iPod Cracked, But Does it Matter?

Bennett Haselton writes "The Associated Press is writing that "DVD Jon", known for breaking the copying restrictions on DVDs, plans to market a method for breaking the copy protection on songs purchased from iTunes Music. What's missing from the story is the fact that converting iTunes music into unrestricted formats like MP3 is already trivial. In principle it's impossible to prevent music from being copied anyway, because a user can always play a song through an audio output jack and use another device to record the sound; there are several other methods that work by reducing the same principle to practice. Bottom line: there's no reason yet to get excited about the iTunes-cracking technology (and, indeed, no reason to buy an iPod), when you can already convert songs this way." Bennett's full article on the subject is available below.

According to an Associated Press story, "DVD Jon" Johansen is planning to market a technology for cracking the copy protection on songs purchased from Apple's iTunes Music Store.

This technology will probably be much discussed in the press as the release date draws nearer, but it's a case of using a flame thrower to kill a fly. It's already possible to convert Music Store songs to MP3 without even using any functionality outside of iTunes.

Apple doesn't make this easy to find, of course, and in fact tries to make it look impossible -- if you set your preferred import format to MP3, then right-click on a song in your iTunes "Purchased songs" list and click "Convert selection to MP3", you get the error: "[song name] could not be converted because protected files cannot be converted to other formats". But you can easily burn a series of songs to a CD, then select the songs on the CD and import them into MP3 format. (Of course, if you don't like wasting a writable CD each time you convert your songs, then wait until you've purchased a few more songs and convert them all at once.) All of this is based on core iTunes functionality, which won't go away unless Apple decides to stop letting users (a) burn CDs or (b) import CD songs as MP3 files, neither of which is likely.

But suppose Apple does manage to block this path. (The easiest way I can see would be to write a hidden code on each CD burned from protected songs with iTunes, so that iTunes would refuse to re-import that CD into an unprotected format. Users could re-import the songs with another application, but at least they'd have to open two programs!) You can still use a program like Total Recorder that can capture any sound output on the computer and save it to an MP3 file.

And even if it ever becomes possible for the audio playback application to seize control of the operating system in order to stop programs like Total Control from working, you can always connect a portable MP3 recorder to the audio output of your computer.

It's a common misconception that if a copy-protection algorithm gets broken, it must be because the encryption was too weak or the algorithm was flawed. But the Achilles heel of any such copy-protection scheme is that in order for the content to be playable, the playback program has to "break" the encryption every time, in order to play it. If the content is encrypted using a key, the key has to be stored on the user's computer where the playback program can find it. (If you didn't have to store the key along with the encrypted content, you could use encryption algorithms that are believed to be impossible to break with today's computers, by 15-year-old Norwegians or anybody else.) But even though every copy-protection algorithm is breakable in principle, it's usually easier just to capture the content as it's played back, which is what the previous examples do.

Logically, I think the only algorithm that would help to fight music piracy would be one that embeds a unique "fingerprint" or "watermark" in each downloaded copy of a song -- in the audio itself. A good fingerprint would have these properties:

• it should not be noticeable enough to interfere with the user's enjoyment of the song
• it should not be possible to copy the song in a way that destroys the fingerprint, without degrading the song quality and diminishing its value

A good example is the "cap code" dots that appear in certain frames of a movie; these are supposed to be unique to each movie theaters so that pirated movies can be traced to the theater where they were filmed off the screen. This, of course, doesn't make the film traceable to the individual pirate who filmed it, but it makes the movie theater accountable, and incentivizes them to prevent piracy. Unfortunately the "cap code" dots tend to fail the first criteria above -- people do find them annoying, to the point where they're nicknamed "crap code". (It would also be easy to remove them from pirated copies, but few people bother, since the cap code only gets the movie theater in trouble; it doesn't incriminate the individual movie pirate.) We can only hope that any fingerprints embedded in song files are a lot less intrusive.

In the meantime, don't get taken in by the hype around a new way to "crack" the existed restrictions on copy-protected song files. They were never really protected.

Comments

DRM sucks, news at 11

[tomstdenis]

Is anyone really surprised by this?

DRM is such a futile idea that the only way it would be possible would be to lock down consumer electronics so badly as to make them virtually function free.

We call that the theatre or a live performance.

Tom

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying to make music uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[gEvil (beta)]

Trying to make music uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet.

Behold the ice cube! : p

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[elrous0]

And I shall offer comptetition with my new patent-pending innovation: "steam" -Eric

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[tomstdenis]

Shut up Bruce.

Besides DRM is more than just copy protection. it's "rights" protection, like I have the "right" to only permit you to view that DVD on Tuesdays between 9pm and 930pm. I have the "right" to stop you from sharing the DVD, i have the "right" to stop you from backing it up or using clips for fair use purposes. I have the "right" make the media only work in select markets and then lock down the number of different players...

Effective, I have the "right" to make you my bitch. Squirm all you want, I'll cry foul and get the Federal government to lock up more kids!

Tom

P.S. note the quotes around "rights"

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[tomstdenis]

Um, steam is wet. It's just a really hot sort of wet.

