Apple Sends Cease-and-Desist To the Hymn Project

Troed writes "Tools for removing DRM from iTunes-purchased songs (myFairTunes7, QtFairUse6) have been available from the Hymn Project Web site for some time. These are legal in many countries. But on the 20th Apple sent a Cease and Desist note to Hymn's ISP, forcing the site admins to remove all download links. It is speculated that this is due to a new tool being created (Requiem) that attacks Apple's FairPlay DRM through cryptographic means instead of by copying the unprotected music from memory while it is being played. But since the tools are no longer available (after several days there are still no public mirrors), discussion around this topic has died out. Many users buy music from the iTunes store and rely on DRM removal to be able to play the content on their mobile phones. Apple may be on dangerous ground here, since those users might now start checking out competing services."

Evil

Now tell me how is this not evil and not unlike Microsoft?

Re:In Apple's defense

Yes, the evil pirates are ruining iTunes by not using it to buy their mus-wait, what?

Try more along the lines of buying coke from a small grocery store and then pouring the coke into a big jug so it takes up less space in your fridge, then discarding the cans.

Re:In Apple's defense

Your analogy is flawed. A better analogy would be walking into a store and buying a coke. When the coke is bought you find out that it is, in fact, chained to the store and you have to drink it inside. Hymn is the glass you pour the coke into in order to be able to chill outside where you want to be.

Re:In Apple's defense

because apple makes money selling ipods and anyone buying competing music players is STEALING from apple's investors.

torrents

I assume that anyone who has the original installer could upload it to the pirate bay as a torrent, right?

Re:torrents

A new version of itunes doesn't just come out for bug fixes and enhancements. Apple is well known for both passively and actively combating software that works against their DRM.

I had an itunes plugin awhile ago that mounted a second ipod on your itunes list, with an important difference. You could drag music FROM the second pod to your library. Very neat hack, using apple's built-in plugin architecture for itunes. It didn't break any of the rules.

At that time there were three itunes updates in two weeks. The first two attempted to detect and deactivate the plugin, looking for strings of code from the plugin. Each time the author quickly released a newer version that got around the checks. The third release of itunes in that run looked specifically for the plugin by name, and deactivated it. The author at that point decided he was fighting a battle he wasn't going to win, and stopped releasing updates.

Now while I think he should have kept trying, as the mac users would not have tolerated a new itunes update every week, I see why he did it.

The problem with the torrent isn't that it's hard to distribute an old release, it's that it's hard to keep distributing new updates every week after apple breaks it again. That's why they had a web page for updates, and that's why apple CnD'd it.

The CnD is questionable, and it's very likely there was no legal teeth to it. The text of the CnD is usually just a formality covering up the sabor rattling of a large company that is ready to drag you into a meritless yet expensive lawsuit, to discourage your legal behavior.

Good old DMCA.

It is speculated that this is due to a new tool being created (Requiem) that attacks Apple's FairPlay DRM through cryptographic means instead of by copying the unprotected music from memory while it is being played.

And that's where they went wrong. The message being that apparently it's okay to copy something that's already available in the clear, but you just can't go around trafficking in naughty circumvention measures. Darn those pesky programmers and their fancy code...

Damn Sony and their DRM!

Another draconian legal tactic by a truly evil company! I would never touch on of their prod... oh wait, Apple?

Ooh, look over there! Shiny!

Re:Damn Sony and their DRM!

I know you are using irony, but actually this kind of sarcasm with Apple is often not fully understood here, so don't be surprised when the "flamebait" or "troll" moderations begin to rain on you.

back OT, back in 1999 (I think, don't remember it exactly), one at my university user was publishing some Windows XP themes created by him which gave Aquas look and feel to XP (OK a far look and feel but anyway). After a week we got 5 (F I V E !!!!) letters in 2 days from Apple's hounds trheating us with legal actions if we don't inmediatelly deleted those icons and themes from our servers.

We obviously deleted them because nobody likes legal problems here for nothing, but anyway, that was overeacting: all other themes from BeOS, OS2/WARP, Super Mario, The Coke theme are still inplace and nobody reacts. Hey, that's free ads for them anyway... But hey, that's Abble for you!

Why bother with the iTunes Store anymore?

