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Apple Fairplay reverse engineered and FOR SALE

featured.gigaom.com — DRM-buster DVD Jon has reverse-engineered Apple's Fairplay and licensing it to companies who want their media to play on Apple's devices. Instead of breaking the DRM (something he'ss already done), Jon has replicated it, and wants to license the technology to companies that want their content (music, movies, whatever) to play on Apple devices.

Who dugg this? Made popular Oct 2, 2006

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  • bobasaurus, on 10/12/2007, -7/+53Ooh, there's some scary legal ground. Awsome, though.
  • narduk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+37"Photo of DVD Jon by Irina Slutsky"

    Poor girl
  • merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -4/+38"he's trying to sell it to other companies so that they use it"

    Yeah. He's trying to sell what apple probably consider to be 'their' DRM to other companies.


    I'm sure Apple's lawyers are gonna be working some long hours this week.

    Is it legal? Maybe.
    Apple gonna sue anyway? Probably.
  • Trention, on 10/12/2007, -14/+45Why is it awesome that this guy is trying to make money off of DRM? He's not removing it, he's trying to sell it to other companies so that they use it. Am I missing something?
  • mxpxpx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+28he lives in California
  • AdamFitz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+27Does this mean that he is going to crack his own DRM once companies start using it?
  • chrislund, on 10/12/2007, -0/+24the summary seems a bit misleading; fairplay isn't required to play media on the ipod. is he licensing this reverse-engineered fairplay to companies that want their *protected* content to play on the ipod (without going through the itunes store)?
  • DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21Well, I think what they are trying to do is legal. The problem is that Apple could try to prevent songs equipped with this fairplay lookalike from playing on the iPod. However, I'm not sure how that would be accomplished if Jon's version is nearly identical to the real Fairplay.
  • 1021, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17I wonder if Microsoft is desperate enough to buy into this to get Zune into a better standing P-)
  • Evoguy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15"Apple is not a litigious company" - Steve Jobs. Hahahaha.
  • kris33, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Yup. He is smart, but at the same time stupid. Why move away from Norway(the best country to live in according to UN) and to USA, where cracking digital mediums are illegal? It is legal in Norway.
  • threepio, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15According to the DMCA reverse engineering DRM is illegal - Jon ran into the same issue with CSS.
  • stoanhart, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14It's awsome because it's already been broken. If you want to strip your apple music store files of DRM, that option is available for you. However, other companies may want to legally sell music online. Since the iPod has the majority of the market, being iPod compatible becomes a huge benefit for any company entering the market. This basically opens up the market to anyone.

    However, it would have been cooler if it was open source. Still, people gotta make money, and if he's licensing it for a reasonable fee, I don't see a problem with that.
  • Altotus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Actually, the DMCA makes it illegal to create, possess, or use software that circumvents and access control. In this instance, his software is not circumventing, rather it's creating an access control -- namely he's selling software that puts iTunes-compatible access control on the files so you can lock them down (more or less, FairPlay was cracked long ago).

    As of yet, there's no law against that (Apple might like to see one, though). It would be like reverse-engineering CSS (the method for encrypting DVDs) and then enabling vendors to sell encrypted DVDs without having to enter into an agreement with the DVD consortium for the rights (incidentally, you can't CSS encrypt your own DVDs because vendors aren't permitted to produce consumer recorders that can write that portion of the media and blank media generally don't support it as a result).
  • marnaq, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Is he gonna sue himself for that?
  • tyns, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Someone's got balls.
  • tigerdyr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Software update.

    No question that DRM is a bad idea. Duplicating it is not what will make it go away - craking it is.

    I respect Jon, but I believe he should have stuck to that.
  • br0ken1128, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"Yeah. He's trying to sell what apple probably consider to be 'their' DRM to other companies."

    Technically, he's just selling a compatable DRM .. or a DRM clone in my opinion, I like the IBM reference.. Apple's DRM is essentially an IBM PC, and Jon has just released the first HP compatable ;)
  • tainc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"Johansen doesn’t think what he’s doing is illegal; he’s adding DRM rather than breaking it." ~ DVD Jon claims that he hasn't actually reverse-engineered FairPlay, just made something very much like it.
  • mainframe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I'm fairly sure DVD Jon now lives in the US, he took a job here after he graduated.
  • flamingmb, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9does anyone else smell that?........ smells like...... like....... a lawsuit from apple.
  • Fordi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I wanted to say, "Jon! How could you?!" but I get the idea that he's doing this for the legal test: by licensing it for distribution to companies, he effectively seats himself right in the 'compatibility' clause.
  • hallous, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I think one of the uses for this will be the ability to play all that music you bought on iTunes on other devices (I may be wrong though). Also, like you said, they can now sell DRM'd music for the ipod from sites other then Apple's.
  • halleyscomet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@br0ken1128

    There are two differences:

    It doesn't look like a clean room implementation.

    While what Compaq did was legal at the time, the DMCA has rendered such hacking illegal. If the DMCA had been passed in the 1970's, the PC Boom would have been very different. There would have been IBM and Apple and not much else. No Dell, Compaq, HP or the like except as manufacturers of peripherals of using compel different operating systems.
  • merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6One thing to keep in mind -- it's largely the labels that are pushing for DRM. If you are, say, Real Networks, and you want to sell Sony music, Sony will *refuse* to sell to you unless DRM the tracks you sell.