This is one of those "if you observe it". Cuz if you touch steam or ice, it often reverts to water. So how can you "feel" them to tell they're not wet? :-)

Tom

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[Raptor CK]

If the end result of DRM was that I'd have a live band following me at all times, I'd be all for it.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[advocate_one]

Dry Steam... it isn't wet... wet steam has water droplets in it, Dry steam is entirely H2O in the gaseous state...If you watch a kettle spout when the water inside is boiling, then you'll see the clear stream of dry steam for approx one inch and then it mixes with air and the droplets start forming and it changes to wet steam (which you can see). Dry steam is very dangerous in that you can't actually see it.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[igny]

Wrong, it is energetically favorable to have a thin film of liquid on top of ice regardless of the pressure.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[diersing]

Wrong, next time copy and paste, its Entropically Favorable.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[the_wesman]

I'm sick of people bashing DRM - the concept makes sense and I don't really have an issue with it - I think a lot of people have their panties in a bunch on this issue without really understanding copyright law - copyright isn't about you backing up your DVDs or making copies to give to your friends - the whole point is that, by purchasing the album/movie/etc. that you have a RIGHT (notice, no quotes) to that COPY of it. You don't have a right to know the songs - or to hear them on the radio - or to download them off the internet if your car gets broken into and the CD gets stolen - you have a right to own them in that format with particular limitations - everyone I hear who has a complaint about DRM* complains because the DRM does not allow them to break copyright laws. People bitch and whine that they can't burn their mp3s to a CD, or give them to the friend or whatever, neither of which not within your copyrights. (actually, there is probably some bit somewhere along the way about making backups, honestly, I don't know it to the letter, but I have the general gist)

So, what I'm proposing is that everyone shut up about how "evil" DRM is and get right down the point: You have rights to the copies of the music you've purchased, let's try to support a DRM scheme that works. If DRM is getting in the way of you doing something illegal, then you can just piss off and move to a country where want you want to do is legal, or wait to do your illegal thing until you've somehow prompted the law to change so that it becomes legal.

To the article poster: All of your points above are pretty weak. Yeah, a user _could_ plug a wire from the out of their soundcard to the in to make a copy of an mp3. That's a lot of work for most computer users, not to mention how far from ideal those recordings will be (mp3, converted to wave on the fly, spit out of your - most likely crappy soundcard - back into your soundcard, then back to wave, then back to mp3 will sound crappy - not that most music listeners can tell these days) - a user _could_ burn their mp3s to the CD, then re-convert them back to mp3 (waste of a CD you mention, but I didn't see any talk about degrading sound quality in your post) but who would do that? - so, I gather from your comments that DVD Jon's whole thing is fundamentally flawed because you were able to come up with 2 ways to make even-lower-fidelity-recordings of songs you paid for - wow. thanks for chiming in there buddy. How could I have been so blind to think that a model where the user doesn't have to do anything is superior to a model where the user has to do a bunch of crap only to end up "owning" audio files that have been degraded (in fidelity) from what was purchased. Thank you for showing me the light .

This whole doublemint thing or whatever DVDJ came up with is actually pretty neat. It's legal, and it works without the user having to jump through hoops (remember, not every ipod user is as computer saavy as you undoubtedly are) to get it done. In fact, with hardware manufacturers licensing it, the consumer won't have to do anything, nor will he/she have to pay for more than the mp3**. Hell, the user (ideally) won't even know what's going on behind the scenes. His rights are managed for him (which sounds scary to a lot of you, but as long as it is done within the constraints of the law, there is little you can do to rightfully bitch about it) and he gets to listen to his music how he wants to. Sounds like a good deal to me.
-w

* Notice the wording here. I'm not talking about people who have, rightful, complaints about faulty/poorly-implemented DRM enforcement.
** hmmm I suppose I kinda use 'mp3' interchangeably to mean 'computer audio file' - you'll have to pick up on my meaning from context clues

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[eldepeche]

That isn't at all what copyright means. Copyright regulates distribution, not use. If I buy a record, I do not have the right to make bootleg copies of it and hand them out or sell them. If I buy a book, I can't photocopy all the pages and staple them together and hand them out, or type it all into a text file and upload it onto my website. The copyright holder can, and can grant the right to do so. Before you accuse people of not understanding copyright law, you might want to know the definition of copyright.

The concept of fair use is mostly separate from copyright, because it is use and not distribution. If I buy a record and make a tape recording (or a digital one) so that I can listen to it on a portable player, copyright law has nothing to say about it because I'm not distributing it. If I buy a book and type all the content into a text file so I can read it on my laptop, that's fine.

The two areas come into conflict mostly due to the DMCA. Until this law came into force in the US, and its sibling pieces of legislation in other countries, DRM was annoying, as it inhibited place-shifting (fair use), but easily circumvented. The DMCA made it illegal to circumvent copy protection, so that, in theory, a person could be prosecuted for removing DRM in order to use a digital file on a portable player different from the intended one. In practice, it allows manufacturers of printers to sue manufacturers of replacement cartridges.

