DVD Jon's DoubleTwist Unlocks the iPod

An anonymous reader writes, "On the 5-year anniversary of the iPod, Fortune Magazine has an article called Unlocking the iPod about Jon Lech Johansen's new venture. Slashdot briefly covered DoubleTwist earlier this month, and those of you who complained that he was not enabling iPod competitors to play FairPlay files will be happy to learn that according to the Fortune article he will also be going after the hardware market." From the article: "As [Johansen] and Farantzos explain DoubleTwist in a conference room they share with several other companies, he points to a sheet of printer paper tacked on the wall that has a typed quote Jobs gave the Wall Street Journal in 2002: 'If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own.' As Johansen sees it, Jobs didn't follow through on this promise, so it's up to him to fix the system... Johansen has written [two] programs...: one that would let other companies sell copy-protected songs that play on the iPod, and another that would let other devices play iTunes songs."

Re:iTunes is the real concern..

[jb.hl.com]

If you email Apple they'll let you download all your music again through iTunes.

Re:iTunes is the real concern..

[Sharkus]

Not strictly true. iTunes 7 willallow you to transfer iTMS songs on your iPod to another computer, have a look here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iTune sMac/7.0/en/2586x.html [apple.com] I'm also sure that it is possible to get Apple to let you download your purchased tracks again. I think you're limited to doing it once a year or some other very infrequent period. I'm trying to find the support doc that details this, as I have read it in the past.

Re:iTunes is the real concern..

[berj]

Think again... apparently you get a one-time get out of jail free card.

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2006/09/a pple_gave_me_b.html [typepad.com]
http://digg.com/apple/Itunes_Lets_People_Re-Downlo ad_all_Your_Music_Once_ [digg.com]

A call/e-mail to apple's tech support may be in order for you.

Note that I've not verified this but I'll take Wil's word on it. In any case it's worth a try.

Re:DMCA

[truthsearch]

Not the most recent copyright act [wikipedia.org].

Re:iTunes is the real concern..

[Y-Crate]

.. at least, it is for me. I bought some music from iTunes a while ago, when my iPod was still working, and - oh the irony - lost it when I switched over to a Mac Mini. So what did I do? I tried to download the music in question, since I'd paid for it, right? Apparently not - once you've downloaded music on iTunes, you don't get to download it again. What a waste of money.

This is your fault for not reading the terms of service, which are quite clear that you are paying for the rights to the song and the bandwidth to download them once.

When you are selling literally billions of tracks, letting everyone re-download their files over and over again is a great way to burn cash. Apple's bandwidth bill would be simply ridiculous if they permitted it. iTunes isn't like the new version of Windows Media Player which will let you back up your files, but not the licenses that go with them. You can put the files anywhere, on as many computers as you like and request that any computer they are on be authorized to play them, with a maximum of 5 computers authorized to actually play them at any given time. You can individually authorize and de-authorize computers at will, as often as you like, or manually de-authorize them all at once once a year if you reach the maximum number of authorized computers. Not the "You can only authorize 5 computers and if you want to change that you can only do it once a year" misinformation that is always talked about.

iTunes has an integrated backup feature [stunningabsurdity.com] that will sync your entire library or just purchased files to CDs or DVDs.

You are just another in a long line of customers that don't bother to pay attention to the terms they agreed to, only to be surprised when things don't turn out the way they want them to.

Re:Jon Lech Johansen has it wrong...

[UncleFluffy]

It's actually a lot easier than that. Use a faked-up sound driver that dumps the audio to a file. Works every time.

Re:Jon Lech Johansen has it wrong...

[spirit_fingers]

There are actually quite a few non-Apple players that support unprotected AAC. AAC is not an Apple-proprietary format. It's owned by Dolby and Apple is merely a licensee.

Re:iTunes is the real concern..

[Anonymous Coward]

If he didn't expect to need to, despite the fact that every time you download somethign from iTunes it says, right there, that you should immediately make a backup copy of your music, this is the only copy Apple will give you, I'd say..'See dumbass...THIS is why we keep harping on you to make backups!'

Re:DVD Jon's not going about it right

[RAMMS+EIN]

``The problem isn't that he's writing software that allows people to copy music to other devices they own. As has been said, that's allowed.''

Not if it involves "circumventing technical measures" that prevent you from doing that. At least, where I live, the law is very clear in that it's illegal to circumvent such technical measures, even for the purpose of doing things that are otherwise allowed.

Re:DMCA

[tranceyboy]

there is legal room when you aim is to establish interoperability, the illegal comes when it's jsut meant to curcumvent, ie illegal uses.

Re:DMCA

[Richard_at_work]

In short, no. In long, I wish Slashdotters would actually read the laws that they assume 'protects' them before commenting on them. Sheesh, Im not even American and I bet I know more about American Copyright Law than most American Slashdotters, purely because I read it before discussing it. Hint - Fair Use is not as wide ranging as some on this site seem to believe, even leaving the DMCA out of the equation for simplicities sake.

