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New utility strips DRM from iTunes Music Store tracks

updated 07:15 pm EDT, Sun April 4, 2004

playfair strips iTMS DRM

is a tool for Mac OS X that strips the digital rights management protection from tracks purchased at the iTunes Music Store, converting them to ordinary AAC audio files without any loss in quality. The utility is believed to be the first to circumvent Apple's DRM without employing quality-sapping lossy compression formats to do so. The current version, 0.2, requires Xcode to be installed and must be built and run from the Terminal. An iPod or Mac authorized to read the purchased track is also needed.

by MacNN Staff

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Putta
Junior Member

Joined: Aug 2002

0

04/04, 08:04pm | report spam | close Reply |
Ooops

Looks like the s*&t is about to hit the fan.

I will use it, but only to put songs on my phone (and yes, I have already bought two iPods).

Still this can only be bad press for Apple and its stock

hzink
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jul 2000

0

04/04, 08:17pm | report spam | close Reply |
c***!

I would really appreciate it if this kind of resourcefulness and effort were spent to defeat the DRM of WMA files. As it stands, this kind of 'innovation' (while certainly interesting), will only result in two things:

- Ammo for all the press trying to shovel dirt on Apple's success.
- Ammo for music publishers to voice concern over licensing music to Apple.
- Ammo for Microsquat to claim how unsecure Apple's DRM is.

Only solution is for Apple to have anticipated this, and to release a stronger version of their DRM within days of this news hitting the press. This will start to show up on tech sites tomorrow, and will have hit the mainsream press by week's end.

jokell82
Professional Poster

Joined: May 2001

0

04/04, 08:21pm | report spam | close Reply |
Except

You have to have an *authorized* copy to convert it. So if it's not your music you can't convert it...

jpellino
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 1999

0

04/04, 08:34pm | report spam | close Reply |
here we go...

tag line at the end of the project page: "INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE."

nonsense. it's a cute battle cry, but you don't really know what it means and you don't really believe it.

there are laws granting copyright that you need to either obey or change - this is digital hijacking, pure and simple.

some kid needs to prove something, or decided to thumb their nose at apple, or who knows why they're taking this rabble rousing stand.

they've got some stones, though - skated completely over the you-need-to-know-how-to-defeat-security-to-make-it-better pond, I can see someone finding a vulnerability and posting it so apple can have their promised model intact, but they don't even try and suggest that.

anything like this has to have a significant competing function/need beyond the wholesale defeat of a copy protectionscheme, or else they won't have a leg to stand on...

tey know exactly what they're doing in this regard, or else they wouldn't require a build thru xcode - they'd just deliver a working app - but that would open them up to more direct blame when people use this for the only legit use - breaking the financial model for apple - so they cover their behinds.

do something truly useful and we'll applaud you.
this simply makes you the eddie haskell of the apple dev scene.

jpellino
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 1999

0

04/04, 08:37pm | report spam | close Reply |
good point,

"You have to have an *authorized* copy to convert it. So if it's not your music you can't convert it..."

true, but once you've converted it, you can do anything you want - which is now by definition unauthorized use, and apple will (rightly so) release the hounds.

these guys are simply squirrels on the bird feeders of technology.

MDiddy
Junior Member

Joined: Aug 2001

0

04/04, 09:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
Here's an example

I've bought some songs from the iTMS, and I'd like to play them at work when I connect my iPod and charge it form my work computer. This would let me accomplish it wihtout having to remeber to deauthorize one of my three machines at home, and/or my work computer and alos saves me the hassle of having to burn them to CD, then re-import them with a slight loss in quality.

Please stop complaing about this guy being a pirate, or hacker loser-hes going to save me some time and hassle. I'm all for it. Hooray

Truepop
Mac Elite

Joined: Mar 2003

0

04/04, 09:41pm | report spam | close Reply |
Where did it go?

I checked out their sourceforge page and every mirror comes up with a 404. either the files haven't been put up or they have been taking down.

ThisGuy
Mac Elite

Joined: Oct 2001

0

04/04, 09:46pm | report spam | close Reply |
WTF is $ make ?

Installing playfair is pretty easy. If you're reading this, you've
already done step 1, which is to unpack the distribution tarball.
After that, it's a simple matter of:

$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

jpellino
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 1999

0

04/04, 10:12pm | report spam | close Reply |
really?

you have three machines at home, hopefully on the same network;
you can use itunes sharing on the (up to five) machines at home
instead of synching - no authorization required
and authorize the work machine.
done.
no loss of quality or drm.

Oneota
Professional Poster

Joined: May 2000

0

04/04, 10:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: WTF is $ make?