Anyway, I mostly just wanted to tell you that you don't know what you're talking about. I can't tell if you're joking.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[bigdavesmith]

Wrong, you are educated singularity stupid and evil, unfit for life in the Universe of Opposites. You can not debate the truth.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[jedidiah]

The concept makes ZERO sense.

The whole point of copyright is so that things get COPIED!

If not today, then 30 years from now all of those things that
the media robber barons want to lock up should be FREE TO ALL
so that the NEXT GENERATION OF ARTISTS AND INVENTORS have
suitable intellectual capital to work with. It is for that
creation of intellectual capital for future genreations that
copyright exists to begin with.

Copyright was never a movie mogul landgrab.

Culture belongs to everyone.
It is the product of 10 thousand years of joint effort.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[berashith]

This is how my wife felt, until she tried to watch a DVD that she owned, on a tv she owned, using a laptop that she had purchased the DVD drive in for the purpose of watching movies (this was several years back). When she wanted to use a large screen and not hunch over the laptop, a simple S-video cable out to the tv showed the desktop of the laptop. Unfortunately, all of the content in the dvd playing program came out black. When I explained that this is DRM and its uses, that the maker was more worried about the potential of her making a vhs copy than her ability to watch the movie unless she went out and purchased their "approved" hardware, she changed her mind quickly.

I don't dislike DRM because I like free stuff. I dislike DRM because it artificially limits me. Before an argument about license and legitimate restrictions comes up, remember that I have to pay again if I lose or break my copy. The media companies need to decide that I own something, or that I license something, and give the rights to the consumer that correspond to the situation. They cant limit me based on the situation and change the rules only with the concern of screwing me for every penny.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[dwandy]

and everytime someone says that I have the right not to buy I note that they are missing the bigger picture.
Why did we grant (heh) temporary monopolies in the first place? It wasn't to enrich some people financially. It was because we want to encourage artists to create, because what the artists create is our culture.

So what you are really saying is that I am free to remain outside of society if I don't want to play by their new and improved rules.
That ain't right.
The rules were set up as a bargain between society and the publishers, and what's happening here is that they are unilaterally altering the agreement.
And that leaves one in the position that either they become self-inforced social outcasts, or they bend over and take it... *OR* they stand up and fight it and say that it's not right what the companies are doing ... just like PP.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[shawb]

But the doctrine of fair use does indeed make enforcement of Copyright through DRM tricky, because it removes fair use rights that copyright holders have no right to revoke. The applicable statue is as follows:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

According to many anti-DRM people copyright as the RIAA and MPAA are attempting to enforce it completely ignore parts 1 and 4 of the fair use test. The RIAA and MPAA, of course argue that part 4 is indeed violated. Although part 3 is generally applicable, as it is whole songs, movies, etc that are shared. Another problem is that DRM does not acknowledge that copyrights eventually expire, and thus the DRM would be creating an artificial barrier to access to the material. However, adding a DRM expiration would make defeating DRM trivial (change the date on your computer.)

Then there are those who are against DRM as they believe copyright is intrinsically unjust, as copyright in its current incarnation violate the purpose for copyright, which is to induce artists to create more works, adding more to the general domain and enriching the culture of the country that maintains copyright laws. Copyright currently has been extended such that it extends well beyond the life of the artist, and indeed the copyright is generally not held by artists but by the studios that publish their work. Thus, copyright does not increase cultural depth. These anti-DRM people believe that breaking copyright is a form of Civil Disobedience. Civil disobedience is a form of protest, and many people feel that protest is a moral imperative against situations they feel are unjust. However, most anti-DRM types don't realize that the main reason civil disobedience is a moral imperative as a form of protest is because the protester is generally arrested for their act, and it is the arrest that brings attention to the situation (I.E. people will think "Wow, he's willing to get arrested for his cause. Maybe I should at least take a look at what he's talking about.)

Wow, that turned into a much longer rant than I expected. Sorry about that.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[Relic of the Future]

Detailed troll, whiny astroturfer, or seriously uninformed slashdotter? You decide!

First, a little point of pedantry: "copyright" isn't named such because you have a "right" (note the quotes) to your "copy", it is so named because only the owner of the copyright has a right to make/sell/distribute (or not) copies of the work. "Copyrights" are "the right to copy"; not "a right to a copy". When you buy a CD, you don't buy the copyrights, you buy a copy.

Second, copyrights, although owned by the original author, are not for the original author's benefit. The copyright is a bribe. The public has decided that it likes new things; new ideas, new stories, new songs. And it has decided that, in exchange for access to this new idea, the person who articulated it can, for a limited time, and with limits for education, criticism, and parody, restrict who has the right to make (and therefore sell) copies of the work. You know, to encourage people to create these new things.

