Playfair Relocates to India 334
Lord Grey writes "Imagine my surprise to see playfair 0.5.0 appear on Freshmeat's project list. Remember, the project was pulled after Apple filed a Cease-and-Desist order just a few days ago. playfair's new web site talks a bit about the move, as well as sporting the latest release of the controversial utility."
Check out the sarovar.org statistics... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sarovar will be moving higher on the list of GForge sites [gforge.org] pretty soon... they're # 12 currently...
Re:doubt that will last (Score:5, Interesting)
This is one of the reasons to use Freenet. Projects should be moved there instead of just off shore to countries with less draconian (yet) laws.
Freenet won't allow realtime CVS checkins, but it'd be impossible to remove the software from it using legal means.
Re:For Once I don't Agree (Score:1, Interesting)
Sarovar (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:For Once I don't Agree (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, as soon as I confirmed that PlayFair worked, I celebrated by purchasing $11 worth of music at the iTunes Music Store, which I then promptly stripped of all DRM, and I'll be buying more in the future now that I know that all I have to do is back my files up and I'll have this music for the rest of my life, regardless of what happens to Apple.
So I've actually put money in my friend's pocket.
The one place that Apple's DRM failed me was at the office. My office mates and I share our music libraries, and they weren't able to access my protected music. Yet Apple provides music sharing for the other music I've purchased and ripped from CDs. If it is fair use for my ripped music, it should be fair use for my protected music as well. I don't understand the distinction.
The only law I'm breaking is the DMCA, and my karma (the karma that Jobs refers to) will be just fine, because the DMCA is a bad law that I'm convinced will eventually be struck down. To say that I have fair use of my music, but that I can't use the tools to get that fair use is to say that I don't have fair use at all.
I'll continue to purchase music from iTMS. I'll continue to use PlayFair. I'll continue to pay for my music and get the use out of it that I am entitled to.
Shows many peoples true colors (Score:5, Interesting)
Worst part is that this just adds fuel to the RIAA fire. They view all sharers as a bunch of crooks, and why not? Basically people are saying "We don't give a crap about copyright laws and your rights to have control over your content, oh, but do something against OUR policies (i.e. GPL) and we'll be first in line crying about "when are you going to release the source!! why are you taking advantage of the hard work of others for your own purposes".
Jobs predicted this (Score:5, Interesting)
To be clear, he believes that iTunes, and stores like it. Will primarily succeed because they provide a better experience than P2P for a reasonable cost. The DRM is something that's in there only to appease the RIAA.
Are the AAC files watermarked in any way ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Has any group of people done any research into whether there is any watermarking or identification contained within the cleaned AAC files... ?
IE, two or more users buy the same song, use PlayFair to strip and clean the AAC, and then compare the resulting AAC files... is there any differences ?
Why people complain about price (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple charges $1 per track for a lossily-compressed file.
That would be $11 for a typical Britney Spears CD, according to a quick look at a Britney Spears discography.
When the RIAA was bitterly complaining about piracy justified by "expense of CD", they put out a cost breakdown -- here's one of the news articles [cnn.com] mentioning it.
Let's take a look at this:
Retail Markup is $6.23. Apple says that they're breaking even on iTune audio sales, and only making money on the iPod. Their server hardware and the software backend is a constant cost, and already sunk. Bandwidth is a couple of cents a gig -- let's be generous and say 20 cents/GB. Let's say each AAC is five megs -- that'd be 55 megs. That's about a penny in retail markup to cover those costs that Apple says they're only breaking even on. So far, the price should decrease by $6.22.
Company overhead, distribution and shipping is effectively nil, aside from constant-cost B2B negtiation. The price should decrease by another $3.34, in total $9.56.
Marketing and promotion costs. These should stay the same. Personally, I think that radio (and netradio) stations should be free to play whatever they want, sans royalties, since it's effectively nothing but marketing. But we'll leave the cost, $2.15, in place.
The artist and songwriter recieve $1.99. No decrease.
The signing act and producing record get $1.08. No decrease.
Co-op advertising and discounts to retailers don't really apply in the online world -- a banner ad on Apple's site when buying your music is of negligable bandwidth cost to Apple compared to the bandwidth cost of the audio file -- $.85 decrease.
