As I said a few days ago, "NEXT!"

>>While the figure may not be exactly 5%, it is very small, and may even be less than 5%. The simple fact is that MP3 compression results in minimal to zero quality loss for most types of music. Music employing very high or very low tones suffers the most and music with many instruments involved simultaneously (ie. a symphony) also suffer. AAC is better at preserving quality and I have never, once been able to tell the difference between a CD and a 128Kbps AAC. It should be notes that "true" audiophiles are dismayed with CD quality, and may pushed for a higher bit rate when the CD standard was approved.

Ugh, for the last time, it's not theft, it's copyright infringement. Big difference.

bad post before...i'll finish now

original poster said:"While the figure may not be exactly 5%, it is very small, and may even be less than 5%. The simple fact is that MP3 compression results in minimal to zero quality loss for most types of music."

The simple fact is that this particular person can't hear a difference. The quality loss is by no means "minimal to zero." It can be very obvious if you know what to listen for

The perfect excuse to say... Clearly this model has holes. We're going to licenses to 'Secure Audio Path' only type devices. This allows them to break the Apple iTMS majority market share they fear and forces us onto even more restrictive DRM models.

Keep up the good work guys. I don't mind paying for music, but I do mind not being able to play the music where I want(like my CD player in my car which supports standard AAC, but not FairPlay AAC).

[i]"It can be very obvious if you know what to listen for"[/i]

The novice can start by listening to cymbals. As for everyone else, I pity those who cannot tell the difference btween a 128-AAC file and CD-quality.

My bet is that most of these people don't know what full audio sounds like because they have crappy audio systems or underdeveloped sonic listening skills. It's a shame, too, because some of the most talented people in music are engineers and producers who have spent their lives learning and perfecting the capture and reproduction of sound.

"The novice can start by listening to cymbals. As for everyone else, I pity those who cannot tell the difference btween a 128-AAC file and CD-quality."

I agree. However, if I'm riding a bus or driving in the car, I can't hear the difference because of so much else going on.

I think both CD and online compressed formats have their place. If people can't hear the difference, then, yes, they are missing out on a lot, but I don't care - they're happy with what they have and I'm happy to have what I have.

They're not stealing music from ITMS, it has to be bought first. All that's happening is that their client isn't adding the DRM that iTunes adds after the purchased music is downloaded.

This system is going to be crackable for as long as Apple has the DRM wrapper happening on the client side. Fact.

Compression: AAC is supposed to be lossless, ie you can get a bit for bit match with the original it was taken from. MP3 certainly isn't lossless, and anyone who says they can't hear the difference must be listening through a really crappy set of headphones.

OK I buy a bunch of hanes tee shirts and want to sell them with my logo embroidered on. I take payment at the door and you bring your shirt to the back and wait to get the shirt embroidered and then you can leave. You come through the front door of my store, pay the price, get an unembroidered shirt and sneak out the side door you just ripped me off. The money has nothing to do with it. If you want the music without the DRM go to a music store that doesn't put it on. That's Apple's product, if you break their system and buy something they are not selling you are stealing.

Seeing as how fervent DVD Jon is in breaking Apple DRM, yet never even dares touch Windows DRM, it does make you wonder, doesn't it, where his loyalties lie -- or rather, who signs his paychecks, eh?

I guess he won't be giving up until Apple has to stop selling music, and all that's left is the draconian Windows DRM -- I have a feeling that if that were to happen, we'll stop hearing how he's just doing it to allow Linux to use the iTMS....

It all comes down to that - there's already a perfectly agreeable way to buy music that has no RM -- it's called 'used CDs'. They cost less than albums on the iTMS, the purchase screws over the RIAA (as they get no dime of the sale), and you can rip these, and move them to your iPod, with any level of quality you want. Hey, you can even move them to oher MP3 players....

Of course, this requires the use of something that neither DVD Jon, nor any of the other anti-DRM purists have -- a brain!

you don't need these guys - that's a red herring - you can burn to cd, rip, burn as mp3 - all perfectly acceptable to apple, no violation of anything.

