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Jon Johansen Breaks iTunes DRM Yet Again
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Mar 22, 2005 09:01 PM
from the bad-jon-naughty-jon dept.
from the bad-jon-naughty-jon dept.
ikewillis writes "Remember earlier today when Apple released an update supposedly blocking the hole in iTMS recently discovered by Jon Johansen? News.com reports that he has already worked around the update, and iTMS can now be accessed from non-Windows/MacOS X systems using the new version of his PyMusique software. You can view his blog entry on the issue (ironically titled So Sue Me). More power to you, Jon!"
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So sue him? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So sue him? (Score:5, Informative)
He's likely acting as a front for another group doing the grunt work who doesn't want the legal exposure.
Given the current legal precedent he's acquired in Norway, it's highly unlikely Apple will be able to prosecute.
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Re:So sue him? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news, I will no longer be going to court for any speeding tickets I get. Since I already went once, and was cleared of charges, it obviously means I can do so again and again.
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FOUL: "Boxen" (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:So sue him? (Score:5, Funny)
DRM company: "Take that!"
DVDJon: "OK, I'll just try holding down the shift key, and..."
DRM company: "Damn, you're good!"
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Re:So sue him? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:So sue him? (Score:5, Funny)
LK
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Re:Apple is the least of his worries... (Score:5, Insightful)
Johansen's app doesn't help to steal music, but allows non-Mac users to BUY it from iTunes. Apple doesn't like it, but it's debatable if even they have been injured in a legal sense.
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Blog Message (Score:5, Informative)
Good for him... (Score:5, Funny)
Any other company would have just had him killed already.
Just develop a Linux version (Score:5, Insightful)
Better story (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no fan of DRM, but it's about time SOMEBODY finally has the right goal in mind. Make legitimacy more convenient. I've been paying $10 a month for nearly 2 years now to Rhapsody. Since then, I've made 0 (zero, just in case any of you thought it was a typo.) MP3 downloads. Why? Their subscription service is significantly faster and easier. Okay, subscription's not for everybody, but the price is right and the service beats P2P.
Believe it or not, the *AA can compete with free. I'm looking forward to the day that this is more widely understood. I really want the instant gratification of buying content on-line.
Re:Better story (Score:5, Insightful)
As you say, the ability to conveniently obtain the music you want has driven your MP3 download count to nothing. Removing the DRM from the bought tracks would only strengthen that impulse, as well as extend it to people like me who won't buy unless there is no DRM (though I also won't be buying until the price is at least halved - the current rate remains exorbitant, even compared to CD prices where I live, and downloading shared music is legal here).
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Maybe Apple doesn't really care if DRM is broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
If Apple really doesn't want to have to use DRM on it's iTunes downloads, and they write patches that are supposed to fix loopholes and these patches are easily defeated...
Is it conceivable that Apple doesn't care if the patches are easily circumvented? "Yeah, we'll fix something we don't really want, and if you happen to break it, you outfoxed us *wink wink nudge nudge*
Just a thought.
I'll bet they do (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's my theory, anyway.
And I'm never wrong.
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Jeez... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. DVD Jon lives in Norway, where the majority of this stuff, including the release of DeCSS which breaks DVD encoding, is illegal. The court case failed.
2. Nobody broke Apple's DRM. All this does is retreive the music before the iTunes client adds the DRM. How is this possible? Apple's iTunes client adds the DRM because it needs the client to generate the key. Doing it any other way would likely be a tremendous processor increase on the iTunes servers.
3. Apple can sue DVD Jon if they choose, but it will likely do no good.
The way I see it, there's only one safe path for Apple. They should release an iTunes client for Linux along with a statement that any further attempt to block their DRM will be followed up with a lawsuit. Sure, the lawsuit part is either a bluff or a waste of time, but at least they eliminate the "It's just so we can run on Linux" argument.
Re:As a record store owner. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:As a record store owner. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your problem is a business model that is becoming increasingly obsolete. Your solution is not to blacklist pirates, but rather to adapt to a market where people legally buy and download music from the Internet rather than purchasing it at physical record stores. If you can't compete in that market, then it's nobody's fault but your own that your business fails as a result.