Why does anyone still shop at the iTunes Store for music if they want DRM-free songs? Just use Amazon.

Re:Why bother with the iTunes Store anymore?

Why does anyone still shop at the iTunes Store for music if they want DRM-free songs? Just use Amazon

Some of us want particular songs. iTMS has many more songs than Amazon at this point.

Re:Why bother with the iTunes Store anymore?

Why does anyone still shop at the iTunes Store for music if they want DRM-free songs? Just use Amazon.

So, what part of the United States do you live in?

Yeah, okay

Apple on dangerous ground? They may lose .01% of their market! People who crack the DRM on iTunes (and their purchase hinges on that) are a tiny part of the market. I can understand both sides here (Apple kinda has to do this or the record companies, who don't like Apple enough as it is, will get even more pissed, but the crackers want fair usage of their music), but saying that Apple is on "dangerous ground" is more self-important internet crap.

Re:Yeah, okay

Apple on dangerous ground? They may lose .01% of their market! [..] saying that Apple is on "dangerous ground" is more self-important internet crap.

You got there before me :)

I'm not sure if this is a geek-specific variant version of the "I'm an important customer so they should do what I want or watch out", or if it's just the less arrogant(?) but equally deluded flaw of Slashdotters to assuming that their views and behaviour are representative of more than a tiny percentage of the market. Probably a mixture- they're both facets of the same thing anyway.

The latter case is something like when people say "I [or 'people'] would be more likely to buy the PSP if they removed the DRM restrictions etc. and let me do what I liked with it". Sorry, but a guaranteed sale to 1, or 5 or 500 people is going to be vastly outweighed by the profits Sony thinks (or hoped) it'll make by tying down the machine and selling people content or applications instead of letting them add their own.

I mean, personally I'd have been far more likely to buy a PSP if it had been more hackable or at least an open development environment, but I'm under no delusions as to my importance in the market, or to what Sony actually want.

Beating the Bully

If someone gets a Cease & Desist letter threatening them with harm if they don't c&d, then fights it in court and shows the C&D was invalid, the court should treat the sender of the C&D letter like any other bully making threats. Fine them, count a strike against the attorney who wrote it (and start disciplining/disbarring them after some number of strikes in some period of time). And find damages to cover the time the recipient had to spend to straighten this out when they weren't wrong.

And when the C&D sender loses such a case, every other recipient of such a letter should be able to file to get the same results applied to their own case, if they can prove it was the same circumstances (which should be cheap, easy and quick if they were indeed the same). That should load up the fines and strikes on the sender and their lawyers.

Which in turn will deter lots of these C&D letters, especially when they're just bluffing (and they know it). Why should a law license and a retainer let these bullies litter the land with their C&D letters that get enforced with just the threat of intimidation, but which don't have a legal leg to stand on (or ever have to demonstrate they do)? They should have to face some consequences for abuse themselves.

As a myFairTunes user...

I will have be forced to stop using the iTunes store if the Hymn project disappears. I don't own an iPod—I don't *want* an iPod—but I do want to play my music on the Linux-powered media box in my living room. Is that really too much to ask?

Re:As a myFairTunes user...

but I do want to play my music on the Linux-powered media box in my living room. Is that really too much to ask?

Yes, because Apple isn't trying to sell music to Linux users, they're trying to sell iPods. Maybe there was a big need for Hymn back when the iTMS was the only store around with major recording artists (I mean ones you heard on top-40 stations, not college rock stations), but with Amazon's store seemingly redundant with Apple's catalog, why don't you just start using them instead?

The only dangerous ground apple is in..

The only dangerous ground apple is in is with record companies if they don't aggressively pursue DRM faults/breaks/violations. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that apple has clauses in their contracts with these companies that force them to maintain their DRM updated, track offenders and litigate where necessary.

This is not to say that apple is blameless. They aren't. Apple, at this point, has had the chance to shame record labels (at least them. It appears we are doomed to repeat this nonsense with video) into changing their contracts. They took the opportunity to sound like a white knight in copyleft circles for a few weeks and did nothing. Maybe this was because companies were intransigent in negotiation. Maybe it is because apple's commitment to DRM free media was less than sincere. Probably both.