Re:iTunes is the real concern..

[TheGavster]

Yes, because iTunes should keep a backup for you in perpetuity because your an idiot.

iTMS already has a 'backup'; the server-side copy that they're selling to everyone else. And you'd be a fool not to believe that they archive every single user's buying history (Heck, probably even what songs you sample) for marketing/later resale. All's that missing is a connection between the two (which, given other posts in this thread, apparently already exists if you call in person to ask for it).

Re:DMCA

[ocelotbob]

Nope. Interoperability is explicitly allowed. [copyright.gov] Much to the chagrin of some copyright nazis.

Re:Cool Jon!

[obsidianpoet]

And to think, Steve Jobs did not have to spend one cent of Apples money to make good on that promise and the end result is still the same :)

Re:Jon Lech Johansen has it wrong...

[spirit_fingers]

Sony and Archos both have models that play unprotected AAC files, as does Microsoft's Zune. There are others too. A good place to find more info on this is here:
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/ [anythingbutipod.com]

Re:DMCA

[tkrotchko]

"However realize when you buy an Ipod, you're agreeing to use it the way Apple says you can."

No you're not.

I just bought a 30G video iPod from Apple, and I didn't agree to that when I bought it. Nor was there anything in the packaging, and interestingly, I didn't have to agree to anything when I turned it on (no EULA was present).

Further, people buying a used iPod didn't agree to anything like that either.

So I think this statement is false.

Re:What's the difference?

[AeroIllini]

If I buy a CD, I can stick it in my computer and rip it into iTunes. That's legal, right?

If I buy a DVD, why can't I do the same thing? Rip it into iTunes, put it on my iPod, import it into other programs and play with it, etc.

Here's the answer to your question:

A Redbook standard compliant CD (with the little CDAudio logo) does not have encryption or other protection placed on the music. The raw 44.1 kHz stream is encoded on the disk for all the world to read. Making a non-infringing copy of this stream for yourself and manipulating it is legal under Fair Use (and to a certain extent, the Home Audio Recording Act of 1992).

An IEEE standard compliant DVD encrypts the video content with a symmetric key system (CSS), and then hides the key on a non-writable section of the disc. Breaking this encryption violates patent and/or contract law. The interoperability clause of the DMCA, which DVD Jon uses as his basis for the legality of his system, allows you to break the CSS encryption on DVDs in order to play them on your Linux box. However, the patent on the CSS encryption system allows the DVD Copy Control Association to only license the technology to companies that pay a licensing fee; creating an implimentation of CSS without paying the licensing fee violates patent law, and creating an incomplete version of the spec (for example, ignoring the Do Not Fast Forward flag) violates the contract you signed when obtaining a license. The reverse engineering is legal, but the implementation of the reverse-engineered technology is illegal, under different laws. Unencrypted DVDs are legal to rip, for the same reasons it is legal to rip CDs.

That's the way it is, and the reason why ripping a CD is legal and copying a DVD is not legal. The question of whether this is how things SHOULD be is left as an exercise for the reader.

Old news - download jhymn

[phatvw]

Just get jHymn to strip the copy protection of your downloaded tracks, then convert them to whatever format you wish:
http://hymn-project.org/jhymndoc/ [hymn-project.org]

There is even a previous slashdot article [slashdot.org]...

Re:DMCA

[bjpowers39]

I have repeatedly read the speculation that EULA's are not enforceable so I decided to check case law on the subject. A quick search shows that they have been upheld (at least in FL). Specifically, Salco Distribs. LLC v. Icode, Inc., 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9483 (D. Fla. 2006) enforced a forum selection clause in some business software made by a company in Virginia. In order to do this, the federal court in FL had to find that the EULA was a binding contract. This is not exactly what is being discussed in this thread b/c the contract was between two businesses and the software company had really covered everything.

On a more general level the court said "In Florida and the federal circuits, shrinkwrap and clickwrap agreements are valid and enforceable contracts." The court then cited several cases to make the point, with a major one being ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996). This one dealt with academic software being used in a commercial setting. The terms restricting use to academia was included in the EULA printed on the shrinkwrap, and is much closer to purchasing the ipod and using the itunes software. In that case, the court determined that the EULA was a binding contract.

I could do more research to figure this out, however, I have a bunch of homework to do as well. Given that IANAL (merely a law student) you can and should take anything I say with a large grain of salt, however, I would not just dismiss EULAs out of hand. If enforcement of the EULA would be very painful or prohibitive, you probably want to really think about what you are doing. I am not saying it is good law or that this is the way that things should be, but I would not count of a defense of unenforceability on EULA contracts.