If you don't know the answer to that, then don't bother with this product - you gotta have a little software development background under your belt to make use of it.

clt2
Forum Regular

Joined: Feb 2004

0

04/04, 10:41pm | report spam | close Reply |
Not the first utility

"The utility is believed to be the first to circumvent Apple's DRM without employing quality-sapping lossy compression formats to do so."

That's not correct. This utility is basically a port of the Windows utility m4p2mp4 (which uses the FairPlay code from VideoLAN).

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34712.html

Btw, the download links are all dead now. Looks like Apple's lawyers worked overtime this weekend :D

PBG4 User
Senior User

Joined: Feb 2001

0

04/04, 10:46pm | report spam | close Reply |
Not all links are dead

Not all the links deliver a 404 error.

vander
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 2000

0

04/04, 11:40pm | report spam | close Reply |
Not a big deal

This program may or may not be useful to some people and it might cause a stir in the press. Most of the press is ignorant about computers anyway.

DRM is a big deal for the music industry because they think p2p is wrecking their business. According to a recent study, it's not. People dl stuff they wouldn't buy anyway. Or, once they hear more than one or two songs they like, they buy the CD.

In my opinion, many consumers would probably be willing to pay a premium (but not a large one) for a file that has no DRM and higher quality. That's why I (and many others) still buy CDs. There's a perception of added value when you have a physical product, but there's also an actual added value: package design, lyrics, credits, etc. Sell an unprotected file for a few cents more and that's given me an added value: I can play it anywhere.

Might I put it online? Sure. But that's a risk you take when you sell me a CD as well.

Furthermore, information does want to be free...it created libraries in the analog world and now it created the internet in the digital world. Should content providers and creators get paid for what they do? Yes. Does that contradict the theory that information wants to be free? No.

clicking88
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Apr 2004

0

04/05, 12:39am | report spam | close Reply |
OK - now what

So I've gone through the configure, install, make, etc. and now what. How do I actually use this thing?

marcopoloseeks
Registered User

Joined: Apr 2004

0

04/05, 12:43am | report spam | close Reply |
how to use?

Would somebody please post step by step instructions of how to use Playfair. Thanks

Maelman
Forum Regular

Joined: Apr 2001

0

04/05, 04:03am | report spam | close Reply |
Doesn't work for me

The files it produces crashes any program that tries to play them.

Maelman
Forum Regular

Joined: Apr 2001

0

04/05, 05:05am | report spam | close Reply |
v 0.2

Version 0.2 does indeed work, version 0.1 does not. The sourceforge mirrors have not updated their files yet so that is why you keep getting an error. I don't really feel like endorsing the use of this app, so I am not going to share how I got the latest version or how to use and/or install it. But you should be able to get it when the mirrors update.

jpellino
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 1999

0

04/05, 07:27am | report spam | close Reply |
information...

go read the entire original treatise - it was simply an analogy to try and figure things out when we had no idea how it was all going to work. but it was co-opted as a glib hacker catchphrase and is now being used as a cracker manifesto.

and in doing so it has raised anthropomorphism to a new and useless level. a red herring. information did not build any libraries, nor did it build the internet. hard working people with a vision for the value of the information did that. if you believe 'information' and 'free' are readily equatable, then you likely never produced any information that had enought value to sell - or found any use for copyright. or if you believe 'information' and 'free' are linked that easily, go work in a library and gain a new understanding of how much value is added by the hard working people who work, as most nonprofits do, ona very thin margin to do what needs to be done to keep the supply of information valuable.

as for the CD argument - the added value of the physical CD does not necessitate any added value in the software realm - it's a choice based on the design of the model for physical or online. the price of a CD has nothing to do with its added value's production cost - that's about $1.25 to press, case and print a packaged disc.

plus, the file sharing flood has shown that the amount of money people will pay for unprotected files is exactly zero. selling unprotected files with no effort required to pirate? that's highly unliklely to emerge as a business model.

you may think that adding a few cents to a file would be nice for consumers - the rest of the industry may not agree - the model so far is that breaking copyright should invlove a discouraging amount of heavy lifting - you have to physically copy a book in a machine or by hand, you need to rip and burn a cd... sadly that qualifies these days as enough hard work that many people won't bother and then pirating becomes rampant.

there are things that dance around the edges fo thsi whole debate - none are developed enough yet to apply to music - free software is free because someone decided to do something and not charge for it - many of those very same programmers charge for their professsional work and depend on the traditional model - the creative common license works for print largely because reading a book on a computer is still a distant second to reading a real one - but digital music solved so many physical problems with sound recording and playback that it was adopted faster than any preceding format change - and we're struggling to keep up with the consequences.

but don't hoist a quaint banner and expect those who do the actual work and with a real stake in the enterprise to smile and look the other way.

mjtomlin
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 1999

0

04/05, 09:58am | report spam | close Reply |
Jobs himself said it...