No, DRM isn't evil, but it does subvert the intent of the law (to provide new works to the public) and replace it with the capitalistic, lucrecratic belief that profit is the only ends we work towards. It undermines the public's security in the copyright-contract by weakening the restrictions placed on the copyright holders ability to limit access. Neither of these is good. And it's often used to destroy the doctrine of first sale, which is what allows me to sell my copy of a book on eBay when I don't want it anymore; once the copyright holder has sold that copy to me, it's MINE, and I can sell it to anyone else I want, at any price I want, and there is nothing the copyright owner gets to say about it. I can't do that with a song I bought on iTunes. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for what DRM does wrong.

That said, yes, the best bet is to change (or clarify) the law. It may be obvious to everyone now that it's okay to have the radio playing in your hotdog shop, but the first hotdog shop to try it got sued by the radio station. That case was only narrowly decided in the shop's favor; it could have gone the other way. We are at another, similar point now as we were then, with new technologies clashing in different interpretations of old social norms (with the constant clink-clink of coins counting out the beat that drives us forward). Sitting in the basement burning tracks doesn't help! Get out there; vote; talk to politicians and your voting friends and family. If you don't, the law will be written by the corporations, and they do not have your best interests at heart.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[Doctor Memory]

But if my DVD goes bad then it's my problem

Yep, just like if you dropped a vinyl album and it broke.

Or if I want to play my DVD on a device that uses a different format, too bad for me.

Yep, just like if you wanted to play your vinyl album on your 8-track player. Or your wax cylinder on your Gramophone. Imagine if the Beatles had been around earlier, how many times would you have had to buy The White Album by now?

Seriously, I don't think the media companies are restricting people's usage any more than they used to, it's just that people want more from their media because the potential is greater. You might as well complain that you can't listen to satellite radio on your car's AM radio even though you purchased a subscription...

Hopefully, once they've figured out their One True DRM, it'll be incorporated into everything, so I'll be able to copy shows from my TiVo onto a DVD so my daughter can watch them in the car. And yeah, I realize that if there wasn't any DRM I could probably do that today, but that's not the point. The industry is fixated on curbing piracy, and I'm not a pirate, so I say the sooner they get something they're comfortable with in place, the sooner I can start lobbying for digital medium independence. Once the DRM BS is settled, we can start agitating for our rights under fair use again, and have a better argument ("Hey, as long as it's protected, I can copy my own DVDs onto my media server and watch them from a hotel in Bangkok, right? I mean, I purchased the right to view them, didn't I?").

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[JimDaGeek]

I'm sick of people bashing DRM - the concept makes sense and I don't really have an issue with it

And I am sick of people trying to push digital restriction management. DRM make NO sense to me.

let's try to support a DRM scheme that works

Are you on crack? I will never support any restrictions on a work that I buy. I will go out of my way to support people like "DVD John".

Your entire post is just silly. You have a corrupted sense of what copyright was designed to do. Copyright was never designed to give a perpetual dictatorship over a work. Copyright has become corrupted by scum in the media industries. Copyright has effectively become perpetual for an author. Life plus 70 years is just insane. There is no author that can benefit from their work(s) for 70 years after they die.

You really need to read copyright law and not be a sheep of the misinformation pushed around by the media companies. I have more rights than what you state in your post. I have a right to resell (first-sale doctrine) the work that I bought. I have the right to convert (format-shift) to different formats. Digital restriction management PREVENTS me from exercising those rights and others. Your perverted and greedy views on copyright laws are out of touch with the reality of what copyright was made for.

Once a work/idea is released to the public, that work/idea becomes a part of other peoples minds/knowledge. No one should have the right to years of control over peoples knowledge.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[Zadaz]

Seriously, I don't think the media companies are restricting people's usage any more than they used to, it's just that people want more from their media because the potential is greater.

Really?

When I had albums I used to be able to make tapes of them so I could listen to them on my (any brand portable tape player). This was legal, and easy to do. I could even make copies of my audio tapes with no prolbem. My cheap Sanyo receiver could dub audio tapes at 2x speed. And I could make my own mix-tapes off of stuff I recorded off the radio. All legal for personal use, simple to do.

But now I can't play my legally purchased DVD's from Japan in my American DVD player, I can't (legally) copy my DVD's. I can't copy my PlaysForSure files to my iPod (and listen to them) The new video download services lock the videos to my physical machine! I used to be able to record shows freely from TV to VHS. Now my TiVo will delete those same programs a week after I save them...

How is this not more restricted?

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I am a pirate, and DRM doesn't stop me doing anything. The only time that DRM has had any negative effect on my experiences on using content is when I purchased the content legally. At this point, I don't pirate media to avoid the costs (I WANT to support the artists financially, though certainly not the Ass.s of America), I pirate media to avoid the problems that come with obtaining it completely legally. If it were an option, I'd send ten bucks in cash to the artist after pirating their album in order to show my support for them, but make it clear that I don't support the policies of their label (not to mention, they'd actually see some of the money from the 'sale').

DRM doesn't do shit to prevent copying - small or large scale. The hardcore pirates aren't phased in the least by DRM, and most people looking to send someone a few songs now will just burn a CD rather than being bothered by crap upload speeds and email antivirus, and in doing so strip the DRM from the tracks. The only thing it accomplishes is making sure that Joe Public has to buy another iPod (or PlaysForSure device, or Zune) when their current one dies, and stick with the same brand. It's not a damn thing more than vendor lock-in, and all of the media companies know this.

