troubleshooting/tutorials/security
08/03/2004, 7:40am, EDT
Tuesday, August 3rd
Report: iMovie strips FairPlay DRM from iTunes songs
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 Macnews.de. The site reports that Apple's own video tool can be used to create unprotected song files that be played on any computer without recompression, circumventing iTunes' DRM protection. iMovie users can use the "Share" feature of iMovie to export any imported (protected) song from the iTunes Music Store. The exported songs can either be stored in the un-protected AAC file format (used by Apple at the iTMS) or in the raw WAV file format; both of these formats are supported by iTunes.
Earlier this year, Apple used the DMCA to try to shutdown "Hymn," 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.
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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".
http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/
http://www.osxhax.com/archives/000045.html
I can't wait for the "DUPE!" flame fest at slashdot on this non-story.
Carl