I have a challenge to DVD Jon - or any other cracker wannabe - why instead of breaking the DRM you honor it. If you have managed to create an iTunes clone and can connect browse purchase and download music from iTMS - forgetting to write the DRM - then I think you are good enough to write a program that can honor said DRM. Make your program dl the song and wrap the DRM and authorize that computer to play the song or be burned to CD. That would be the 'fair' thing to do. Then everyone will be happy, the RIAA will have their precious DRM (cause truly Apple would rather not have to deal with it - but never the less) and you can play your music on your Linux box - and Apple can get to work on other things. Apple would still be pissed but then that is what reverse engineering is truly about - to understand how something works so you can build it somewhere else - without breaking it. You are good at the first part of reverse engineering but seem to be lacking the re-engineering part - where you put it *ALL* back together.

"It's too hard" you say to crack the DRM to allow the song to be played? The CSS on DVDs was suppose to be hard to crack, the password on zip files where suppose to be hard to crack, heck a safe is suppose to be hard to crack - but it can be done.

You can argue the merits of DRM till the cows come home but it is here to stay - the way I look at it is, when I buy Photoshop or Final Cut Pro I have to enter my serial number to show I paid for it - DRM is just a serial number for music.

[/end rant]

[quote]Compression: AAC is supposed to be lossless, ie you can get a bit for bit match with the original it was taken from. MP3 certainly isn't lossless, and anyone who says they can't hear the difference must be listening through a really crappy set of headphones.[/quote]


No. AAC is *NOT* lossless. AAC is lossy just like MP3 is. It just might sound better than mp3. But BOTH are lossy

Yes, yes, MP3 and AAC causes compression artifacts, you can hear the difference on a decent stereo system, you personally can pick out the sound of a butterfly nibbling a cheese souffle during a thunderstorm.

You keep forgetting something: A lot of people don't care, and that's the market online music like iTMS is after. A lot of people can't afford a high-end audio system, or primarily listen to their music on their computer or on their iPod or in their car. The majority of teenagers downloading the latest Britney Spears single probably aren't all that concerned about fidelity and lossless compression.

iTMS is mostly about selling convenience. You can browse music at home, listen to samples, buy individual tracks, download the music immediately. If it took 3 hours or more to download an uncompressed audio file, a lot of their target audience wouldn't bother.

If you're a listener who isn't willing to compromise sound quality for convenience, or if your principles are wounded by the thought of DRM, then you're not iTMS's target audience and should stick to CDs or vinyl. In the meantime, though, people like 'DVD Jon' are going to ruin the system for everyone else.

Quote 1: " My bet is that most of these people don't know what full audio sounds like because they have crappy audio systems or underdeveloped sonic listening skills."

Huh...maybe I don't CARE about the difference in quality. I love music and am a 'hobbiest' musician, I've got great headphones (that are too bulky to use) and a decent stereo. Yet 99.9% of the time I listen to music is while working out, in the car, or in the background while I work. I don't have time to sit around doing nothing but listen to music as I guess a fair majority of people don't.

I can't stand the arrogance, claiming something is wrong with buying or listening to AAC or MP3 music. It's convenient and it's good enough. If that's not the case for you then don't use the iTMS, but don't belittle those who do.

I hope these guys fry for this. They are ruining it for the rest of us. It's a small minority of people who asked to be liberated from the ITMS.

Yup, my thought exactly when I first heard about these guys... so, assuming these guys *are* being backed by someone, who's more likely?
MS?
Napster?
Record companies? (get around Apple's DRM consistently and they have an arguement to get even tougher in their attempts to "secure" their product)
Who knows... but continued successful workarounds for Apple's DRM is about more than giving consumers "freedom" -- ultimately the effect could be *less* freedom as Apple, record companies, etc. react to this. Not cool.

Before the iTunes Music Store ... Steve Jobs had said it would be impossible to design the perfect DRM scheme ... someone will always find a way to get around it.

