Cracking iTunes' DRM with JHymn 449
comforteagle writes "Howard Wen has interviewed 'FutureProof' of the JHymn project, a DRM removal application for iTunes song files laden, or 'crippled' as some say, to prevent filesharing. FutureProof tells us how Apple's DRM works, how to rip it out using JHymn, how they build on the work of 'DVD' Jon Johansen, and how to upgrade to that brand new iShuffle safely."
Nothing, just as he's done for months now (Score:5, Interesting)
Hymn released a fix in short order - I think back in July? It was a long time ago anyway. And since that time, Apple has done nothing to shut down project-hymn.org. And multiple releases of iTunes since then have done nothing to stop these files from playing - which it cannot do because they are now identical to files that you rip from CD yourself with AAC!!
If Apple could or would do anything about Hymn, they would have done it by now.
Since sales on ITMS have kept going up, no-one really cares if you can break the DRM or not.
I'm not sure if Hymn still does it, but it used to even keep the ID of the owner in the file to make it impractical to share on P2P networks (as it could easily be traced back to the owner). I thougt that was a nice touch to show it really was not meant for piracy.
I use Hymn myself, no to crack my master files but to break them so I can share them at work. The annoying thing about iTunes sharing is that if another user is not authorized to play a song it halts and brings up a dialogue, making true random play over another users library impractical. Once a co-worker and I even went so far as to authorize each others computer to play our music so that we could listen to the libraries of the other.
I don't feel like using DRM cracks for this use is at all like P2P, since it's just streaming the song and not transferring it - plus lots of people discover music they might not have otherwise and it helps those artists out (which I feel P2P does as well, but it's a different and much greyer case).
I'd like to think I'm not cracking anything here.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably still illegal nonetheless, but I really don't feel very 37331 when I do it.
there is no DRM when you burn it as audio (Score:3, Interesting)
iTunes has some limit to the number of burns a playlist can have...... but you can either change the playlist by mixing around one song, or take one burnt CD and just use disc copy on that "master" cd.
Re:I just used JHymn (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I love this shit (Score:5, Interesting)
It was pirated the same; in fact, there was a NO-STEAM a day after release. So you could argue it was less of a hassle for pirates to play it than it was for some users from what i've read
Re:Shill or just don't care about your rights? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you give up control, you get what you deserve.
Which I also believe in. I believing in keeping control... perhaps the JHymn creators do as well. However, ranting about how Fairplay is just like all the other DRM is counterproductive. I believe, currently, that Fairplay sets a good standard.. and that JHymn is a nice "ace in the hole" against it.
Remember, proper "diplomacy" (saying "nice doggie" with the big rock behind your back) doesn't give up control. Just because you're satisfied that other guy is doing what you want, doesn't mean you shouldn't stock up on deterrents.
Re:Why crack it? (Score:4, Interesting)
No per-track at all. A flat-rate or collective license model would work. The collective-license model would work best, since in that case, they could simply allow P2P to operate legally. The users would, in that case, absorb the costs of bandwidth, distribution, and manufacturing of the CD's if desired. All the labels would have to do is sit back and collect the money.
Of course, given that, they could no longer -control- distribution. Might that be the reason for the resistance to something which in every other way is pure profit for them?
However, a flat-rate model would also work. And I'm not talking "RealRhapsody"-I'm talking a per-month flatrate for downloadable, burnable, DRM-free content, with EVERYTHING available, not just whatever few labels they can get to sign on, in (within reason) a format of choice-perhaps choices between .mp3, .flac, .ogg, and a raw uncompressed format.
When they offer that (provided the fee isn't astronomical), I'll have my credit card ready. Until then, I'll keep right on downloading. And by the way, guys-DRM is trivial to break.
Re:I love this shit (Score:3, Interesting)
The act of stripping the DRM puts the user in a different legal position. I think the industry's threshold is the point where users must go to significant lengths to get around it. For projection that, for example, is based on a CD that autolaunches DRM software, users can reasonably argue that they didn't even realize there was protection (they use Mac or Linux, or have autolaunch turned off or something).
I don't think you can really get significnatly better (read: harder to copy) than FairPlay on a general purpose computer. Until you can (eg, DRM hardware is standard), the industry will probably allow the current situation to continue.
Re:DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't flamebait - it's true. DRM costs money - removing it generates revenue. Counterintuitive? Case in point:
An iBook came into my household this christmas. I had heard about iTunes for years, but not being on Windows or Mac, had never seen more than a screenshot. So anyway, I try it out and buy an album I once had but lost to a departing girlfriend. It was cool, but I also knew it was DRMed - and indeed, when trying the file on my linux box - no joy. I didn't buy any more music after that. No way would I pay for music I can only listen to on one computer (I want it to work at home (linux/new mac), work (linux), studio (linux)). So I didn't buy any more music - then I heard about Jhymn - installed it, stripped the DRM off my files, txr over to my linux box, and voila - lot's of joy.
That was about a week ago - I've spent over $30 on iTunes in short time since then (it's frighteningly addictive and easy to click "buy" - especially when sleepy late late at night). Without DRM stripping I would have spent a big fat ZERO.
Moral of the story:I only buy from iTunes BECAUSE I'm able to strip the DRM and play the files on my linux boxes
Re:Jon Johansen? (Score:3, Interesting)
This [sethf.com] is a link.
Re:DRM (Score:2, Interesting)
But *legally* Apple cannot condone any DRM strip scheme. The problem here is not with Apple.
