Slashdot Mirror
DVD Jon Creates DRM Killer
Firmafest writes to let us know that 'DVD Jon' Lech Johansen's company has released an open beta of DoubleTwist, a desktop application that allows the user to copy media to any device. There's a Facebook app too. The software is available for download at Doubletwistventures.com. Currently only Windows is supported, but a Macintosh version is on the way.
I wonder who will be first to be contacting these guys and threatening legal retaliation based on DMCA.
"You can't copy that tune from there to this device. You must pay another fee!"...
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
Can it strip the DRM of iTunes songs and put them in a nice .mp3 format?
~Vexed and loving it!
I wonder when he will request a new nickname!
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
I've been using something like this for awhile, its called "dd" (run as root for extra goodness).
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
This looks like the same old FairPlay crack, just with a better GUI. It doesn't strip any other kind of DRM.
1)Convert all of my HD DVD movies into Blue Ray movies?
2)Run on Linux
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
How is this different from Virtual Audio Cable?
From TFA:
"DoubleTwist also recognizes and imports all iTunes playlists and will read instantly which ones are protected by digital rights management technology. The software automatically plays the song files in the background (sans volume) and re-records them as MP3 files so they can be transferred to any device. Note: DoubleTwist only does this for songs you own or are authorized to play in iTunes."
So it will create DRM-free files but only for files that you are "authorized" to play. So it's not like someone sends you a DRM'ed file and it will happily remove the DRM and let you play it. Of course the whole point is that people can use this to share any kind of media with pretty much anyone.
Looping the audio and creating a non-DRMed second generation copy?
That's so last century.
DVD John is losing his edge.
Is this just a frontend for the same technology that exists now? I mean, is this just a program that centralizes DRM cracks for common media?
Every time this dude releases a hack I'm not interested in using, I end up being forced to download a new patch from Apple for my iTunes/iPod if I want to buy new music.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The install page doesn't mention anything about having to register for some reason. I think I'll go ahead and pass on that until after the subpoenas come through.
On a whim, I tried installing this. Once the setup is complete, it wants my e-mail address to create an "account" for me... and it installs a couple of other programs I didn't agree to. Sorry, not interested - deleted.
halting DoubleTwist development.
RIAA Creates DVD Jon Killer
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Went to give this a try. Upon starting the installation, the application required MS' dotNET and started to download it. That's when I hit the CANCEL. Don't want that dotNET on my computer at all.
From Another Article:
The company is confident there will not be any legal challenges from Apple. "All we are facilitating are friends sending things to one another," Ms Farantzos told the Reuters news agency.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Any reason there isn't a linux binary for this?
Umm.. after reading them relatively carefully, I don't think I'll be using that software. Basically, you give us your info, we update ourselves on what you're doing, we send it to the Cayman Islands and we promise promise promise never to give it to anyone else unless you agree, we're bought, subpoena'd or otherwise compromised. Somehow... I don't think so. Peace.
Jon Postel, R.I.P. You are missed.
MODDER UP TEH PARENT!
this is a lynucks news site after all
Yes, it does appear to be a centralized way of converting A to B. And contrary to the article title, it does not kill DRM -- it just converts what you rightfully own to another format. You still have to purchase those iTunes songs in order to convert them, you can't just convert what you find on the net, thus is no different than using WMP or iTunes to burn to disk then rip the disks to files (if those two programs don't convert directly to MP3 or your preferred flavor without the intermediary disk step).
:)
Keep trying, Jon, you'll liberate some oppressed music yet.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
At some point, I do expect that very large organizations will break the DRM on Blu-Ray, and they'll probably present it to DVD-Jon, much like they did with DVD's. Probably be a while, though.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
"My Life As A Nail"
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
... if you care to pay the 200$ cost(tax) for a Blu-ray burner.
(Trying to find a link, I see this old NYT story about how they discovered 105,000 of the 20,000 human genes we have today. Those were the days, huh?)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
...by "related news" you meant "Soviet Russia". This is Slashdot, after all.
"The software automatically plays the song files in the background (sans volume) and re-records them as MP3 files so they can be transferred to any device."
This is not stripping DRM, this amounts to a generational loss of quality when its decompressed and recompressed. Why would someone known for cracking DRM protections start a company that recodes the files with loss of quality instead of strip the DRM from the existing file? Isn't this the same thing as connecting a SP/DIF cable to your output and feeding it back in so that you can recompress the digital signal as mp3? That's not what I called cracking DRM. Thats a poor mans solution to overcoming DRM.
