FairPlay DRM reverse engineered

[MisterMe]

Supposedly, this crack will allow DRMed music purchased from sources other than the iTMS to be played on the iPod. So where is this music supposed to come from? If a new online music store--let's call it MySongs--wants to make its music compatible with FairPlay, it can license this crack. Oh really now! By doing do, MySongs will find itself in a legal fight with Apple--a fight that the DMCA says it will lose. But let's say that it can win. Where does MySongs get its music? The music labels' beef with Apple is that Apple charges too little for its songs. The only way that MySongs can get titles that people want to buy is to agree to charge more for them. What is the market for songs priced higher than those on the iTMS? OK, so they go for the titles not available on the iTMS. Well, the market for those is tiny.

It comes down to this: This is not about choice for the consumer. If the consumer wants choice of music on the iPod, he buys a CD and RIPs it to AAC or MP3 and loads it on the iPod. This is about easing the piracy of music from the iTMS and facilitating those who want to sell pirated music.

[Tommo]

Of course it is about choice for the consumer. And Apple don't like their consumers to have it. The whole point of DRM is to prevent piracy, not tie one product in with another. You want ITMS music on the move you have GOT to buy an iPod.

All consumers want choice and somehow Apple seem to get away without having to provide it. It uses it's software products to protect it's hardware sales. Don't agree, then why do they produce software to let you boot an intel Mac to Windows, but vigourously prevent you from running OSX on other Intel based systems.

[Viro]

Originally Posted by Tommo

Of course it is about choice for the consumer. And Apple don't like their consumers to have it. The whole point of DRM is to prevent piracy, not tie one product in with another. You want ITMS music on the move you have GOT to buy an iPod.

You have choice. It's not like iTunes is the only music store around. If you don't like iTunes, you can always buy from some other music website.

All consumers want choice and somehow Apple seem to get away without having to provide it. It uses it's software products to protect it's hardware sales. Don't agree, then why do they produce software to let you boot an intel Mac to Windows, but vigourously prevent you from running OSX on other Intel based systems.

That's simple. OS X exists to sell Mac Hardware. Apple is primarily a hardware provider, as witnessed by their revenue breakdown. You want to run OS X, run it on a Mac. Having OS X running on a bog standard PC is to compete with MS's business model, i.e. providing a generic OS to run on generic PCs. You'll also inherit the headaches MS has, of having to guarantee compatibility with a wide spectrum of hardware (most windows crashes can be attributed to poor drivers), guarantee a stable binary interface (something OS X is kinda notorious for not having), all for very little returns. After all, most of Apple's revenue comes from selling machines, not copies of OS X.

You always have a choice, of course. You can choose not to use OS X, in the same way that you can choose not to use Windows or Linux. Allow for a very poor car analogy. It's like wanting to have a Ferrari engine in a Fiat, and then complaining that Ferrari refuses to allow their engines to be put into any other car.

Apple's business model is substantially different from Microsoft. They see themselves as a solutions provider. As such, they seek to fill the entire computer stack, from hardware to OS to user level applications. Call it vendor lock in if you want, it's just a different business model from your usual PC manufacturer. If you disagree strongly enough with it, just vote with your feet. Everyone who advocates providing the ability for running OS X on just any PC, or running iTunes music on any player never ever provides a solid financial reason for doing so, other than "because that gives consumers choice" or they point to examples like Microsoft and wonder why Apple doesn't adopt a similar strategy.

[MisterMe]

Originally Posted by Tommo

... And Apple don't like their consumers to have it. The whole point of DRM is to prevent piracy, not tie one product in with another. ...

No. Unprotected MP3 and AAC play perfectly fine on the iPod and you don't have to pay Apple a dime for the music. Apple does not own the music on the iTunes Music Store. The record labels do. Apple sweated a lot of blood in negotiations with the labels to gain access to their titles. One of the compromises that Apple made was to include DRM. Take away FairPlay DRM and you have no more legal downloads of today's popular music. Disagree? Give an example of a legal download store that does not use DRM.

[Tommo]

I am not suggesting that media should be sold without DRM, and I don't know of a legal download site that doesn't use one. What I am opposed to is that one product ties in exclusively with the other as far as portability is concerned. iTunes is free so it is not an issue, but iPods are expensive and you are forced to stay with that hardware platform if you have a high number of Apple DRM files.

I am not saying take away the DRM, just licence the damn thing to other manufacturers and then no one would have bothered to reverse engineer it. When the Zune is finally released there maybe tracks on its accompanying store I would like to buy and play on my iPod.

Maybe the OSX/Mac was not a great example, though I don't know how much revenue Apple would generate if you could run OSX on any Intel box. Maybe using a music analogy it is like saying that you can only play any Sony produced CD/DVD on a Sony player.

Consumer choice should be about more than take it or leave it.

[Lt Major Burns]

then again, "on average, only 20 of the tracks on an iPod will be from the iTunes shop."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5350258.stm

yes it's wonderful saying oooh aren't apple naughty, but it's just a gimmick at the end of the day. as napster said at the superbowl a few years back, 10,000 songs on an ipod, $1 a song. that's $10,000. no-one is that stupid.

the best way to buy music is on a cd. you get 10x the sound quality, no DRM, all the artwork you can shake a stick at, and a physical backup if your HDD goes silly.

[scruffy]

Originally Posted by MisterMe

By doing do, MySongs will find itself in a legal fight with Apple--a fight that the DMCA says it will lose.

Don't forget now, the DMCA is a U.S. law. And there are still countries out there where U.S. laws don't apply - like all of them except the U.S.

[MisterMe]

You can rest assured that the lawsuits will be brought in a jurisdictions where the DMCA does apply.