I understand where they're coming from and that they want to protect their content. I have plenty of things that I'd want protected too. But unlike them, I've realized that treating (potential) customers like criminals in order to try keeping a couple sales drives them to steal an unprotected leaked/cracked version of what I currently have, and will encourage them to buy from other vendors that have an equivalent product without being so draconian about it.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[treeves]

Yer not a pirate! Ya didn't say "ARRRRR!" even once! What kind of pirate cred do you hope to have with your vocabulary and grammar?

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[miskatonic alumnus]

Yep, just like if you dropped a vinyl album and it broke.

That analogy would make sense except for one teeny, tiny little thing: The music companies say that you haven't purchased a physical object (for if you did, you could make legal copies of it at will, just like I can buy a hamburger, enjoy it, and make some at home to serve to my family and friends without violating any law), you have purchased a LICENSE to the music/video on the media. Under the terms of the license (and copyright law) you cannot make copies. BUT, by the same token, when the media is damaged, you still have a valid license to the music/video, bought and paid for, and they should pony up another copy. As George Carlin would say, the want to eat their cake and have it too.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[Celandine]

Um, you're sure that this wasn't a technical problem with playing video on more than one display at once, as is fairly common with cheapo laptop graphics chipsets?

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[miskatonic alumnus]

Record companies didn't replace broken vinyl albums, what makes you think they'll replace a snapped CD?

Aha, but they've changed the rules, see? No consumer could make a backup copy of their vinyl. They could copy it to tape, but then tape hiss is introduced, and the vinyl sounds worse every time you play it anyway. So, the rule then was: you had purchased a physical object, and if said object fails, tough titty.

NOW, the consumer can make perfect digital replicas of their music purchases. So, we have this nebulous product called the CD that when it works, you have purchased a license, and when it is broken, you have purchased a physical object.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[Asacarny]

The DirectX surface, or whatever, only gets shown on the primary display. You had the primary set to your LCD, not to the TV out. Hardware/software limitation, but not DRM.

Make the TV out the primary and you'll be able to watch the DVD on the big screen.

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[the_wesman]

When I explained that this is DRM

actually, what you just described is not DRM (remember, DRM is a concept) - you've described a poor implementation of a DRM system - blacking out the video over s-video is not in and of itself DRM, again, it's a poor implementation/design - with this design, it prohibits you from watching as a side-effect of prohibiting you from copying via that output - again, we should focus our efforts into finding a DRM scheme that works and not just dissing it because we don't understand it ...
-w

Re:DRM sucks, news at 11

[Fabio9000]

>If it were an option, I'd send ten bucks in cash to the artist after pirating their album in >order to show my support for them, but make it clear that I don't support the policies of >their label (not to mention, they'd actually see some of the money from the 'sale').

It's an option now. Pull out your checkbook and start mailing out your dough, coward. What's stopping you? Could it be that your own sense of greed is the only thing "preventing" you from ponying up the money for the stuff you've already stolen?

I sympathize with you. Labels are assholes. But...

A) You don't have a need for any of this content. This is strictly about you wanting to enhance your entertainment experience and make your life cushier than it already is. Hence, you don't need to buy (or steal) any of the crap the labels dish out.

B) There are a few possible positions here. You could be a typical thief and offer zero recompense to the artists, or you could be a slightly more moral thief and offer some payback for the stuff you're stealing. Of those two options, at least, the latter would seem better.

That is, of course, if you're just looking to keep your cushy life with little to no cost.

The ironic aspect of all of this is that you're probably blowing enough on electricity, hardware, software, and time to make the whole file-sharing thievery enterprise not worth your while.

Bullshit! At least the editor(!) might RTFA!

[mstroeck]

He is going to market a way for COMPANIES OTHER THAN APPLE to create copy-protected content that is playable on the iPod. None of the crap you just wrote is in any way relevant to what he is up to.

Re:Bullshit! At least the editor(!) might RTFA!

[elrous0]

Geez, I know this is /. But you think at least the SUBMITTERS could RTFA.

-Eric

Re:Bullshit! At least the editor(!) might RTFA!

[jfinke]

I agree. I was wondering what the hell I was reading there. The whole point of what he is doing is to allow say Microsoft to encode their files such that it is native to the iPod format. It is not so you can pull iTunes songs off.

I believe that this is what real did several years ago without much success.

Re:Bullshit! At least the editor(!) might RTFA!

[zeromorph]

Yeah! The point actually is that he is going to commercialise his hack. And that is something more newsworthy than the fact that you can copy DRMed material through a digital-analog-digital conversion.

And if he (or they i.e. DoubleTwist) is really doing that - what will Apple do to him/them in court?

DoubleTwist seem to be pretty sure about not being sued, but I can't imagine Apple not taking them to court. And thyen will any mp3-player manufacturer buy it before the whole issue is settled?