FairPlay was designed not so much to be bullet proof, but to show that there are honest people, who wouldn't mind paying for music if the restrictions were fair. To me, Apple's restrictions are the most lenient on the market and so far, I have not had a situation where I couldn't play or use a song I've purchased off iTunes.

I think people need to remember that this is not your music, it belongs to the record companies and if they aren't happy with the way things go they could easily make it worse for everyone involved. That's the problem with the creation of utilities like PyMusique. It only gives the record companies more of an argument to up the prices or restrict the "fairness" even further.

Thank god there's a company like Apple and a man like Steve Jobs involved in online distribution. They at least were able to get the record companies to be somewhat reasonable in their expectations of what is fair and what is not. And provide the music lovers with a system that works.

"Yup, my thought exactly when I first heard about these guys... so, assuming these guys *are* being backed by someone, who's more likely? MS? Napster? Record companies?"

How about Apple? It doesn't really matter who or why, it is actually in Apple's best interest to have these holes/flaws discovered so they can be patched and fixed.

Cody Brocious, a Pennsylvania high school student working with Johansen, said they saw the project as 'necessary for the Linux community,' despite Apple's opposition."

Exactly how is it necessary for the Linux community to do access the web-store? How come its not necessary to access Napster? And then the bigger question. The Linux/Open source communities are always all up in arms over closed systems and preach about open formats and systems and such, yet they feel its essential to access the iTMS, which sells music in the proprietary AAC format (just like MP3, its owned by someone, so its proprietary, even if its also a standard). Shouldn't they all be trying to start their own store (well, since its the Open Source community, they'd be opening 68293 stores, all slightly different) and selling music in OGG format or something?

And since he came out with software to strip the DRM, why'd he need to write another piece of software? [Man, this is where I end up going on a rant about how, if all these 'programmers' could actually get together, and put together a NEW program or software, they could end up building grand new things, but, no, they spend their time beating a horse into the ground, or wondering whether they need to come up with another IRC client, but one where you could control the color of the text AND put in graphical smilies, because all the other clients give you the ability to do one or the other (or neither! the heathens!) so let's build another one rather than updating one of the 5400 others. OK, end of rant]

And since he came out with software to strip the DRM, why'd he need to write another piece of software?

Really. Why didn't the guy just run the readily-available iTunes for Linux? He so cwazy!

How about Apple? It doesn't really matter who or why, it is actually in Apple's best interest to have these holes/flaws discovered so they can be patched and fixed.

Not backed by apple. If apple wanted to find/fix the flaws, they wouldn't hire a guy who (a) wouldn't be hired by a big corp to secure DRM, because its against his 'principles', and (b) wouldn't hire a guy who'd publicize the flaw and post ways around it.

If you read the news.com article DVD Jon says:

"The work I do is completely legal in my country," Johansen said in an e-mail interview. "Of course, I know very well that not doing anything illegal doesn't mean you won't be prosecuted (or) sued."

So essentially he's hiding behind some laws that must exist to protect him in Norway or wherever he is from. Does he even understand that acessing the ITMS via a different application other than iTunes is a direct violation of the ITMS user agreement? Personally, I think this dude should be made an example of. Lock him up in Gitmo or a prison with the general population. He could really be doing something good for the community instead he's just a glory hound.

Cough.

"It's not theft ... 160833 3/23/05, 10:45 am EST
They're not stealing music from ITMS, it has to be bought first. All that's happening is that their client isn't adding the DRM that iTunes adds after the purchased music is downloaded."

When you agree to purchase music from the iTMS you agree to that DRM also! It IS theft.

I guess the best thing that could happen is he just gets run over by a bus or taxi... simpler than trying to prosecute!

The reason he isnt applying DRM in his software is because it's Open Source. Apple screwed up when they choose to apply the DRM in the client side. If Jons group had coded a DRM applyer into the software it would take 5 mins to remove it from the source code afterwards, and you could then announce a compeding version without DRM....

