-in terview-j-allard-microsoft-corporate-vice-presi/ )

Confused

[TheWoozle]

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?

Suuuure

[finkployd]

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

Re:Why do I...

[daveschroeder]

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.

Re:Ton o Bricks time...

[ALpaca2500]

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...

Worse

[TubeSteak]

Twenty-two-year-old Johansen moved to San Francisco to work with Monique Farantzos, who had contacted him after reading a Wall Street Journal profile of him last fall. The two now live in the Mission District and devote their time to DoubleTwist Ventures, which is Johansen's first major attempt at commercializing his hacking. They haven't raised any outside money because they have already found at least one (undisclosed) paying customer.

He lives in the U.S. & has a company.

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?

Re:Worse

[elrous0]

That brings up an interesting point. Why would DVD Jon, or any of these other hackers, want to live in the U.S.? Hell I'm American, and even *I* would rather live in Sweden, Denmark, or Canada if I could. If I were routinely thumbing my nose at the RIAA, the MPAA, the DMCA, etc., I wouldn't even *visit* the U.S., much less live here.

Do these people not get it? In the U.S., the government doesn't fuck around--they WILL kick your door down, take your computers, and drag you off to jail if they suspect you're up to something (or some company or other government agency tells them you are). Hell, they'll drag you out of the airport if you even LAND here. And they don't give a shit about it causing an international incident, either (really, how much lower could the U.S. sink in international opinion than it already has).

-Eric

For those that didn't RTFM

[guruevi]

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)

Snarl!! Bite!!

[Savage-Rabbit]

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.

It does sound fun.

[SanityInAnarchy]

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."

iTMS gives the iPod legitimacy.

[Kadin2048]

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.

Re:iTMS gives the iPod legitimacy.

[guet]

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.)

Actually, I disagree - they didn't license out to protect the market as it was growing, if they had attempted to license early it could easily have meant the death of their format. Licensing out to the likes of Microsoft and their hardware partners would leave them forced to play along with multiple implementations of their DRM, possibly even dealing with outright sabotage (see Java in MS Windows) to undermine their position. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. By building a strong monolithic market first, they're in a perfect position to open up licensing and make a killing, and no-one can challenge their position at this point as the one who sets the standards.

In fact there's going to be far more money in online media when it takes off than there will ever be in gadgets - once people don't bother buying physical media the market will be huge; owning the most widely licensed DRM will be very profitable. For now though the money is in the gadgets.