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Apple To Play Fairer With FairPlay?
NewbieMonster writes "According to tech.co.uk, Apple is about to license its Fairplay DRM to Made for iPod accessory manufacturers. It's reported that Apple will also allow streaming of protected AAC content via USB. Could this signal a move to allowing other music players to access and play ITMS content?" From the article: "The expected announcements could signal a move on Apple's part to take some of the sting out of its Fairplay DRM which has come in for a great deal of criticism over recent months. It may also be a way of keeping Made For iPod makers onside, as the draw of the Microsoft Zune becomes stronger." Anyone noticed the draw of the Microsoft Zune becoming stronger?
Anyone noticed the draw of the Microsoft Zune becoming stronger?
.......no
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
why was the zune thrown in there???? to start a flame war of course, no other reason, i mean whats a /. article without some micro bashing
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
According to tech.co.uk, Apple is about to license its Fairplay DRM to Made for iPod accessory manufacturers. It's reported that Apple will also allow streaming of protected AAC content via USB. Could this signal a move to allowing other music players to access and play ITMS content?
Again, reinforcing the point that DRM isn't about preventing piracy, it's about maintaining control over other things. Like competitors in the marketplace.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
No, it is not cracked.
The iTMS (iTunes Music Store) was cracked, meaning that people were able to buy DRM-free songs from iTMS using custom software. iTMS 6.0 changed that, and to date, it is not possible to buy unencrypted music from an account registered with iTMS 6.0 or higher. It's possible to run older iTMS versions (for now) and buy music, but some of us had extensive music purchases before we got our heads out of our butts and realized we wanted to play the music on something other than an iPod.
The DRM encryption itself is completely uncracked. IF you can get a hold of your decryption key, there is code to decrypt your music files. Apple has done a rather amazing job of keeping that key secured, though. It's pretty much impossible to pull it off of newer iPods, and I think it's not possible yet to extract it from a box with iTunes 6+.
If I'm wrong about that, let me know... I've got 250+ encrypted songs I'd really like to play on my Linux box with its superior sound setup, instead of on my iBook.
Outside of slashdot (an alternate reality where grandmothers use lunix and ogg vorbis is popular), who is criticizing fairplay? Is there anybody that doesn't think Zune is a turd?
Please, enlighten me.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
You may already know about this, but here is how to un-DRM your songs: simply burn them to an audio CD, then re-import them from the CD's. Sure, you theoretically lose sound quality this way, but I cannot tell the difference, and I'll bet if I blindfolded you, you couldn't either.
This is a bit tedious when done by hand for a large number of songs. The only working Macintosh utility to automate this process that I know of is "DRM Dumpster," which uses a single CD-RW over and over to get the job done. Worked great for me. Other utilities seem to have bugs that prevented me from using them.
Currently hooked on AMP
Wow... you sound really authoritative, but it seems like you really don't know what you're talking about.
Nothing in these links contradicts what the parent said. You can't buy unencrypted music with PyMusique anymore, and the DRM encryption is still unbroken. QTFairUse extracts AAC frames from memory, it does not break the encryption.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
At this point, if anybody knows how to get the keys for iTunes music, they're not talking. This doesn't mean DRM can't be removed. There is a program written in Python that latches onto iTunes like a debugger, has iTunes play DRMed songs, then grabs AAC frames after they've been decrypted but before they've been decoded. It then prevents iTunes from decoding and playing the audio, so a 5 minute song can be decrypted in less than 30 seconds, and it's a lossless transfer (as opposed to burning and ripping). Unfortunately, this program was written for Windows, and I don't believe anyone ever got it working on a Mac. If you can come up with a Windows box, one of the sibling posts has linked to it.
My interest was the same as yours. I had about $300 invested in my iTunes library, but my media center (and now all my other boxes) runs Linux. I certainly don't want to promote piracy, but I think it's perfectly legitimate to want your music library on a Linux box.
I'm surprised no one has made an AAC encoder specifically designed for this situation. Consider how lossy audio compression works. The 30000 ft overview would be that you simplify the input by throwing away some of it (hopefully, some of it that is inaudible), resulting in something that can be losslessly compressed.