Failed businesses are nothing to be ashamed of. But you need to do a cost-benefit analysis of each option in front of you. Among them are continuing as you are, adapting to the new marketplace, pursuing your blacklisting system (which only affects pirates, not lawful downloaders), and bailing out.
And remember: Shit happens.
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Re:A Name! (Score:5, Informative)
The only way for Apple to actually fix this hole is to handle DRM encryption server side, unless you consider the problem is unresolved due to the fact that DRM is a fundamentally flawed concept.
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Re:A Name! (Score:5, Interesting)
PyMusick could send the same public key, iTMS would send it the same song, and PyMusic could decrypt the song with its private key, yielding the same unencrypted, DRM-free file. Adding public key cryptography does nothing to solve the problem.
They could use private key cryptography, but the key would have to ship with every copy of iTunes, where it could be discovered through disassembly of the encryption algorithm. This is the exact approach KaZaA used, and it was reverse engineered, but 3rd party KaZaA clients were halted thanks to the DMCA.
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Re:A Name! (Score:5, Insightful)
Allow me to give you a quick refresher on public key encryption. With public key encryption Alice has a public key and a private key. Anything encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the private key. So Alice keeps her private key private and allows Bob to have her public key.
Now let's look at how DRM tries to turn this upside down and fails. With any DRM, the basic concept is that Bob is going to give Alice her private key, but try to keep it totally private from her. By definition it needs to be stored on her device (PC, ipod, whatever) to decrypt what Bob sends her, but he does not want her using it in any way that he disapproves of. So convoluted schemes of symmetric encryption and security by obscurity are developed to store this private key in such a way that only certain programs on Alice's device can access it, but nothing else can (nor can Alice access it directly). However, since the machine is under Alice's control it is only a matter of time before she finds it or figures out how to use it to decrypt data as she pleases. This is why nearly every DRM scheme in history has been broken.
It is a fundamentally flawed concept.
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Hur Hur Hur, private key="secret" (Score:5, Insightful)
And uh, where exactly is this private key going to be hidden on a users own machine that they can't find it? This is exactly the fundamental flaw of DRM everyone keeps talking about. If the client can decrypt it, the client can be hacked. For software clients this is no longer even a question. For hardware clients, we're just not sure yet
Note: Things like Palladium which would try to take away a user's "root access" to their system *might* create a platform that could make hard DRM possible, but that's all thoery until it hits the field. (And it's questionable whether customers will swallow that particular cactus bulb. Some folks speculate the only reason many products *cough*DVD*cough* survive today is because customers know they can get around supposed restrictions.)
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Re:A Name! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Best Solution ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then
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Re:rant (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about getting free music. It's about removing restrictions that traditionally haven't been in place on consumer media. DRM of any kind can become an obstruction even during benign activities traditionally protected under fair use. Sure, i COULD burn my DRMed AACs to a CD then re-rip to an MP3 to get my files onto my NOMAD or CD-MP3 player, but it's a pain in the rear and I'm going to lose my tag info. If there weren't restrictions on the files, that would be a non-issue.
Yes, Apple's DRM is less obtrusive than most, but it still locks you out from things you've traditionally been allowed to do. And that's simply not OK.
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Re:More power to you, Jon! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want to then fine... wait until you upgrade your computer and find that DRM has locked you out because you 'copied' the files to the new one.
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Re:More power to you, Jon! (Score:5, Insightful)
* Copy music to the playback device of my choice.
* Re-sell a product I have purchased (selling a book second hand is legal. Selling second-hand music is also legal. See Doctrine of First Purchase for more details).
Anyone that gives me back my legal rights, is someone who deserves encouraging.
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Re:More power to you, Jon! (Score:5, Informative)
A tip for you and others just in case you didn't know about this company. [magnatune.com]
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More power to you, Jon, and I stand by that! (Score:5, Interesting)
The music industry is plagued by an enormous problem of legacy. Creativity has been stifled by the labels' continuing drive towards commercialization. We have "artists" like Gwen Stefani releasing cover after cover, first covering Talk Talk's It's My Life then covering If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof, and both covers are atrocious. These are examples of an industry which is creatively bankrupt and where profit is the bottom line. It seems like nowadays the only place you can find creativity is in underground music, before the industry has commercialized and destroyed it.