There will always be a way to get around DRM. He's no fool and I'm sure he made that perfectly clear to the record labels. Dishonest people are going to be dishonest ... and you can't prove that. However having people buy music with DRM attached, provides a method of proving that there's honest people out there, by making some attempt at keeping them honest. Flawed, backwards logic perhaps, but it works nonetheless.

If you buy your music online, you already know it's limited in some respect. If you don't agree with the DRM model, go buy the physical CD and rip it.

LMidnight
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Dec 2003

0

04/05, 10:23am | report spam | close Reply |
Fair Use

If I buy a song, it's considered fair use for me to copy it and play it. It's not fair use for me to share it with 100 of my best friends. I'll have no guilt using this app.

mgpalma
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2000

0

04/05, 10:59am | report spam | close Reply |
This link still works...

http://belnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/playfair/playfair-0.2.tar.gz

ciao,
Michael

vander
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 2000

0

04/05, 11:05am | report spam | close Reply |
Botany of Desire

The original phrase "information wants to be free" may have been co-opted, but that's irrelevant. It has a different meaning now and it's used not just by script kiddies and hackers, but also by philosophers.

As for it anthropomorphising information, it's easier to say "information wants to be free" than to say "An active subset of the human populace believes information should be free and thus this subset works to encourage and provide the free availability of information."

In the book "The Botany of Desire," the author examines why certain plants have been so successful and in doing so he anthropomorphizes the plants somewhat. Information, although not living, can be compared to living things for rhetorical purposes and for analytical purposes. For example, the spread of information could be compared to the spread of an infectuous bacteria.

Clearly information itself did not build or create anything, but why do we value the libraries and internet so much? Free information, free discourse, free interaction. Of course somebody somewhere is paying for everything online and most people pay for the convenience of internet access in their homes, but there are places access is free. Which brings us back to the library.

And I have created content that was copyrighted and sold. I've worked on one of the best selling study guides for high school test preparation and I've worked for a few national magazines.

So, although I've benefitted from copyright, that doesn't mean I don't support the idea of copyleft, opensource software, and other means of sharing information without attaching onerous burdens.

Further, that people use file sharing doesn't prove that people won't pay for DRM-free files. If iTMS sold DRM-free files, they probably would have sold a comparable number of files if not more. People buy from the iTMS not because the files are protected, but because they're easy to access, are readily available, have guaranteed quality, etc. Another important reason they use iTMS is because it's completely legal. They feel morally obligated to pay someone.

dcrosby
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2002

0

04/05, 11:38am | report spam | close Reply |
Playfair

1) At least one of the European links worked yesterday.

2) You're only downloading source, which needs to be compiled, hence "make" etc. I'm sure a more perfected binary version will show up eventually, probably with a thrown-together Cocoa interface.

Most importantly, 3) If you don't have an iPod, this is useless on your Mac. The program knows how to find DRM key info on an iPod or on Windows, but not on a Mac. Hopefully that will get corrected eventually.

z10n
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 2003

0

04/05, 12:21pm | report spam | close Reply |
p2p

The one and ONLY reason to include DRM in a product is to prevent people from blatently copying and sharing it with other people. That's it. DRM is a necessary evil to keep people from abusing the system.

The problem with DRM is that it assumes that everyone is guilty before proven innocent. Since companies have little to no control over their product after the customer obtains it, the fact that they would want to impose some restrictions before the customer obtains it is understandable. But it's also quite understandable if people want to break those restrictions. The average person is NOT guilty of anything, so why should they allow themselves to be restricted?

There is a concept in society that when something is bought, ownership of the thing transfers over from the creator to the purchaser. Legally, that's not exactly true, but for the purposes of most products, that's the public expectation. The purchaser believes that if they have ownership, then they can basically do whatever they want with the product. Otherwise, they never had ownship in the first place.

Thus, DRM is directly contrary to the popular perception of ownership, because it creates restrictions as to what can be done with a purchaced product. You don't "own" a DRMed product, you own it with restrictions. IMHO, DRM is not unlike that picture of Big Brother that's constantly watching over you to keep you from doing anything "wrong". That's quite different then buying say, a book where you can rip out the pages, highlight, or even burn the book if you want to, and it's always up to you.

So it's no wonder that people are trying to crack the DRM. They are trying to make their files their own. Many will try to say that "well, you really only needed x** capablity if your intent was to do something illegal". That's not true at all. In fact, I bet many people will crack their files simply because they are against a company imposing restrictions on what they can and cannot do with what they OWN. I don't think there's anything ethically wrong with that. In fact, I support it.

Clive
Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Jan 2001

0

04/05, 12:28pm | report spam | close Reply |
People problem

>The problem with DRM is that it assumes that
>everyone is guilty before proven innocent.