When you take a lossy compressed song and expand that (e.g., burn to an audio CD), and want to compress that again, you don't need to throw any of it away to get something that will compress well, if you are trying to compress using the same compression system that was originally used. (If you were expanding an AAC file, and then wanted to compress with, say MP3, that would have to have some degradation, because AAC and MP3 would have different ideas of what needs to be thrown away). What this means is that it should be possible to design an AAC encoder that can take advantage of the knowledge that the input is the result of expanding a 128 kbit/second stereo AAC file, and compress back to something that matches that original AAC file.
There was a brief flurry of interest in Zune when it was released, but now we seem to be getting steady-state numbers.Only one model rates in amazon's top 25 MP3 players list (Apple takes out the first 5 or so entries).
Using "lemon" to describe Zune is an insult to citrus!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
eMusic doesn't have major label stuff precisely because it doesn't do DRM (well, that, plus it's not as lucrative). That's not necessarily a bad thing, of course; as an eMusic user myself for a fair while, I've come to realize one of the many benefits of the service is how it fosters discovering new/obscure music, and that's frankly easier without the same major label stuff one can get elsewhere anyway dominating the site and distracting one from the hidden real treasures. However, it does mean there's an additional factor that has to be taken into account when comparing DRMed iTunes to DRMless eMusic.
There are in fact a bunch of download services, both with DRM and without (iTunes, eMusic, Audio Lunchbox, Napster, etc.), and the line dividing the ones with major label material from ones without is the same line dividing the ones with DRM from ones without. There's a reason for that, and it's a lot bigger than Apple, since only one of the download services is theirs.
"Maybe I missed something. Why is the Zune becoming more attractive?"
My guess is these people can't get enough punishment to satisfy their 'masochistic tendencies||hatred of all things Apple||love for all things Microsoft||pseudo-metalhead-gamer-wannabe fantasies'.
please excuse me if I cause anyone offense in saying this, but maybe if Mac users didn't refer to crackers as "scum" and other names, they wouldn't ostracize the platform. I do appreciate that crackers are finally being recognized by others as the freedom fighters I've always considered them to be. It's about time.
How we know is more important than what we know.
All that needs to be done to make PyMusique again is to reverse-engineer the algorithm used to encrypt the store pages behind ssl, the algorithm that manipulates their keys, and the simple algorithm used to encrypt the files as they're transferred from the store (before per-user DRM is applied).
:P )
Not very difficult at all, just a bit time consuming.
(From the original author of PyTunes, which PyMusique is a GUI frontend to
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
Anyone notice there are still people who don't realize that you can use plain MP3/AAC files with the iPod?
The Zune has a proprietary DRM system, just like the iPod. It even (illegally, in some cases) ads DRM to your non-DRM'd files if you "squirt" them. Or maybe I'm just not getting something here.
Wow... where to begin? I think at the beginning is probably the best. When CDs were first created long long ago, the format itself was considered a DRM measure, because computers at the time were hopelessly incapable of copying them. They didn't have enough capacity, there was no "internet" to speak of... Hell, most computers at the time didn't even have CDROM drives, let alone CD Burners. No one could forsee the world we have now. CDs have been around for a LONG time now. So your assertion that the labels wouldn't sell CDs if they weren't concerned about theft is ridiculous. To add insult to injury, despite the fact that CDs were astoundingly cheaper to produce, CDs were significantly more expensive than casette tapes. I talked to someone once who worked in the industry, and they said it was because CDs had "longevity" and thus priced it accordingly. Riiiiight. Your "opinion" is that its the tech companies who are pushing DRM (and by implication, the major labels are just victims of the advertising). Well, until you can give some figures to back that up, I would say that that statement is downright idiotic and naive. As the GP mentioned, there are countless articles spanning years about the major labels talking about how desperate DRM is needed in order to curtail the rampant piracy and other nonsense. There are also a good number of articles pointing out how completely false these statements are, and how laughable the supposed supporting evidence is. Major labels, and major content providers in general (ie: movies) have ALWAYS had a fondness for ANYTHING they can use to control what people do with content, with the only limiting factor being the law. VHS tapes have special encodings to prevent them from being copied, for example. Content control is not a new thing. It is not some thing that tech companies suddenly dreamed up. Tech companies now are doing nothing more than similar companies did in the past. They saw that the media industry wanted to control the product they sell to customers, and created products accordingly to suit the media industries whims. The fact that it's biting the media industry in the ass is PURELY the media industry's fault, as a result of the media industries own greed. No amount of spinning you try to do will change that simple, widely acknowledged fact.