Music needs a new distribution model, one where the artist is in the driver's seat and has complete creative control over their work. The Internet has rendered traditional music labels obsolete, they're aware of this, and they're fighting their eventual downfall tooth and nail. They will lose.
DRM is based around cryptographically unsound principles. In order to play DRM encrypted music you need the encrypted content and the key on your local system. Given this you have everything you need to unlock the encrypted data, it's only through obfuscation in the client that the key is hidden.
Eventually the industry will have to come to terms with this fact and the fact that their distribution model is antequated and obsolete. We need people to continue proving DRM is an unsound technology so eventually they give up on it entirely.
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Re:More power to you, Jon, and I stand by that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because encryption for my personal privacy doesn't infringe on any of your rights whereas DRM infringes yours, mine and everyone elses rights to copy for personal backup, right of resale (doctrine of first sale), right to timeshift and right to reverse engineer for interoperability.
Your arguments and contrasting of issues are not congruent.
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Re:More power to you, Jon! (Score:5, Insightful)
RTFA: the "back door" doesn't strip out the DRM. It merely lets you play it on Linux - if you want to get it, you need to buy it.
As iTunes already allows you burn purchased tracks to CD (allowing them to be ripped into MP3s according to the article), all this does is allow you to play music you purchase. After all, what are the odds that the music you steal is DRM'd when there's so much un-DRM'd music to steal instead?
All this is doing, as far as I can see, is filling a hole in the market by producing a player that works under Linux. Heck, they're not even releasing a Windows version - Windows already has a free-as-in-beer player in iTunes.
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Re:More power to you, Jon! (Score:5, Insightful)
people have been broken. they are weak and without principles.
that's why most refer to themselves as "consumers" these days.
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Re:More power to you, Jon! (Score:5, Insightful)
You certainly don't have to buy it, nor use it (especially since using without buying it would be stealing it), but frankly I don't think it's your place or anyone else's to tell people not to subvert it. People have a moral right, and perhaps a duty, to work to subvert things they think are unjust. And while I personally don't really feel that FairPlay is terribly unjust, I have a certain amount of understanding for those that do. If you want to argue morals, fine--but as someone who otherwise agrees with you, I take offense to the suggestion that people should not actively work against causes they find repressive.
If people think it's wrong, they're going to do their best to subvert it (regardless of what 'it' is). And as long as they're doing it from countries where this subversion is legal (ones without DMCA-like laws, in the case of DRM) then
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Re:More power to you, Jon! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes it does. Their business model is based on "First Sale Doctrine" and that model is moot in a digital world where the cost of reproduction is esentially zero. And so they are attempting to create new laws in congress so that they can sustain their business model. I believe Robert Heinlein put it best:
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit.
The copyright owners own the content, period, and get to decide how it's used, by whom, and under what conditions, whether you like it or not.
Wrong! Try reading the Constitution sometime. Once a work is published it is by its very nature a public work. They government grants the origiator a limited time copyright and with it come certain restictions and allowances. The inablity to resell or otherwise use the work in personal ways is beyond the scope of the granted copyright. These technologies are attempts to add restrictions to these works so that they become the sole distributor and "Second Sale" and personal use become impossible.
They don't have to encrypt the music. Apple is well within its rights to sell the music in the ways it sees fit on its own service.
Yes they are, and I am well within my rights under the constitution to place that music on phonogragh, tape, eight track, cd and any and all music playing devices I own.
Additionally, this argument is worthless, because even if it was encrypted, you'd be on the side of arguing that it's ok to break the encryption.
If GM sold cars with that only accepted gas from GM gas pumps and I removed their gas tap and replaced it with a standard gas tap, would I be breaking the law?
If you don't believe in copyright, licenses, or "trade secrets"
This isn't about doing away with copyrights and licenses completely. Its about returning to what copyright laws original intent was "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" and not to line the pockets of the middle men over and over again.
Oh, I forgot, those things only apply to the things you want it to, not corporate interests.
Please read the eighth section of the first article of the constitution I don't see anything in there about corporate interests. What I do see is the promoting of scientific progress and useful arts which are clearly public interests.
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Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it" (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, your "rights" are not being violated by DRM.