The Privacy Policy
The Terms of Service
Quotable Quotes Please note that this Privacy Statement is not a binding contract and does not create any legal rights. It is made available to you so that you can make an informed decision about using the doubleTwist website and services after considering the steps doubleTwist takes to protect your private personal information doubleTwist" means the SpiceFlow Corporation, a company incorporated under the laws of Cayman Islands, having its registered office at PO Box 309GT, M&C Corporate Services Limited, Ugland House, South Church St, George Town, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, and any SpiceFlow Corporation subsidiaries or affiliated companies. You acknowledge and agree that doubleTwist, in its sole discretion, may modify or discontinue or suspend Your ability to use any version of the doubleTwist Software, and/or disable any doubleTwist Software You may already have accessed or installed without any notice to You, for the repair, improvement, and/or upgrade of the underlying technology or for any other justifiable reason... We may use Personal Data to: provide services and customer support You request; resolve disputes, collect fees, and troubleshoot problems; enforce our Terms of Service; customize, measure, and improve doubleTwist Software, VoIP Service and Website content and layout; inform You about targeted marketing, service updates, and promotional offers (unless You opt out)
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Real winners dd the mouse to the CD.
Now that's music!
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4036678
threatening legal retaliation based on DMCA.
I'd like to see US law enforced over in Oslo, Norway. Wouldn't that be a hoot.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
1. configure cups-pdf
2. configure samba and share the cups-pdf printer
3. print the PDF to said printer
4....
5. profit??!! (serious, now you should have an unlocked PDF for your document)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Not true.. just convert to a non-lossy format like FLAC. You won't get quality better than the original AAC file, but you won't get any worse either...
I installed it this morning (finally, after the downloader managed to complete successfully) and each time I click on the "Sync" button my PC reboots. So much for that.
... by starting up your favorite audio recording software and selecting "wave out mix" as the input device while whatever DRMed thing is playing?
This works for WMA and RealAudio files.
Spiceflow... you're right... I was blind, but now I see. It's the goddamned House Horkonnen at it again. Probably in league with House Ordos.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
What is property? Property is theft.
No! Property is imaginary. (Do try to keep up.) Basically it doesn't matter how much it cost to produce a program, a movie or a song: because it's imaginary property, you can give copies to whoever you want. All IP licences are unenforceable relics of a bygone era, so pirate away!
After you've bought 250 movies, and the DRM they made "back then" is no longer supported, DVD Jon will have made sure you can still see what you bought.
OK?
My startup is a Web-based social network portable media player plug & play standards based open media file swapper with AJAX Google enhancement.
I always thought it was the feminists that were "so cute."
It sounds like a GUI front-end for Sox, Image Magic and ffmpeg. As such, it should be immensely useful, since running those utilities from a command line is quite a challenge.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
How is this different from Orb?
Now dont you guys do anything that we would do... From their EULA (http://www.doubletwist.no/dt/Legal/EULA.dt) "C. You agree not to circumvent, disable or otherwise interfere with security-related features of the doubleTwist Website and/or Services or features that prevent or restrict use or copying of any Content or enforce limitations on use of the doubleTwist Website and/or Services, and the Communications Content made available by use of the Website and/or Services." I guess only DVD Jon is allowed to do that.
Of course its just the structure fires that make it look that way.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
1)Convert all of my HD DVD movies into Blue Ray movies?
2)Run on Linux
-----
3) Profit!!!
make up a phony name/email address (disposable email addresses are a dime a dozen or cheaper) and use it without revealing info.
If your not sure what will happen, install it in Sandboxie.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
My understanding is it takes line out and loops it back to line in and re-records it for later use on non-Apple devices with only a 5% degredation of sound? How is this any different from taking the audio files, burning them to a cd and re-ripping them? A bit of audio loss? Check. Ripping to whatever format you choose? Check. Avoiding DRM? Check. Yay, I'm a hacker for figuring this out! :D
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Anarchists are so cute!
Q: Why do Anarchists drink Herbal Tea?
A: Because proper tea is theft.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Except that the file will be significantly bigger. Considering that most people I know seem to have made it a mission in life to max out their gigabytes of space with as much audio as they can, I don't think that most people would take kindly to such a larger file unless the quality had suddenly increased by two orders of magnitude.
No, the DVD in my hand that I burnt from an ISO is quite real, so is this hard drive full of DivX encoded movies. So are the profits to be made from pirating movies.
