iTunes v6 FairPlay DRM Cracked 421
luaine writes with an Engadget article claiming the cracking of iTunes v6 FairPlay DRM. From the article: "[A] new app called QTFairUse6 looks like it can now be used (with some amount of difficulty) to dump iTunes version 6.0.4 - 6.0.5 files of their chastely protection." At present this is a Windows-only tool for those who are "not afraid to get [their] hands dirty with a little python." Engadget does not provide a link to QTFairUse6, and neither will we. We've run several DRM stories recently, but it's been 19 months since Cracking iTunes' DRM with JHymn.
Behold... (Score:3, Interesting)
Macs have this ability - via iMovie (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, NOW you won't link to it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google: QTFairUse6 (no results?) (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Macs have this ability - via iMovie (Score:3, Interesting)
I would also disagree with the tone of your post which seems to suggest that you think that the artists get the lions share, or even a reasonable amount of the money which is paid for a song/album - which simply isn't true.
Finally I would say that as far as I am aware artists can get money from allofmp3 is they register with ROMS (although this might be wrong... someone will have to say either way...)
Re:Another Stupid Headline (Score:5, Interesting)
Wired had a good print article on that a few months ago. Summary: you have to get a cell carrier to distribute the phones, and none of them want to let you upload music to your phone for free instead of making you pay to send it through their data network.
Engadget double-standards?? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Haha (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:nothing was cracked (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Another Stupid Headline (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on how you interpret / how far you want to trust the DMCA's Reverse Engineering exception.
Not at all. The DMCA makes illegal the distribution of tools that can be used to break encryption used in copyright protection schemes, not creating or using said tools.
Re:So what (Score:3, Interesting)
What I'd like to see is a system where the music is storted on the computer in the library in a lossless format, and then when you sync your player, if it can fit on as lossless, then that's how it goes. (There are a lot of people running around with half-full or less iPods!) If it can't, then it would start to compress it using the codec of your choice.
Obviously, this could increase sync times a lot -- if you had a player that was filled to the gills as lossless, and then you wanted to add more music to it, you would need to clear the player, and add all the music on as compressed files. (Or at least some of it.) But I don't think this is a deal-breaker; you could do the updating as a batch process at night, when most people just leave their player sitting on its charging cradle.
Computers are fast enough now that I really don't think that the performance hit you'd get during copying, caused by the on-the-fly lossless to lossy transcoding, would really be that big a problem. It's a pretty easy process to multithread, meaning that you can easily take advantage of modern architectures (you have separate threads for at least the decoding and reencoding of each file, and you do multiple files at the same time). In a few more years, we'll probably get to the point where the process would be I/O rather than processor-bound anyway, if chips keep getting faster and computers keep getting more cores. (Unless they start using faster hard drives or memory in portable players.)
Anyway, so I'm not disagreeing with you; people are always going to want to get the most from their investment in a portable player. However, in some cases, getting "the most with what you have" might indicate using a lossless codec instead of a lossy one (if you have a player big enough to fit your music losslessly); I'm just proposing that we make software that's intelligent enough to do the optimization.
Although you do have a point; most people think 128kbit MP3 sounds good, so they might not care.
Not Really (Score:3, Interesting)
God Loves DRM. (Score:3, Interesting)
I always wondered what would have happen to some of the world's major religions if copyright law in its current convoluted form existed at the time of Moses. Would the Ten Commandments be copyrighted? Would Gutenberg have had to pay royalties? Would he have had to pay God? Check or money order? Would churches now have to get a volume license to relate the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah? Would Cain and Abel have gotten 'points'? Gross or net? And when Cain killed Abel, who bought up his rights from his estate?
If the first letter of Paul to the Ephesians was read out loud to the Ephesians by someone other than Paul without Paul consenting in writing, could Paul sue for damages? Or does this qualify as fair use?
If God liked DRM, would the first Bibles be like a big sheaf of blank pages, and when you pay your licensing fee, the words magically appear (only partially illegible due to compression loss)? Or would he just temporarily blind you every time you looked at it until you paid.
Along the same lines, you know how people like to quote scripture? Would God give you a case of laryngitis if you tried to quote scripture without accepting a EULA first? Does the fact that God is omniscient and knows what you're thinking constitute a 'rootkit'?
DRM, always a fun topic.
Re:been there, done that (Score:3, Interesting)