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Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it" (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed that is one the problems with Digital Rights Restriction, and the DCMA. The DCMA allows companies to Rights Restrict copyrighted works in perpetuity, granting them an illegal end run around the constitutional limits of copyright terms.
In the mean time, it is important that traditional copyrights activists use the correct terminology to describe this restriction on consumer rights, Digital Rights Restriction.
Until we are able to discuss content control systems by an accurate name, we will never be able to have an honest discussion of the issues involved.
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Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it" (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it" (Score:5, Funny)
Wow. All this brand new vinyl I bought the other day must be a figment of my imagination. Time to lay off the acid...
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Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it" (Score:5, Insightful)
True. It is. Personally I couldn't care less if they locked up all the music in the world. I am much more worried about the bigger picture, as you say. I don't know if I fight enough. But I write, and I try to inform. But no one listens. Quite frankly, not many of us are fighting the onslaught. No one cares, because they can still sit back in their vinyl chair and watch boobies from satellite with their 55" TV they bought at 22% interest from Best Buy.
Ask anyone not a regular reader of Slashdot what they're doing to send Orrin Hatch a clear message to leave our computers alone. They'll look at you as if you're eyes just fell out. Ask them if they're fighting Trusted Computing. They won't have an inkling of what you're on about. Ask them if they hate the draconian licensing scheme of Windows XP. They don't care. Ask them what the perpetual copyright is doing to our Public Domain... Ask them why we are constantly giving up our individual rights for the rights of a faceless corporation. As long as the mob has their reality TV and buckets of beer, they won't lift a finger.
I wish more of us were proactive. I wish I did more, honestly. The world is in need of some no-doze because the planet's spiraling out of control.
I can only hope the line that wakes up the unwashed masses isn't too far down the road. But, in the smaller picture... it's just music. I don't necessarily give two monkeys about it anyway.
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Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it" (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not? Today, the iPod may be your device of choice, but what if, tomorrow, a company comes out with a much, much better device. Will you still be happy? You won't if you bought Rights Restricted songs from Apple. Your songs will live and die on that iPod like a caged animal and your investment will forever be tied to Apple's largesse--and the life-span of your iPod. Your argument is like a person in a locked room saying he chooses to stay in the room of his own free will, not realizing that he can't open the door should he ever decide to leave.
The term "Digital Rights Management" is a misnomer. It doesn't let you, the consumer, manage anything. The proper term is Digital Rights Restriction because the technology restricts the ways you are allowed to use your music in ways that copyright law does not allow rights holders to restrict you. You are legally allowed to resell copyrighted material, including digital media like CDs and DVDs. DRR prevents you from exercising your legal rights.
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Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it" (Score:5, Insightful)
And before that, it was called "Copy Protection." The language we use to discuss the issue of content control frames the discussion. There is no reason to let the content industry frame the issue with the misleading term "management" just because it works for them. The Orwell inspired name for Microsoft's total system lockdown, "Trusted Computing" is a fine example--and it is the one that Stallman is calling into question with the counter term "Treacherous Computing". Tomorrow the industry may try to say their Rights Restriction technology is Consumer Media Choice technology, and we shouldn't let them get away with that, either.
However, in the case of content control systems Digital Rights Restriction more accurately describe the technology from a consumer perspective. This technology doesn't let consumers manage anything, it manages them by restricting their rights to use their digital media.
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Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it" (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now there is not a choice unless you want to pay thousands extra to purchase a single brand closed solution that might ultimately fail or be shut down which would lead to all that music being unusable. You can have the data, you just can have access to it.
I buy CD's because usually they are cheaper for me than buying indivdual songs (everything I listen too is worth buying the whole album.). I take them home, rip to a 256 or 320kbps VBR MP3 and stack the CD along with the thousands of others that I have. It sits there collecting dust because I have a harddrive player in my car, I stream whatever I want to work and I own a portable mp3 player. I have never used P2P to share my music, I checked out some of the stuff on napster about 5 years ago and it was all crap quality so it wasnt worth my time.
Now lets say they stop making CD's. Where does that leave me ?
Lets say they update the itms and/or ipod firmware to only play songs encoded with the "new" codec, where does that leave you ?