Pressing album and printing booklet -- doesn't exist in the online world. $.75 decrease.
Profit to label -- $.59, stays the same.
Okay, let's do the math: $.59 + $1.08 + $1.99 + $2.15 + $.01 = 5.82. The price for that Britney Spears CD that used to cost $16 and Apple is selling for $11 should be $5.82 in the online world.
There are numerous other benefits to labels to online music purchases, including the fact that CD audio is lossless and Apple is selling lossy data that is likely to eventually be behind the times in compression algorithm, meaning resales sooner. Cheaper online purchases mean more sales -- and my numbers (unless, of course, the RIAA is lying about their costs and hiding additional profit in per-unit distribution costs or similar) mean that the RIAA makes *more* money in such a scenerio. Returns don't exist -- CDs can be defective, but a bunch of bits is the same bunch of bits when anyone obtains it. Unique per-copy watermarking is easy to do, and watermarking seems to make the RIAA absoutely giggle in delight, so they should like online sales.
Want lossless FLAC quality? It should require about five times the bandwidth -- it should be about four cents more in cost to Apple, or $5.86, for that Britney Spears album.
Now, a couple of assumptions here should probably change, to be realistic. First, the RIAA should probably expect to be making less per-unit, since there's simply less money involved. Second, most retailers aren't going to be happy with just breaking even, and probably are going to want more money (plus, I ignored constant costs, and big business is usually incapable of setting up any computer systems without flushing masses of money down the toilet -- even if data transfer costs should be the dominant expense for a company that makes money by selling data in an automated fashion). That album in lossless FLAC still shouldn't be costing more than $6, which is *half* what Apple charges and provides much better quality.
Good god (Score:5, Interesting)
It does the same DRM removal that iTunes does for you already.
In iTunes, you can burn tracks to CD. Then, you can rip them as unprotected tracks. There's a slight quality hit, but it's still equivalent to the original for purposes of copyright law. All PlayFair does for you above iTunes is save you a CD-RW, a few minutes, and the quality hit. You are left with a non-DRM track that is not substantially different from the PlayFair-stripped track. The copyright violation occurs if you distribute the track to those not licensed to have it.
<RANT>
I'm amazed that any slashdotters at all are willing to put up with any sort of DRM, even the relatively friendly Apple version. It's reasonable for the copyright holder to expect me not to distribute it, but restricting my ability in any way to listen to it on all my computers is ludicrous.
My experience in college radio has shown me that RIAA labels are slimy bastards. I'm not willing to give up rights so they can apply an overzealous solution to a "problem" that might not actually exist. Even if all labels ceased to exist tomorrow, we'd all still be alive, folks.
</RANT>
Maybe I'm smoking crack on this one; would someone care to correct me?
Re:No good can come of this (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me that the DMCA is not working the way that the Media big boys thought it would. Back when DeCSS was released, the MPAA took all kinds of legal action under the DMCA and won, at least in court. Even though the MPAA "won", they lost in the end. I can find DeCSS (and newer programs that were developed from it) all over the Net. The legal action gave DeCSS all of the publicity it would ever need -- and not just in the Geek community.
We are seeing the same thing now with Playfair. What will Apple invoking the DMCA accomplish? It has just given Playfair a big publicity boost that it would not have otherwise had. I'm not saying that Playfair would have remained obscure if Apple had remained quiet, but the end result is lots of publicity not only for Playfair, but also for Sarovar [sarovar.org]. Even if Sarovar eventually takes down the Playfair site, the Playfair program will be available all over the Internet.
It is time to get rid of the DMCA and any other DMCA time laws. All they do is create more "crimes" instead of solving any copyright problems that big Media think they have. Programs like DeCSS and Playfair have legitimate uses that do not constitute a copyright violation under fair use and there are already laws that cover copyright infringement.
Re:For Once I don't Agree (Score:3, Interesting)
It's interesting that you believe so strongly in the rule of law, but your .sig quotes one of the heroes of civil disobedience.
You have to reconcile your belief in the rule of law with your admiration for great men and women who changed the world for the better by breaking laws.