All things considered, Fairplay is a pretty amazing concession from the RIAA in the first place.
Re:DRM (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:DRM (Score:3, Interesting)
Why did you choose to do it the hard way? And more important, are you trying to say that the only place you've got copies of these songs that you bought and paid for is on hard drives? Why didn't you burn them to CD anyway for permanent safe-keeping?
Re:I'd BUY songs on iTunes if they were DRM free (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Buy song(s) on iTunes
2. Burn song(s) to CD-R (which you should be doing anyway for archival purposes)
3. Tell iTunes to rip to MP3 format at an archival-quality (192 kbps or better) bit rate
4. Rip CD-R you just burned to MP3 files
5. Delete original DRM-crippled
Voila, DRM-free songs from iTunes... and you didn't even have to run any cracking tools.
It boggles the mind that so many uber-leet Slashdotter types don't realize that iTunes lets you do this. As soon as you buy a track, you can, and should, convert it to an unencumbered format. After that, nothing Apple or the RIAA do in the future can affect how you listen to the music you purchased.
Re:You know... (Score:2, Interesting)
Your definition is partial - it doesn't include compensation for the act of providing services. The more general definition is to apply the law of supply & demand to "things of value", which includes both property (by the commonly understood definition) and services.
Technically, but I think most people would refuse to accept it if the government something like the color "red" as someone's private property. It might be LEGAL, but that doesn't make it really "property" by a moral, society-beneficial or even common-sense standard.
I think that most people would accept the basic idea of property as something that can be counted or measured. They also understand that this implies that only one person can have a piece of property at a time - if someone else gets the property, then the original person doesn't have it anymore. Even "intellectual property" law doesn't try to apply real property conventions to "ideas", since the people drafting the laws knew that would never fly. Instead, they've set up a bastardized system of a special "legal status" of being a copyright or patent holder as legally-defined property, and let people buy & sell those.
The recording industries have been using extensive propaganda to try and get people to confuse real property with "ideas", but if you start showing people examples of how "intellectual property" law lets people they don't know arbitrarily stop them from doing whatever they want with their own private property, almost everyone except the most die-hard "intellectual property" fanatics get annoyed. People who work out solutions to thorny problems, try to sell a product or service based on those solutions, then get slapped down by bozos abusing the patent office also tend to get annoyed with the so-called "intellectual-property" laws. The main reason some people LIKE intellectual property laws because they see a way where they force people to pay for stuff that people wouldn't ordinarily want to pay for.
I'm not confusing anything - a performance _IS_ a service, with the expectation that if the service pleases the audience, they will compensate the performer somehow. A song on a CD is NOT a performance - it is a hunk of plastic whose value has been increased by encoding something on it which can be converted to pleasing sound waves.
No, trademarks are an intended form of FRAUD protection - to prevent people from fraudently selling product or services associated with another person or company's. They were never intended to be a "product for sale", although a few people have been abusing the trademark laws that way.
Re:Why We Like Breaking DRM (Score:3, Interesting)
" If you want to "support your artists," then you shouldn't give money to the RIAA companies. Fact is that the vast majority of the money you pay for CDs doesn't go to the artists, but to the corporate coffers."
Huh? About 30% of the price you pay for a CD goes to the store that sells it to you. Likewise, most of the money that the record company gets for the CD goes to paying the various people who helped create the CD. "Corporate coffers" sounds like you think it's going into some Gringots-style bank; the reality is that when you buy a CD, a mouse, or most any other consumer good, most of the money you pay ends up paying somebody's salary. In fact, the record industry makes do with margins that are lower than the PC mouse industry, so it's likely that if you buy a CD and a mouse, a higher percentage of the cash you paid for the CD will end up going to help somebody make their living.
"Why do we like breaking DRM? Because if I pay for something, I might want do things with it. You know, throw it on a few computers, play it in my stereo downstairs and also have a copy up at my summer home (I'm dreaming). The Constitution gives us that right, and calls it Fair Use. DRM attempts to defeat our constitutional rights, something that nerds don't like, you dig?"
The constitution says nothing about "fair use rights," and neither does US copyright law [copyright.gov]. If you'd like to learn more, you can read what US code has to say about fair use [copyright.gov]. There's also the Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] and EFF primer [eff.org]. Fair use doctrine gives you a set of legal outs if you're brought into court for copyright infringement (ie. you can attempt to use the guidelines in that section to show that your actions were fair use), but fair use doctrine most definitely does not disallow a rightsholder from taking steps to prevent their work from being copied in an unauthorized manner.
Either way, you're allowed, under fair use doctrine, to make a copy of music you've purchased for personal use. I do this all the time with stuff I've purchased from iTunes, without breaking their DRM -- the folks at Apple who set up the DRM policies took a sensible approach, and their DRM allows me to move tracks between multiple iPods, make backups of the tracks, burn them to CD as often as I want, and even burn multiple copies for friends (which is definitely not fair use, but iTunes doesn't stop me from doing it anyway). In short, Apple's DRM has not stopped me from doing anything I've wanted to that would fall under the realm of fair use. Apple's DRM does not allow me to put a track in a P2P share directory so dozens of people I don't know can download it and listen to it, but that's not "fair use" by any stretch of the imagination.
If you ever come across a music download service that doesn't allow you to make copies for personal use, then that service is retarded and will hopefully die the death it deserves. Apple's DRM is remarkably easy-going, and I think this is one of the reasons that the iTMS is such a wild success.