You wanna trust them with your data, go ahead. Me ? I am going to keep fighting. If I purchase something I own it and should have the right to do what I want with it.
I would also point out that Jon's work isnt to make the songs work on other mobile devices, thats a side effect. The idea is to allow people who dont use a corporate OS (Windows, MAC) to use the itms. To the best of my knowledge none of the current major label online soulutions offer a "plain jane" high quality mp3, or a way to work with linux. (I might be wrong since I have never tried)
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Re:Companies won't let us "Get over it" (Score:5, Funny)
MTV has obtained exclusive contracts such that certain music videos could only be found on MTV.
MTV still plays videos?
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Re:This Is NOT to Be Applauded (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps it's more like bringing your own tupperware with you when you go to the restaurant, so that you can take the food with you and eat it anywhere you want.
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Re:This Is NOT to Be Applauded (Score:5, Insightful)
And Rosa Parks knew what she was getting into when she refused to give up her seat on the bus. Knowing that your are going to have your rights violated by a business does not mean that you have no right to complain. Your not suggesting that Rosa Parks should have moved to the back of the bus because |She knew what she was getting into| are you?
"Creating these hacks is really like taking the silverware and plates out of a restaurant when you know you are really paying just for the food."
No, it is like taking the onions off your burger when you know that the menu shows the burger WITH onions.
"It's so hypocritical how slashdot really realy really hates GPL violators, but cheers something like this."
This is nonsensical. Most people that hate GPL violators, hate them because the GPL violators are performing the same act as the DRR (Digital Rights Restriction) groups are doing. Building their projects on the shoulders of those that came before, then trying to stop anyone else from doing the same. It's not about honoring or breaking a license. It's about submitting an idea to society, then trying to control the idea, even if it means that part of our culture is lost to future generations.
Fox Movie Channel [thefoxmoviechannel.com] tells why DRM/DRR is a catastrophy in the making.. "Sadly, 90% of films made during the silent era are gone, due to neglect or chemical decomposition. 50% of films made before 1950 have suffered a similar fate." Much of our cultural history was lost. Now that we have ways for millions of people to help stop this from happening again, DRR shows up, and we are faced with it all happening again.
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Re:Whack a mole (Score:5, Insightful)
[Record Labels, to Apple] Sorry, you can't guarantee security with your store, so we won't license the music to you anymore.
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Re:Yes, more power to you! (Score:5, Insightful)
Like I said earlier today, I could buy music from the iTunes store, which comes in a mediocre sound quality (compared to DRM-free CDs), in a format that doesn't work with my portable music player. Then I could burn it to a CD, then rip the CD into another lossy format to lose even more quality, all just so I could use the music like I want to. Honestly, it would be a lot easier to just obtain the music illegally, because I'm not gonna run out and buy an iPod or sit at my computer all day. To be honest, I've decided to stick to CDs for now.
To keep the ease of use and freedom we already have with music, we have to recognize this DRM for what it is: a power grab. Anybody with half a brain can see it is pretty much just as easy to share music you rip off a CD as it is to share music you've downloaded. Whether you consider the DRM a hassle or not, there is no doubt that you are losing control you once had. Why would you want to pander to these people and their anti-consumer goals?
The way I see it, the music labels themselves are hurting online legal music, because I would be buying singles and so on, if I didn't get less rights and more hassle out of it. As far as I'm concerned, they can just not have my money, you know? I'm not going to encourage what they are doing. Hurting the iTunes music store or this kind of locked up DRM business model doesn't seem so bad.
As for the people cracking these DRM schemes, well, its not necessarily illegal, depending on how free of a nation you live in. It's hard for me to see it is inherantly unethical either. It's not like the music is being being taken without paying.
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DRM threatens everybody (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it only hurts schemes that rely on DRM. It doesn't hurt on-line music sales that don't rely on DRM.
After all, we can't just NOT BUY THE SONGS if we don't like the DRM, right?
The existence of DRM still threatens me because as long as people erroneously believe that they can make DRM work, they will be trying to put all sorts of bogus technological protections in my hardware.
So, I don't buy DRM'ed music, but I still consider it very important, and applaud, that people break the hokey DRM schemes that companies try to build business models around.
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Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Thanks! (Score:5, Insightful)
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