The Register reports that the DRM-format used in Apple's iTunes Music Store has been circumvented. The original developer of DeCSS has created a utility for intercepting the decrypted AAC in the QuickTime DLL - they say a utility for doing this already exists, but this time, the source code is in the open.

Stories on The Register & Mac Rumors

Well, The Register says that "An application called MyTunes already performs much the same function, but Johansen's is open source."
According to other sources (Mac Rumors article&forum) this is not the case. The new utility strips only the DRM off and leaves the unchanged raw AAC-stream, which can be again put to the MP4 container, losslessly.

Edit. seems that this information was wrong. MyTunes claims that it saves the original encoded stream.

I thought MyTunes was used to copy network streams losslessly. In any event this could be a big blow to the iTunes store.

Jon Lech Johansen's blog says "So sue me". It seems that DeCSS trials weren't enough for him..

Yay, let's hijack the only decent online music store.

Hmm, but doesn't this still require the file to be cracked to be owned by the cracker?

Or does this also work when you don't have the playback rights for this file?

Menno

As far as I can tell you need the playback rights.

Edit:
The process requires you to be playing the file in QuickTime so that the app can divert the raw unencrypted AAC stream to the hard drive. Therefore you would need playback rights.

Edit 2:
At least under Windows people will be able to play back iTMS songs in something other than iTunes (which is bloated, slow and memory-resident).

Yes, I'd guess too that you need the playback rights, as it's said that QTFairUse is not decrypting the DRM, only extracts the raw AAC stream.

You can already do that, as long as the program knows how to use the QT API. For example, Media Player Classic can play owned M4P files perfectly.

On the other hand it enables playback of the music you own with players not using Apple's decoder. This is perfectly legal in both Denmark and Norway; circumventing copy protection solely for the purpose of playback is not against the EU directive - at least not the way the Danish Ministry of Culture interprets it. The world is not black & white...

It'll be interesting to see how Apple responds to this

I thought this wasn't true. I can't test it because the iTMS is only in the US but even if it's possible Media Player Classic can't save the AAC stream anywhere.


Apparently not.

I'm still wondering why debuggers aren't illegal?

Because they are too useful for other purposes. You can't ban kitchen knives either.

@zZzZzZz:
Whait a year or two and some idiot in a government will propose this.

There are several good uses for this kind of delevopment. For example i recently got a Nokia 3300 phone which plays mp3 and .aac formats, not even mp4!! If i ever used the apple music store, this would allow me to use music, I had payed for on MY own devices. This is more likley to persuade me to buy from the store, therefore increasing apple's revenue.

There are several other good asspects as well, and of course the negative aspect of piracy.

Kristian

I foresaw it a month ago

See that thread.

Apple is clever, but I wonder what they'll do now.

gday..

just a minute..

this type of stories.. do somewhat bug me..


in that time.. he did function purely as a carrier..
the real man behind that.. was a russian dude.. witch i think
most of you know by nick.

as the aac/mp4 story.. well.. i didn`t read it all..
but i have my doubts.

my crude but effective method has to play the AAC files thorugh the iTunes player, capture it .wav via Audiotools, and encode that as a flac file that has the full sound quality of the AAC without the restrictions. Also lets me play in it in foobar 0.6/0.7

How do you convert the stripped AAC file back to a usable MP4 file? I tried opening the AAC file in WinAmp and the plugin has an option to convert to MP4 but that errored out. I tried the version of MP4Creator on RareWares and that did not work either.

The file is RAW AAC, you can convert this to ADTS AAC with faad2 (-a option), then convert it to MP4 using mp4creator or the winamp plugin.

Menno

Maybe I'm blind, but the FAAD 2.0 RC1 build on RareWares doesn't have an -a option. Is that something implemented in a newer version?

I'd agree that Apple have made some good choices lately, but iTMS has put them in an entirely new situation. They are no longer a just niche player, but "the Microsoft of music stores" - to quote their CEO, Steve Jobs. It's a new challenge, and they can either fail horribly or use it to actually compete with Microsoft on other areas.

Hmm, yes, it's in RC3, bug roberto for a new compile, or go to Case' site.

Menno

Here, if somebody wonders.

Woo! We scooped Slashdot!

Has anyone actually tried it? I've tried it and it doesn't work at least for me.

got it to work

basicly all u do is compile the file with MinGW. then run the output through FAAD with -a command. then i used ivan and menno's frontend for mp4creator and works perfectly.

edit: one side effect of the patch is any mpeg 4 content will export the audio stream.

No, I got it to build fine but it doesn't patch some necessary files so it doesn't work properly. I don't want to get into any further since I think I fear I might break rule #9.

be sure to have QT and itunes closed before running the patch.

Ahh, damn I'm stupid. Works now,

Well.. does MyTunes, which is almost month old, allow actually saving the aac stream of files which are not your own, rather shared by others? This is the impression I get?!?
If this is so, there's nothing new in QTFairUse, except the open source code and MyTunes seems to go even further??

I don't think you can save your own files in mytunes. Hence the need for this program.

Here's a borland DEF and build script so you can compile this thing using the borland c++ compiler instead of Mingw.

DEF (call it november_bcc32.def):


Build script:

Has anybody tested it? It would allow shared files to be saved but not own files? I don't know.. The homepage says:

When I try to use I&M's front end with their mp4creator60, the command prompt popup tells me it's dropping vast numbers of input bytes, and the files come out wayyyyy too small. Any help on this one would be appreciated.

before: You buy the song for 99¢ from the iTMS or you go looking for it on some p2p network.

after: You buy the song for 99¢ from the iTMS or you go looking for it on some p2p network.

"Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more
than water can be made not wet." - Bruce Schneier

Is Steve Jobs the only one who gets this? People pay for convenience and that's what Apple is selling.

It's quite likely that Apple couldn't care less if their DRM was cracked. However, the music industry has shown more than once that they worry more about loosing their rights than loosing their customers. The real issue for Apple is to keep pleasing both users (and thus themselves) and the music industry.

Apple is not making much money out of this scheme as it is. Check this.



I guess so because of the same reason.

In the end it's good for everyone. Yay! for the freedom of communication.

MyTunes works to save your own files as well, basically anything that can be played can be saved to a specified file.

How do you get it to work pacohaas? I turned on sharing in iTunes, but nothing shows up in MyTunes. I thought you needed two computers to make this work.

While this may be true, according to Steve Jobs, you won't be helping them turn a profit unless you buy an iPod.

Did you run faad -a out.aac in.aac on the file first?

If so you may need to update your mp4creator.

Menno

as soon as you start playing a track, regardless of the source(network, local drive, etc), the track shows up in MyTunes, then you double click to save it locally.

removed message: don't want to risk violation of rule #9.

nice work guys! wtg

Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! What a shame !

Johansen is demonstrating an old rule: any kind of protection in the digital world is useless.

Resistance is futile !

What about guns, then?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...cy_031124173049

gday..

again.. JJ. did not create DeSS.. nor did he break the DVD encryption.
someone should make that clear to MPAA..
i guess that`s why he did win the first round.. and feeling pretty shure
about the outfall of the upcomming..

either way.. if he should have done it.. he would be pretty stupid
to take on apple.. during the "trial`s".

i personally doubt he have hacked anything else than games..

Please explain me how to compile qtfairuse in minGW?
I have installed minGW and MSYS in my system which commad I have to type?