Apple serves Cease & Desist to Hymn Project
updated 11:05 am EST, Mon February 25, 2008
Hymn Project shuts down
The creators of the Hymn Project have once again been forced to shut down, a site moderator has announced. Apple has served the current website with a cease-and-desist order, insisting that all downloads of the associated software be removed. The moderators are further blocking anyone from linking the software on the site, or even pointing people to functionally similar applications.
The Hymn software is meant to strip Apple's copy protection from music bought at the iTunes Store, without any loss in audio quality. Although the FairPlay technology is nominally meant to block music piracy, Hymn's founders note that it also prevents owners from listening to tracks under operating systems such as Linux, or loading them onto non-Apple media players. Similarly, FairPlay limits users to five computers, and makes it difficult to create backups without burning CDs. The coders of Hymn thus defend it as enabling fair use.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jul 2004
Unfortunate
That the record labels (and Apple to some extent) have been so short-sighted about DRM. I stopped buying iTunes tracks when Hymn stopped working and I went to listen to music on my Powerbook and it would not work because it lost the authorization. This happened at a cabin in the middle of nowhere, with no internet connection available. My music became useless - thank goodness I had some CD's handy.