But you lose quality

[kill-1]

You lose quality if you first convert audio from digital to analog, and then sample it again. But in the age of "CD quality" 128 kBit MP3s and crappy PC speakers, who cares about audio quality anyway...

Re:But you lose quality

[mgabrys_sf]

Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba. There - no analog conversion. Was that so hard?

Re:But you lose quality

[kill-1]

That won't work with future DRMed PCs.

Re:But you lose quality

[rincebrain]

You're still transcoding from [codec of your choice] to raw audio data and back again, but you're correct, that does skip the digitalaudio steps.

Re:But you lose quality

[eldepeche]

Doesn't the audio get captured in its lossy state, then recompressed? That would be a quality loss whether or not there was an analog conversion.

Re:But you lose quality

[pla]

Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba. There - no analog conversion. Was that so hard?

The grandparent post has the right idea, but either misspoke or misunderstood the real problem...

Even with "perfect" fidelity analog (or in the case you offer as an alternative, bypassing the analog step completely), playing and recompressing to MP3 will still cause a loss of quality, for two reasons.

First, AAC throws away slightly different "unneeded" parts of the sound than MP3 (or Ogg, or whatever lossy format you want to use) does. This means you have a serial reduction in quality with every generation of transcoding. You can avoid this problem by transcoding to a lossless format ("lossless" at the same sampling rate and number of bits per sample, anyway, since no truly lossless encoding exists, not even in analog)... But doing so gives you a much larger file with the same (lossily compressed) quality as the AAC you started with.

Second - and your suggestion may get around this, if the sound hardware allows it - Resampling an audio stream will virtually never capture the exact same moments in time, with the same exact starting point. Thus, even reencoding with the exact same encoder as the original will still result in the same sort of quality loss you see from transcoding.


Thus, if you consider the convenience of downloading compressed audio as worth the loss of quality compared to buying a CD (for almost the same price new, and actually less if you buy used) and ripping it yourself to something like FLAC - At least keep the original and never, ever transcode it. That means, if you want to really "own" your collection, you have the sole option of directly stripping out the DRM. Any other method will sacrifice quality for the convenience.

Re:But you lose quality

[mochan_s]

First there are digital outputs like SPDIF which are not analog.

Second, if you encode it again with AAC with the same settings, then the quality does not go down but remains the same.

Re:But you lose quality

[ReiDragon]

One thing i'd like to comment is that i DO find a difference a lot of times between bitrates and a loss of quality due to burning to a CD and reimporting. At one time i had to back up my music collection, however small it was at the time, and upon reimporting it i found a serious loss in quality due to something i couldn't explain.

In response to the cheap PC speakers comment, i'm one of the weird people that spent $80 on a 2.1 speaker system just because i wanted the quality and frankly, it sounds good.

Now to make this post a relevant one, If people are honestly worried about quality and needing the highest, then go buy a CD, that way you won't have to worry at all about DRM or anything to speak of aside from putting a CD in the tray and clicking "Import" through iTunes or your favorite music importing program. This would allow for both a bypass of the DRM and having to get rid of that for use on non-iPod devices and also, for those audiophiles like me that require over 128kbps quality, allows for near perfect, if not perfect, quality straight from the cd itself.

Yes yay for getting rid of the DRM but come on, trying to market it as if it's something new? Not likely to really do anything or cause any problems or excitement in the world.

Re:But you lose quality

[eldepeche]

"Second, if you encode it again with AAC with the same settings, then the quality does not go down but remains the same."

That isn't true.

Re:But you lose quality

[steveo777]

Count me in too. I always buy the CD if at all possible. I'll download if I can't get a copy or if it's so old that buying a CD. With CD's I get all the expected quality I can handle, and I can make copies regardless of DRMing with any number of older ripping programs, or, if I have to, I can just line out from and back into my computer to re-record if I really need to get creative. I can also make as many MP3's as I may at any quality I want. It's a win-win for me.

Or what if I have a CD and I need it replaced? For instance: Chicane - Far from the Maddening Crowds. It would cost me more than normal price (>$60) to acquire via ebay and the like. The money isn't going to go to the artist or label, and it's out of print. Hell, I have a legal copy of it, but somehow it managed to get a few good scratches and as it's years old I never made a good copy. Don't even have it on mp3. Anyone want to help?

Re:But you lose quality

[Moofie]

See, now that's what I call an insightful argument.

Re:But you lose quality

[damiam]

No, it's not. Reencoding, even with the same codec, causes a loss of quality. The loss is minor in a single generation, but it adds up. If you want to test this yourself, take an MP3 and reencode it ten times - it will sound significantly worse.

Analog re-recording is tedious!

[FooAtWFU]

There is value to a fully digital cracking technique. If you have a large collection of songs, it is a royal pain to set things up to re-record them, re-label them with titles and artists and such... it's good for one or two songs at a time, but for a big collection? Ick. With a digital cracking procedure, you can write an automatic tool that runs at well above standard playback speed and which you can walk away from (or leave running while you browse the Web...)

Re:Analog re-recording is tedious!