However, the losses involved from no-sale piracy are quite imaginary.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Dale Clapperton has posted a review of the doubleTwist EULA, ToS and Privacy Policy on his blog. These agreements purport to prohibit the very activities that made DVD Jon infamous (such as reverse engineering, and DRM circumvention), and Dale opines that these agreements are 'rank hypocrisy' and a sign that DVD Jon has become much like the corporations he has fought against.
All you have to do is play your crippled songs and use the record what you hear feature on windows to reencode them as mp3s
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I read on another site how this works for music files. It's not so impressive. It does not remove DRM. It simply plays the song, using a valid license if one is required, and records the song to an MP3 file, which of course is DRM free. This might be OK for some users, but it's definitely not going to be what others will want. Perhaps a similar mechanism is done for video files, but the article I read did not discuss that.
No DRM is broken, hence lawsuits may be difficult.
I wonder if it will work under wine? iTunes does.
The original question was about converting to MP3, not FLAC.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
The issue is not property (a poor choice of name).
The issue is labor.
I'll use an example to illustrate:
You are a good office worker, and your boss has tasked you with writing a 100-page document. You spend all week writing said document and when it's done, you hand it off to your boss. He says, "Thanks; beautiful work." You then go home and wait for your check.
The check never arrives.
Meaning that you labored to produce a work,
but never got paid for it.
Okay. Now imagine that your name was Stephen King, and that 100-page document you created was your latest short story, and that your bosses (the customers) took that work without ever paying you.
What they've stolen is not property.
What they've stolen is another man's labor.
Like the planatation owners did to slaves.
Bottom Line: I believe that the authors, writers, et cetera deserve to get paid for their labor. They don't get hourly wages like we do, but they do still deserve to be paid for the labor that they performed. BUYING the short story is how we customers pay them for that labor.
If you don't pay, you've stolen another man's labor without just compensation.
You've turned that man into your own personal slave (labor without payment).
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
That's absolutely true.
However, once I've bought that book, I don't plan on paying Stephen King each time I intend to read it. If I have bought the deluxe-bigass-hardcopy edition, and plan on reading it while backpacking, it is my good right to photocopy that book.
That's what this software means to achieve: Use stuff you've bought legally, in the way YOU want it, not hindered by commercially-imposed limits of device, location, etc. I don't have an Ipod, I have a minidisc. If I buy stuff from Itunes, I need to get rid of the DRM in order to listen to it, even though I've bought it fairly.
I take life with a grain of salt...a slice of lemon and a dash of tequila
One one hand, I agree with you.
On the other hand, the world is filled with pirates who will not just make a photocopy to go backpacking - they will make 1,000 copies to share with friends. That's what DRM is supposed to prevent from happening.
Unfortunately the way DRM is designed now, it doesn't just punish pirates.
It also punishes the innocent user trying to copy his Stephen King
book over to an Ipod or CD or email. Thus DRM is too heavy-handed.
There's nothing wrong with the concept of DRM - just the nutjobs in the RIAA who insist that even legal users may not copy their goods over to other devices. The RIAA needs to stop being so paranoid, and adjust the DRM so that it will allow reasonable use (like letting each user have 5 copies of his book, rather than just 1 copy).
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
There's nothing wrong with the concept of DRM - just the nutjobs in the RIAA who insist that even legal users may not copy their goods over to other devices. The RIAA needs to stop being so paranoid, and adjust the DRM so that it will allow reasonable use (like letting each user have 5 copies of his book, rather than just 1 copy).
The problem with DRM is that the people it's intended for know how to circumvent it, and all other pirates get the illigal, non-DRM version. Meantime, the paying customers are stuck with crappy DRM-limited versions.
I could go on a rant about unreasonable prices, the RIAA/MPAA being a mob-gang etc, but it's not the point here. Likewise, I agree that pirates are spoiling it for the normal people, but that's also not the discussion.
The point here is that this software enables paying customers to do what they want with the stuff they paid for. And as a user who buys a lot of CDs, but likes to listen to them from a PC, that's a good thing (not that I need this, my ripping software can take care of DRM perfectly).
I take life with a grain of salt...a slice of lemon and a dash of tequila
Or...you are the co-worker of that good office worker who spends all week surfing the web and at the end of the week you hand off to your boss a 100-page document full of gibberish you typed up just so you can go home and wait for a check. You've done this numerous times so you don't really care about the quality of your work so long as you get that check. What you've done is worthless. What you've done is taken money for worthless labor on your part. Like what the RIAA is doing to consumers. Bottom Line: Until consumers are allowed to choose the value of the media being produced, worthless crap and great works will share the same value to them--either worth paying for or not at all. What you've done is
"Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?" --Yoda {whips out green light saber}
DRM is the result of mass pirating, not the other way around. Remember when we had things on non-drm CD's? We had these things called "Brick and Mortar" CD stores. The Wherehouse, Tower Records, all wiped out.