The problem with people is that DRM is necessary in the first place. If so many idiots hadn't spoilt it for the rest of us we wouldn't need to put up with this inconvenience.

z10n
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 2003

0

04/05, 01:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
People problem

"If so many idiots hadn't spoilt it..."

This is to be expected though. Laws are imposed in society because when faced with a situation that can be abused, people typically are either unable or unwilling to control themselves. But this is not necessarily a proof that people are inherently evil. Society spends so much time trying to tell people what they are not allowed to do, that all they do is think about trying to do it. There's a reason for this- it's because the uncontious mind cannot process a negative command. Example: suppose I tell you that you really shouldn't think about ice cream. What did you just do? You thought about ice cream. Until I said ice cream, you weren't thinking about it at all, but now you are.

It's amazing to me that everyone knows the laws (what NOT to do) but many people have no idea what their goals and dreams in life are (what TO do). And people wonder why there's so much crime and despair in the world.

MDiddy
Junior Member

Joined: Aug 2001

0

04/05, 03:02pm | report spam | close Reply |
Doesn't work anyway

Keeps crashing iTunes & QT Player wheny ou try to play the resulting file. Please make this work. It'll save me a h*** of alot of time

Brian Jewett
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Feb 2002

0

04/05, 04:25pm | report spam | close Reply |
This is lousy news

Information wants to be free? Oh, right. This will only hurt Apple, this will only make it more difficult for those of us who want to use online music downloads legally ... because they'll have to tighten up the methodology. We'll end up back paying $20 for CDs, and the music company lawyers will end up going after those who put their DRM-free tunes out on the web for others to get at. If you don't want musicians to make money - especially new ones, the ones not yet millionaires - if you don't want Apple to make money from the music store, then by all means, use this software...

I'm interested in creating content. It makes me sick to think that some people just can't stand the idea of paying for content, or respecting those who create it. Perhaps the author of this "workaroundware" will have a different outlook if he/she starts to create and sell software, only to find it heisted and made available for free on the net.

z10n
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 2003

0

04/06, 10:32am | report spam | close Reply |
Re: lousy news

"This will only hurt Apple, this will only make it more difficult for those of us who want to use online music downloads legally"

Only if the music industry forces apple to impose more restrictions. If apple imposes too many restrictions, then it just means people will stop buying music. The industry knows this, otherwise they would have inforced much more restrictive measures by now. The have to walk a fine line, otherwise people will stop buying. (Don't think it won't happen.)

"the music company lawyers will end up going after those who put their DRM-free tunes out on the web for others to get at."

Um, how is this any different then what goes on right now? People burn their AACs and then rip them to MP3 and put them on the net. All this software does is make the process easier and without loss of quality.

"If you don't want musicians to make money - especially new ones, the ones not yet millionaires - if you don't want Apple to make money from the music store, then by all means, use this software"

Using this software has no effect on musicians OR apple unless you take your un-DRMed files and put them on P2P. Just because a piece of software exists doesn't mean people have to use it. And just because it's used, doesn't mean people intend to perform an illegal action with the resultant files. Suppose I want to put my iTunes downloads on a player other then the iPod? I should be able to, and this program lets me do that.

"Perhaps the author of this "workaroundware" will have a different outlook if he/she starts to create and sell software."

Nope, he/she won't care. The sole purpose was to do it "because they can". What people make protections for, they take pleasure in breaking. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, that's just what is.

If this person hadn't created the crack, then someone else would have. You can't stop piracy, you can only slow it down by making it more difficult to do. Or you can try to make it so less people know about it. That's exactly what will happen here- apple will send a cease and desist, the software will be pulled, yet it will be freely traded on kazaa until the end of time. Pirates will remain pirates, and the rest of us will get back to our lives.

lukechip
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2003

0

04/07, 04:31pm | report spam | close Reply |
it's not the only way

I agree that people trying to strip DRM from iTMS songs are bad news for Apple, and I'd rather that they spent their time more creatively. However, given than Apple themselves freely distribute software that nicely strips the DRM from their own iTMS songs, then they can't really be that serious about stopping this practice...

I'm not saying how to do this using free Apple products, but it isn't too hard...

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New utility strips DRM from iTunes Music Store tracks

updated 07:15 pm EDT, Sun April 4, 2004

playfair strips iTMS DRM

Related Articles

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Ooops

c***!

Except

here we go...

good point,

Here's an example

Where did it go?

WTF is $ make ?

really?

Re: WTF is $ make?

Not the first utility

Not all links are dead

Not a big deal

OK - now what

how to use?

Doesn't work for me

v 0.2

information...

Jobs himself said it...

Fair Use

This link still works...

Botany of Desire

Playfair

p2p

People problem

People problem

Doesn't work anyway

This is lousy news

Re: lousy news

it's not the only way

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