[UbuntuDupe]

Right, but if, for whatever reason, your argument against DRM were some excuse like "DRM takes away my fair use rights", the possibility of analog re-recording kinda puts lie to that. Fair use requirements (though not easy copyright violation) can be satisfied by re-recording that fair use clip you plan to use.

Does anyone use the "fair use" argument against DRM anymore?

Re:Analog re-recording is tedious!

[RAMMS EIN]

``There is value to a fully digital cracking technique. If you have a large collection of songs, it is a royal pain to set things up to re-record them, re-label them with titles and artists and such... it's good for one or two songs at a time, but for a big collection? Ick.''

Exactly! I can't believe that a story containing crap like ``you can easily burn a series of songs to a CD, then select the songs on the CD and import them into MP3 format.'' actually got posted to the front page of Slashdot. Sure, editors miss things, but I'd expect the Slashdot editors to know the difference between automated and manual processes, and why one would prefer the former over the latter. Guess I overestimated them.

And I'm not even talking about all the other things that are wrong with this story.

iPod Cracked?

[Meatloaf Surprise]

I read most of the article and it discusses breaking drm on music purchased on iTunes. Can someone explain what this has to do with cracking the iPod?

Re:iPod Cracked?

[jayhawk88]

Welcome to Slashdot, pioneer of the misleading headline.

Oh Bennett

[gEvil (beta)]

It's clear that Bennett didn't even bother READING the article that he's supposedly using to back up his claims. Nowhere in that article does it talk about DVD Jon (or his company) selling a tool to crack the iTunes encryption. However, what it does talk about is DVD Jon's company selling a tool that will allow other music retailers to encrypt songs that they sell in the format that is used by iTunes and the iPod.

Remember kids, Reading Is Fundamental!

Re:Oh Bennett

[tabdelgawad]

I don't know about TFA, but here is the first paragraph from a similar story on the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6083110.stm

[Begin Quote]

The code that prevents music downloaded from Apple's iTunes store being played on any portable player other than an iPod has been "cracked".
Apple has not commented on claims that Jon Lech Johansen has "reverse engineered" the FairPlay system.
Prominent hacker Mr Johansen has made a name circumventing software used to restrict the use of digital media.
His company, DoubleTwist, said that it planned to license the code to other digital music player manufacturers.

[End Quote]

Perhaps that's why the company is called *Double*Twist. It will allow both iTunes tracks to play on non-iPods and non-iTune tracks to be encrypted using Apple's DRM and therefore be playable on iPods.

No Reason to buy an iPod...

[PPGMD]

Huh? Why is broken iTMS DRM a reason not to buy an iPod? Since I purchased my first iPod years ago I only have 4 protected music files, 3 of which are political speeches from the National Conventions in 2004, and another is the free song that I got from a Pepsi. Heck I don't even use iTunes to put music on my iPod anymore, I use XPlay.

Anyone that assumes that the iPods success comes from iTunes Music Store is mistaken IMO, iTMS helps the iPod alot but what makes the iPod such a hot seller is good marketing by Apple, and a good product. The user interface for the iPod is still the best one on the market (never mind the fact that Apple has a patent on the interface which prevents competition), and iTunes is extremely easy to use even for people that know little about computers. That combined with excellent marketing makes the iPods extremely popular.

Re:No Reason to buy an iPod...

[danpsmith]

Huh? Why is broken iTMS DRM a reason not to buy an iPod? Since I purchased my first iPod years ago I only have 4 protected music files, 3 of which are political speeches from the National Conventions in 2004, and another is the free song that I got from a Pepsi. Heck I don't even use iTunes to put music on my iPod anymore, I use XPlay.

So if you aren't using the store, why bother to buy an iPod? If you are using non-protected files anyway, I find it much easier to just drag and drop the files like you would on a portable hard drive than to mess around with some application, and every other player on the market it seems supports linking their device to your computer as a USB-Mass Storage class unit. Why bother with the iPod? The addons? I mean, come on.

reson to buy an iPod?

[DrBdan]

Bottom line: there's no reason yet to get excited about the iTunes-cracking technology (and, indeed, no reason to buy an iPod), when you can already convert songs this way

Considering that the iPod is the top selling MP3 player right now it sounds more like he's missing the point than making great insights. He makes it sound like people only buy iPods for the specific purpose of playing music bought from the iTunes store. I'm sure there are plenty of people (myself included) that have never bought music online and bought the iPod for other reasons, be it usability, style, social status or whatever. The ability to play music bought from iTunes never even crossed my mind.

Bennett

[truthsearch]

Who is this Bennett person and why do I get the feeling he'll be as popular as John Katz?

Watermarks are evil

[dupont54]

... at least when it is used to identify the original buyer.

Just imagine you have lots of CD/iPods/whatever full of watermarked (with your name) titles. And you lost your stuff or someone stole it. Then those same files are found on P2P networks or on counterfeited CD. And tada, the RIAA lawyer charges you with massive copyright infrigment.

What should you do ? Go to the police to tell them precisely all the tunes you were stolen, then try to fight the RIAA lawyer with that ?

