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Report: iMovie strips FairPlay DRM from iTunes songs

updated 07:40 am EDT, Tue August 3, 2004

iMovie strips iTunes DRM

Apple's iMovie can be used to strip the FairPlay digital rights management protection (DRM) on iTunes songs, according to a report by German news site an open-source projected designed to convert iTunes songs into an unprotected format. The report notes that users can also bypass the iTunes song protections by burning a CD and then re-ripping the songs, although some loss of quality is expected during the recompression.

 
Previous Comments

Erp...

08/03, 08:12am reply

There's no way to strip the DRM from your iTMS songs in iMovie without reencoding the file. Please read the article again...

Eugene

Dedicated MacNNer

Joined: Nov 2000

0

Not in my iMovie...

08/03, 08:32am reply

All I get is silence in iMovie 3.03 when importing or exporting purchased tracks. What version are they using?

ethical_paul

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 2002

0

Exaggerating a bit...

08/03, 08:39am reply

This is no different than burning and re-ripping a CD.

Importing the song into iMovie transcodes the audio to a lossless format.
Burning the song onto a CD transcodes the audio to a lossless format.

You can either keep the raw audio of the native format (creating a huge file) or re-encode the audio into mp3, aac, etc. but that causes loss of quality. This applies to both mediums and there's no way around it.

It's a tricky situation for Apple because, really, if you purchased the song, why shouldn't you be able to put it in your latest iMovie of your kids playing in the park or your own skate video or whatever? The alternative would have far more outcry by the faithful attached to it than this latest "development".

Visnaut

Senior User

Joined: Nov 2000

0

Re: Not in my iMovie...

08/03, 08:41am reply

> All I get is silence in iMovie 3.03 when importing or exporting purchased tracks. What version are they using?

http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/

Visnaut

Senior User

Joined: Nov 2000

0

wheeeeee

08/03, 09:28am reply

it worked for me. now i finally have a reason to use iMovie :P

crayola

Junior Member

Joined: Jul 2003

0

QT....

08/03, 09:45am reply

If you are using pre 6.5 QT, this hacks will work... but not with latest version.

Sydney Tsai

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Feb 2002

0

Re: QT

08/03, 09:52am reply

i have QT 6.5.1 and it works fine.

crayola

Junior Member

Joined: Jul 2003

0

Slow News Day

08/03, 10:46am reply

It must be a slow news day for "them" to show how iMovie removes DRM. The fact is that any person that would use iMovie to strip DRM from their songs is an idiot with too much time on their hands. Stripping DRM is much easier by creating a CD and reimporting the song as a clean .mp3. And who does that? Not me or anyone else I know. It just isnt worth the time or effort.

ronjamin

Baninated

Joined: May 2002

0

Yawn. this is old news

08/03, 11:05am reply

see for example
http://www.osxhax.com/archives/000045.html

I can't wait for the "DUPE!" flame fest at slashdot on this non-story.

Carl

cellocgw

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 2003

0

This is news?

08/03, 11:45am reply

I have been using iMovie to convert DRM-AAC to 48k AIFF for use in FCP without first having to burn to a CD for over a year...So what?

macbarry

Junior Member

Joined: Aug 2002

0

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