I've compiled some charts based on 2 factual sources in regards to karaoke . You're more than welcome to dispute the facts any way you want, but please show sources.
My two sources are.
NAMM Global music reports. Namm is considered to be the definitive resource for music sales info.
Microsoft Netscan. Netscan provides statistics on newsgroups. I took a sampling of the newsgroup alt.binaries.sounds.karaoke It doesn't take a genius to figure out what's going on. You can see that pre AI(American Idol) karaoke had some decent yearly sales which were on a nice upward trend. The volume of posts in alt.binaries.sounds.karaoke was not really epic. Then came AI in 2002.
What happened was a shift in karaoke's popularity. Post count almost quadrupaled. Now sure, you can say "Oh karaoke just apexed" but that's bullshit because AI is still on the air with a ton of copycats. Not only that, there are more karaoke shows now than ever before. What was once considered *just* a Japanese oddity was now cool with most Americans. The post count would decrease if suddenly millions of people just suddenly decide "Oh karaoke is lame, I don't want to do it no more".
Let's get back to the subject of DRM though....
People are responsible for thier own behavior, but what technology has done is to aid in anonymizing copyright infringement. It's the old addage, "Would you do it if you knew you couldn't get caught?"
Do I mind DRM? Not at all. I have a napster account I pay $10@mo for. I listen to what I want, when I want. I have a really nice Jazz radio station (KCSM) in the car. I can access Napster from home or work.
Right now publishers are in a bind. If DRM isn't the answer, then what is the answer to stop people from anonymously stealing music? Education? Ha, don't make me laugh.
I'm sorry DRM is so inconvenient for you.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Fair enough for them. I'd still be happy to consume even up to (as a roundabout figure) 4x or 5x the space, if it meant that my files were freely usable.
DRM is only something scared content producers want - I don't want it at all. Don't force it on me.
>>>"You've done this numerous times so you don't really care about the quality of your work so long as you get that check. What you've done is worthless. What you've done is taken money for worthless labor on your part. Like what the RIAA is doing to consumers."
That does happen sometimes. For example I downloaded Prison Break season 1, determined it was crap afer watching it, and promptly erased it from my computer's disk. Not worth paying money and I'll never watch that show again. However....
There are many users with 100+ DVD-Rs
(or 1 terabyte drives) filling their shelves.
If the work is worthless, why are they hanging on to it? Apparently the content on those DVD-Rs/hard drives must have SOME value to them, since they are keeping those works on their shelves. Therefore they should pay up, and pay for the labor of Stephen King, et cetera rather than steal the labor.
It doesn't work both ways.
You can't complain "this is worthless"
and yet horde it on your bookshelf.
If you're keeping it, that means it isn't worthless. That means you should pay for the labor of the creator, rather than turn him into an Unpaid slave/employee.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
CD sales didn't drop because of piracy.
CD sales dropped because single sales (itunes, rhapsody, et cetera) have gone through the roof. People want individual songs, not whole albums.
(Of course the record companies conveniently keep that statistic quiet. They don't want us to know that Singles Sales are setting new records. That would ruin their anti-piracy campaign.)
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
>>>"The problem with DRM is that the people it's intended for know how to circumvent it, and all other pirates get the illigal, non-DRM version. Meantime, the paying customers are stuck with crappy DRM-limited versions."
Yes true, but with Bittorrent even casual users can become pirates. Rip a CD, create a torrent, and within just one or two months, you've created 10,000 copies for whoever leeched off that torrent.
Hence the need for DRM.
The only problem is that the DRM needs to be reasonable (say 5 copies per purchase), not a 1 copy per customer limit. That's just nuts. Or greedy. Given how RIAA operates, probably greedy.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
- Sony v. Gamemasters: Playing a video game from one region on a console from another is unauthorized.
- RealNetworks v. Streambox: Viewing free streaming media can be unauthorized.
- Universal v. Corley: Viewing a DVD on an unlicensed player is unauthorized.
I think you mean circumvention, not copy protection. The DMCA restricts "any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof" that meets any of the criteria. Yes, as well as a neurosurgeon, physicist, rock star, and everything else I didn't say I'm not.