Sorry, but I do not want to take so much juridical risks for stupid songs. The scary thing is that iTunes or any other service could very well implement that in their "burn cd" features, and without telling you about it.

Re:Perhaps this explains ...

[rincebrain]

http://rapidshare.de/files/33076083/QTFairUse6-2.4 .zip.html

Sorry, that's the "official" link. It works, though.

crack still matters

[theStorminMormon]

One common misconception I've come across on Slashdot a lot is that security is either open or shut. An algorithm is either secure or broken. This is not how security works, and a couple real-life examples demonstrate this. You lock the doors on your car, but someone can still just break the window to gain access. But this doesn't mean locking the doors is meaningless, it makes it harder (or more risky) for a thief to gain access to the contents of your vehicle.

The same thing applies with iTunes. The question isn't "is it possible to strip DRM", but "how easy is it to strip the DRM". I don't think, for example, that being able to burn to a CD or capture audio output is practical for most people. I have over 40 GB of music. A lot of it is burned from my CD collection, a lot of it is from my wife's collection, and some of it is downloaded from iTunes. So I've got well over 8,000 files and of those a couple hundred are DRM-protected. I honestly don't know which at this point. For me to DRM-strip them using either of those methods is going to be like a day-long project that, frankly, I don't have time for. In addition to that, I'm not sure about the sound-quality degradation in converting from MP3 to audio CD and back to MP3. Or about going from digital to analog back to digital. In any case, it would be pain in the butt to go through my entire library, and I may not be able to practically avoid some quality degradation. Yeah - DRM is already "broken", but at what cost?

If the result of DVD Jon's crack is a program what will go through my iTunes library and batch process the files to strip any DRM automatically, then we have something on our hands that matters. In addition, there are a lot of additional potential applications for DRM-stripping to make music automatically portable across various music players. If my library was nothing but vanilla MP3s with no DRM, then it wouldn't realy matter if I accessed it with iTunes (for an iPod) or Windows Media Player (for various wannabe iPods).

The effect of DRM is not to make it impossible to move your music around, it's to make it inconvenient. Convenience is not a side-issue for digital music. It's the issue. Otherwise we'd all just carry around CD players and 500-disc CD wallets. The digital music industry exists because of convenience, so any approach that not only circumvents DRM but does it painlessly is a significant improvement over DRM-skirting strategies that require additional effort from the consumer.

-stormin

Too much loss

[Extremist]

As a musician and home studio owner, I find any lossy format to be ugly. Whether you can hear it or not, information is gone no matter what bitrate the file was encoded at. Imagine the source code for a program you write gets compressed with a new compression scheme that, when uncompressed, results in a "fairly decent approximation" of your code. Bad. Now run it through that twice. It's NOT gonna get better.

To go from iTunes (lossy, I believe) to CD, then rip to MP3? Yuck. 2 stages of loss. Recording off the analog output is worse, as now there is the inherent loss of multiple AD/DA conversions on top of the double encoding to lossy formats.

Really, DRM just needs to die.

As A Proud Slashdot Member

[TechForensics]

...I can Articulate at all times, whether I have anything to Say or not.

wow, new low

[oohshiny]

Not only did both the submitter and the editor get wrong what the guy was actually planning on marketing, the whole thing was followed by an uninformed and irrelevant rant about watermarking. What's the problem, guys? Are mere dupes getting boring?

iPod Cracked???

[carrier lost]

Holy Shit! Did you drop it? Didn't you get a case with it? Damn, sorry dude. It'll probably still play. If you still have the box and stuff maybe you can give it to someone for Xmas and get a new one. MjM

Give it up to Apple

[MicroDV8]

You have to give it to Apple. They have a deal with some of the most vicious greedy people in the world to sell their wares. In return they build a DRM that most anybody can get around. With the talented programmers that they have at their disposal they could do much worse. We just need to keep complaining about how horrible it is and enjoy the fact that they have given us the means to control the music we buy. At least we have an alternative to spending $20.00 on a cd that contains one good song.

But how much?

[Gorimek]

I've heard this argument for as long as there has been iTunes. And it's of course true that there is some non zero degradation.

But is there any objective information on how much worse the sound gets? Does it matter at all in practice? For normal people playing normal music on normal equipment? The few times I've done it, the results have sounded just fine whan casually listening.

A slightly bigger question is if there even is an objective way of measuring sound quality?

Re:You lose quality, but only by choice...

[VP]

You are mightily confused:

iTunes gives users the opportunity (by making a CD) to get full quality non-DRM copies of the music they purchase.

What you buy via iTunes is an AAC encoded song. AAC (just like MP3, OGG, etc) is a lossy compression format. "Lossy" means that you are throwing away information from the original in order to shrink the size of the song. When you make a CD, iTunes cannot recreate the original full quality song, because it cannot recreate the thrown away pieces. The result is a WAV file of significantly lower quality than the original song. When you then compress the crappy WAV file into an MP3 (and therefore throw away other pieces, different from the ones used in the AAC compression), you get loss of quality which is much worse than the original AAC song.