Part of what is allowing this silliness to happen is the dMCA itself. These folks can be send a CnD because they might be cryptographically breaking DRM, but regular old listening and rerecording is ok. The anti-circumvention clause allows companies to litigate in the absence of real infringement. That is the problem.

Cease and Desist *Letter* not *Order*

A C&D letter [wikipedia.org] is no more than a nasty letter from a lawyer asking (no matter how it is worded) you to quit doing something his client doesn't like. In other words, really expensive toilet paper.

A C&D ORDER on the other hand, comes from a court and you'd better do what it says or risk pissing off the judge. Almost always a bad idea.

In any case, a C&D Letter can be responded to by a letter of your own back to the sender requesting "clarification", setting off a torrent ( :-) ) of correspondence that could level a forest while consuming time as you continue to do as you please. Or you could just use it to pre-emptively go to court and threaten the sender with attempting to interfere with your business/life/whatever by harassing you. And you will have the letter/evidence in hand, signed by the sender.

And of course, in the greatest of Slashdot Traditions, IANAL.

Re:Why put up with that crap?

In my view you can't steal something unless you're depriving the original owner of it's use. Copying is copyright infringement, and whether that's right or wrong is left an an exercise to the individual.

Re:It's theft of service

Let's say you go get a hair cut. Then you walk out without paying for it. You haven't deprived anyone of physical property, however it is still "theft of service".

But you aren't paying for an item, you're paying for the time and energy that the barber uses to cut your hair. If a barber chooses to cut your hair, then he doesn't have that time available to cut somebody else's. Theft of service is a concept which was developed to deal with times when the commodity being sold was both rivalrous and intangible so that services that people need would be available to those willing to pay. It isn't a concept which logically extends to items which are either non-rivalrous or are tangible in nature.

If you were to download a song or software program off of a p2p network, you haven't prevented the bits from being sold to other people, the business is no better, or worse, off than it would have been had you chosen to not use it at all. In some ways, the company might even be better off for you having done it, because if you've downloaded an installed their program in that manner you haven't joined a competitors install base, and they can use the install as an indication of prevalence anyways.

I wish trolls like you would come up with a better set of analogies, because this is just as tired as it always was, and it isn't even logically consistent.

I don't personally agree with downloading content without respecting the licensing agreement and paying any relevant fees, but it really undermines the interests of the content producers to have trolls like you trying to make analogies which are as severely distorted as this one is. This isn't any different than any other situation where you have free riders using a resource without contributing to its creation or upkeep.

Re:You don't need software...

What's more convenient? Software removing DRM in a matter of seconds from songs that I paid for, or CD burning, which not only takes several minutes but also uses a CD? I think these smart kids you refer to know what the right answer is.

Re:You don't need software...

The easiest way to remove Apple iTunes DRM is to burn an audio CD with your tracks. Then, rip the CD to MP3. In fact, Apple tells you this explicitly on their website in the tech support section. There are several advantages to this, the number one being, you don't have to run fly-by-night, I-don't-know-this-person, hey-ma-look-at-that-keylogger-go greyware to do it. You just need a fucking CD BURNER.

And I thought /. kids were smarter than this.

That's also the easiest way to butcher the quality. QTFairuse was lossless. It captured the decrypted aac stream before it was decoded and then put it in a new, DRM-free, container. Plus, it was licensed under the GPL and written in Python.

Yes you do.

/. kids are smart enough to know that transcoding decreases the sound quality, and burning to CD is a waste of money.

But judging from the other comments here, while they're self-righteous enough to bitch about DRM, they don't have the fucking backbone to just not buy DRM'ed music.

Re:Steve Jobs = Hypocrite

So he bashes DRM http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/ [apple.com] and then turns around and has his company issue a take down for anti-DRM software? That's awfully two-faced.

I don't think that is two-faced. Jobs position has always been that DRM on music is counter productive and a flawed concept. His position has also been, that it is a necessary evil if you want to do business with the RIAA cartel which controls the music distribution in the US. First he pushed for the most user friendly and unrestrictive DRM of any company reselling RIAA music. Then he pushed to get them to sell some music with no DRM, for a slightly higher price.

Sometimes you can not agree with something, but still have to put up with it to do business.