Every time I hear an "audiophile" go on about the difference between a CD and AAC or MP3 I get a big belly laugh. I'm old enough to remember when CD's first arrived on the scene. Audiophiles were aghast at such an abomination. These were the guys with 500lb granite turntables, vacuum tube amplifiers, Magnaplanar speakers, and oh-so-keen ears that were offended by the harsh sound of the compact disc. The CD couldn't capture the nuances of extreme upper harmonics because the sample rate wasn't fast enough and the conversion scale only used 16 bit words. All hail the Analog God. Now these same guys, and maybe their children or grandchildren, lament the advent of compression. Now they make their pronouncements to the unwashed masses about the superiority of CD's over MP3. What an absolute hoot!

The only thing worse than a self-righteous audiophile is a flaming irrational Mac zealot. Maybe not.

Doesn't anyone appreciate the irony that an OS X PyMusique client DOESN'T EXIST and probably never will!? So here we have a hack of Apple proprietary software that is Linux/Windows only! Maybe the Mac really is being marginalized!

ROTFLAMO!

I had no idea this product was only for Linux and not for the Mac. I naturally assumed it was an OS X application the way the sites have covered the story. It would be nice of Apple to provide a Linux version of iTunes, but, of course, Linux geeks would invariable scream about it not being open source.

Moron #1: "Seeing as how fervent DVD Jon is in breaking Apple DRM, yet never even dares touch Windows DRM, it does make you wonder, doesn't it, where his loyalties lie -- or rather, who signs his paychecks, eh?"

Or, he could justl like cracking DRM for the fun of it. Not everything is an apple vs microsoft issue. Likewise, just because you buy a product from apple doesn't mean you suddenly have to lick SJ's feet or worship everything apple does. Suggesting that DVD Jon is working for microsoft, just because he's doing something you don't like, is completely retarded. Please go back to licking your iPod, or at least grow a brain before you post.

Moron #2: "I have a challenge to DVD Jon - or any other cracker wannabe - why instead of breaking the DRM you honor it."

DVD Jon is so named because he cracked the DVD protection scheme. Not only has he done that, but he's cracked numerous other protection schemes, all in the name of making software available to linux users. Calling him a "cracker wannabe" has got to be the dumbest comment I think I've ever heard. Likewise, suggesting that he write an iTunes clone for no apparent reason is equally stupid. Translation: "I don't like him, he has no honor in stripping DRM, blah, blah, blah." Yet where is the honor in apple imposing DRM when it is unwanted? What is the honor in apple being the b**** of the RIAA when at some level, they know it isn't right?

The truth is, it isn't about honor or right and wrong. It's about creating solutions for people. What people choose to do with those solutions is their own responsiblity, not the author's.

Moron #3:"I hope these guys fry for this. They are ruining it for the rest of us."

Nope. Sorry, but nothing is ruined. Did apple stop selling music? Nope. Did your computer blow up? Nope. Did the world end? Nope. In a world where it takes a total of five minutes to fire up Acqlite and download any song I want for free, there is no reason at all to be bitching about someone cracking some DRM. The RIAA knows that people pirate and crack iTMS songs, and yet they still haven't pulled the plug. For one obvious reason: they are still making money from the people who can't be bothered and don't know any better who continue to buy music from iTMS in the normal way. And that will NEVER change. Heck, the RIAA is probably happy that they are making money at all from online music, because they remember what it was like back when everyone downloaded through Napster. Money makes the world go round, and the RIAA sees enough of it to let iTMS live, regardless if the DRM is cracked.

Moron #4: "Does he even understand that acessing the ITMS via a different application other than iTunes is a direct violation of the ITMS user agreement?"

(A) He did not agree to the iTMS user agreement, since he is using a different program.
(B) EULAs are not

(B) EULAs are not legally binding.

Moron #5: "When you agree to purchase music from the iTMS you agree to that DRM also"

Show me exactly where in the agreement it says that. Show me the popup in iTMS warning me that I have to accept DRM.