The simple answer is to take one of the extremist views that either 1) the law must always be followed and civil disobendience is wrong, or 2) the law is an ass and we should all just do what we want.
The more sensible approach (IMHO) is that you have to obey the law in general, because that's what's needed in order to function in society. Occasionally you break the law when you feel it's important enough and you're willing to accept the consequences. This is a tough position for moral absolutists because it doesn't give a clear guideline for what's right and wrong. Too bad - life is full of grey areas.
Re:You're not willing to *really* pay the price. (Score:3, Interesting)
Interestingly, I'm still not uncomfortable breaking the DMCA, because, as I said, I don't feel that it is a good law. It should never have been passed.
What does give me pause is your observation that I have broken an agreement with Apple that I have made. I do take my agreements seriously, although I'm sure I'm breaking other agreements as well. For instance, I have created disk images of Neverwinter Nights and Warcraft III to make it more convenient to play them. I copy DVDs to my laptop hard drive when I travel for convenience as well. I never carefully read whatever notices came with those titles and I'm sure I'm violating them as well.
Because I am violating the agreement I made and there are no inconvenient issues, tonight when I return home, I'll restore my backups of the encrypted songs, so one point to you. However, I'll stop making purchases from the iTunes Music Store, so indeterminate dollars lost for Apple and the record labels.
Finally, I never characterized my actions as civil disobedience. As another posted has supplied, it would more clearly be civil disobedience if I had brought my actions to Apple's notice explicitly. Since I have no intention of doing that, I'm merely breaking a law and a TOS for my convenience.
I have great respect for those who feel strongly enough to engage in civil disobedience (at least, when I agree with their aims!), I wouldn't include myself in their ranks.
Now, I'm sure you'll be critical of my decision because you feel I only accepted your point because there's no overriding inconvenience to me. But in truth, I accepted your point because I agree with it and there was no other real issue to weigh against it.
I refuse to accept DRM. (Score:2, Interesting)
this is as it should be (Score:2, Interesting)
The DMCA, while trying to accomplish some lofty goals, is unfortunately a good example of a law written by people that had no clue about the technologies that they were trying to legislate. In some places it seems to be in direct opposition to Fair Use laws that are still in effect, and as with many laws, it reflects more the side that had the most money to spend on lobbyists.
So here we stand, about a year after iTunes debut, an easy solution to removing the DRM has appeared. Here is a 'test' if you will of the current laws and policies. Many more will follow.
This is where things get interesting as far as I'm concerned.
Will apple now change it's scheme to stay ahead of the programmers working to crack the encryption schemes?
Is the DMCA going to survive?
Do Fair Use rights trump the DMCA or visa-versa?
Are we moving to a more restricted use model for purchasing content?
To people who are picking on the author of this program, i think you are missing the point. Were it not him it would have been someone else. Not speaking from a legal point of view, but a human nature point of view, any DRM is a gauntlet thrown down, it's like Mt Everest, people climb it because it's there.
Personally I think there is a place for fairplay, and as long as we move toward the restricted rights model for purchasing content, these tools will only become of more value, and more sought after. When I found playfair I quickly tested it, and finding it did what it claimed to, I promptly removed the DRM from all the tracks I have purchased from iTunes (about 20 CDs worth) because the one thing that bothered me about iTunes was the thought that apple could get out of the music distribution business at some point and decide that FairPlay is no longer needed in quicktime, and I would be stuck with unplayable tracks. I like the fact that with playfair I have unencumbered copies of the tracks I bought that I can play on many platforms. I haven't shared any of my DRM removed tracks. I don't feel I am breaking any laws, I may well be, but that is for the courts to decide. And that is what is needed at this point.
Re:No good can come of this (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a parallel with military strategy here: if you're trying to defeat an enemy, should you attack him at the point where he's strongest, fighting the battle on his terms, or should you go around him and attack from the rear, fighting the battle on your terms? Much like it would have been stupid for the American colonists to fight the British Redcoats in a formation-based battle as was the custom in that day, it doesn't make much sense to take this issue to the (broken) US court system when easier ways of achieving a goal are available.
Also remember, his goal isn't to win some legal victory for fair use rights, it's just to make some software available which allows people to exercise those rights.