Apple DMCAs iPodHash Project

TRS-80 writes "Apple has sent a DMCA takedown notice to the IpodHash project, claiming it circumvents their FairPlay DRM scheme. Some background: Apple first added a hash to the iTunesDB file in 6th-gen iPods, but it was quickly reverse-engineered. They changed it with the release of iPhone 2.0 and a project was started to reverse the new hash, but wasn't successful yet. My guess is Apple used the same algorithm as FairPlay for the new hash, so Apple could use the DMCA to prevent competing apps like Songbird and Banshee from talking to iPods/iPhones. BTW, don't tell Apple, but the project uses a wiki, so the old page versions from before the takedown are still there."

Comments

EU legislation in favour?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the EU legislation that's closest to the DMCA explicitly allows reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability. Perhaps someone should just make a Swedish mirror? :)

Re:All the more reason not to buy an ipod/phone

[jawtheshark]

You're locked in dude.... The iPod connector is, as far as I know, licensed to 3rd party accessories manufacturers. No way in hell, is Apple going to license it to a competitor.

And, yes, a connector can be patented without any problem. After all it is a physical device, where you can give schematics etc....

Re:All the more reason not to buy an ipod/phone

[MasterOfMagic]

Buy a used iPod (not refurbished and not from Apple), run Rockbox on it, and don't purchase anything else from the iTunes Music Store. Apple doesn't make any money from you on that. That's how I've acquired 3 out of my 4 Apple products (the other was a gift).

If you want to avoid it on principle, I don't know of any competing player that uses the same dock standard, but even so, if you are rejecting on principle, do you want to encourage others to accept Apple's dock connector? As I recall, it is patented and has to be licensed from Apple - you don't want to encourage more people to pay licensing fees to Apple, do you?

3.5mm stereo minijack or stereo RCA all the way. No encryption, no DRM, just analog goodness. Sure you need an additional wire for power, but that's rarely a problem.

Re:Which leads to a question

[tgatliff]

Maybe it is because people actually like the iTunes -> iPod setup.

Meaning, you are not required to buy an iPod or iPhone. Also, you are not required to buy iTunes. There are plenty of other options to choose from. In MS Windows case, all of the vendor applications were written for Windows, so you really had no choice...

Re:All the more reason not to buy an ipod/phone

[Threni]

The 6th gen iPod hasn't been properly cracked so there's no rockbox for it.

USB is a *fucking standard*

[DrYak]

pin density is one factor that certainly weighed on that decision.

We are in 2008. Why would you even need to have a separate pin for everything ?!?

We have very nice, completely standardized connection such as :
- USB (specially since the On-The-Go and Pict-Bridge standards where the same physical connector can switch between master and slave depending on needs).
- FireWire (which has the advantage of allowing several masters on the same bus and device sharing both master and slave role - just like SCSI. And has overall much better latency and bandwidth once you factor all possible overhead)

They are almost ubiquitous. Today it's hard to find a device which is NOT USB-enabled. (although not all FireWire connectors you may encounter are 6pins with power. 4pins data-only are popular on some portable device).

And they can easily do pretty much everything you cited and much-much more.

Audio/Video (+controls for it) over FireWire is just a piece of cake, the standard was created with that purpose in mind.

how would you create video out from a USB port?

- If the device is a master and is PUSHing video OUT, video-over USB was among the first standardized stuff, with USB-to-VGA dongle being very popular. It's already a very popular method to get 2ndary output from device which lack a VGA or DVI out. Or get a 3rd output.
- If the device is a slave and you are PULLing video FROM device, then a USB video device is perfect for it, just like thousands of Webcams, video receiver, etc. There's even an emerging standard called UVC - USB Video Class (Before UVC, every webcam USB chip used a different protocol requiring several different procols).

Given the sensitiveness of analog to electronic noise, digital video out makes A LOT of sense. And given that hosting the electronics for a DVI/HDMI/miniDisplay port would unnecessarily increase the costs of the device, the USB-to-VGA or UVC is the best compromise.

the radio

You must be joking. Just look at the crazy amount of USB FM+TV+DVB+DAB receiver dongles.
There's a custom version of the OpenMoko sold with such an USB receiver contained in a spacer between the battery and the original cover.

If you want a radio *emitter*, see next question about audio.

headphone adapter?

Still keeping with the everything over USB :
- USB audio is an absolutely standard protocol.
In fact dozens of headphone made for laptop/skype don't plug into the audio in/out ports, but instead plug into an USB port.
As USB Audio does both input and output, it doesn't matter which is master which is slave, you can establish an audio link over USB.

Now, plain analog audio has had a standard for many years : the simple 3mm Jack. For a quick and easy analog access you should leave an audio jack on the machine.

For even more practical solution, you could go for a 3 or 4 ring jack instead of a classical stereo one, and carry video, s-video and/or mic.
Put a LED on the bottom of the connector and it can also work as a nice digital out (Sony's MiniDisc already used hybrid optical+analog contacts for quite some time).
Put them in line with the usb at very specific distance one from each other and you have a perfect connector with both analog and digital.

The only reason not to do this is because by letting normal audio connection (jack), the constructor lose the incentive for users to buy the more expensive USB-based peripherals.

artist/song/albumart along with audio out for the dock devices?

That is just plain stupid.
All this meta-data you cite is never going to be transmitted by lots of dedicated pins.
Normally such kind of data is just emitted over a serial connection. (Even before the age of USB, Sony MiniDisc already used a serial link to transmit this. Audio goes through analog+optical jack, meta-data