    So, if you're Real Networks, and you want to sell Sony music to iPod users, you *have* to be able to DRM the tracks in a manner compatible with the iPod -- which means you *must* fairplay encode them.

    Additionally, if you're iRiver, and you want to be able to play iTunes tracks on your MP3 players, you'd need fairplay as well.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8C&D Letter in 3..2..1...
  • eclectro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6It's interesting. It's not cut and dry. Out of all the DRM around, Apples seems to be the most fair, if you could ever dress up a pig. Helping it become even more of a standard would help kill off other more draconian (i.g. microsoft) frormats. I don't see this as a bad thing(tm), one way or another.
  • digga, on 10/12/2007, -11/+16You've just totally missed the point of the article.
  • halleyscomet, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5This is similar to what Compaq did at the dawn of the PC era.

    The IBM PC was the MAJOR persona computer in the market, and due to IBM's brand name was crushing all it's competitors. The only one of those competitors to survive in the PC market was Apple.

    Most of the IBM PC was built with off the shelf components, except for the heavily protected BIOS.

    Compaq had a group of engineers reverse engineer the BIOS, and had another group write create a clean room version from the first group's specifications.

    The result was a perfectly legal clone of the IBM PC, which Compaq was more than happy to sell.

    That said, this case is different. Before the DMCA, it was legal to reverse engineer a product for the purpose of creating a compatible device. The Clean Room barrier Compaq used is a common one to prevent any hint of copyright infringement. For example, to prove that Compaq wasn't just using a copy of the IBM BIOS, but a complete ground up rewrite.

    Apple could use the apparent lack of a clean room implementation to accuse this guy of stealing code.

    Alternately, they could use the DMCA, which made most "Hacking to build a compatible device" illegal.
  • standardissue, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9"Why is it awesome that this guy is trying to make money off of DRM?"

    More competition is always a good thing.
  • fkamthong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Not sure if he used cleanroom reverse-engineering though...
  • felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4What would be great is if you could play iTunes-purchased media on non-Apple devices.

    I don't care much about buying more DRM'ed media from other sources. I'm happy with my *ahem* ripped CDs and the few things I purchase from iTunes.

    I would like the option, however, to use other media players with iTunes. Apple's not going to be opening that up anytime soon (barring a court order), so a little reverse-engineering action would be welcome.
  • bunni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Reminds me of the Connectix Virtual Game Station - a Sony Playstation emulator for the MacOS - it was reverse engineered, perfectly legal, and in stores for a time. 3 court cases later Sony was forced to pay off Connectix and in exchange it appears Connectix agreed to stop shipping/producing CVGS.

    http://insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ArticleID=2334

    I still remember playing Metal Gear Solid on my blueberry G3 tower. The final case was post-DMCA (2001), and may bode well for DVD Jon.

  • afx1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Doubles as her stripper name...
  • the8toes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This was (is?) already done by RealNetworks, they called it Harmony and it was used to allow iPods to play music bought on the RealNetworks music store
  • Kolenka, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I agree that this is on scary legal ground. DRM schemes tend to be patented (Apple actually bought the company that created FairPlay to get at the technology, IIRC, which had patents attached)... and even if you reverse engineer it, if there are patents on it, you can be sued for damages. :/
  • scooter17, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As much as I love Apple, I think we can all agree that DRM sucks.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This would only be of benefit to companies like Real, who tried to do the same thing with its "Rhapsody" service. Apple made a change that prevented Fairplay-like songs from working.

    So Microsoft could license this to make songs to sell for the iPod? Silly. There is no big market for songs anyway - its the player that Microsoft wants to sell. Additionally, there's a difference between making Fairplay-like songs and making a player that can play Fairplay songs from iTS, so this isn't useful for the Zune. And why would Microsoft see any benefit from making its users able to play music sold by Apple? They want to sell music themselves, and in particular rent it at $15/month.

    This is a lot like the big to-do about cracking AirTunes - when all it allowed was sending other audio streams to the Airport Express.
  • Vizin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'll admit I'm no expert on Apple's DRM procedures, but from what I understand, they've beaten previous DRM workarounds by simply changing the DRM and releasing a new version of iTunes (and of course forcing this new version on customers to continue using ITMS), but this seems different because it's about getting DRM'd files on the iPod, not letting iTunes DRM'd files play on other devices.

    Doesn't this mean the only way Apple could get around this (excluding legal actions) would be to release an iPod update that removes support for older (i.e. the one this is "based" on) versions of FairPlay?

    In that case, Apple would not only have to release a new version of iTunes, but also an iPod software update, and re-encode all users' previously downloaded songs into the new version.

    As I said before, I'm no expert on FairPlay, so I may be missing some critical information, but this seems like a problem that Apple may have trouble finding a technical solution for.

    Well, there's always legal action.
  • Ahnteis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4DMCA explicitly allows for reverse engineering (not removal) for the purpose of interoperability.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Ooh, there's some scary legal ground."

    Actually, the legal grounds are pretty explicit on this. You could sell this reverse-engineered DRM if and only if it had been reversed-engineered in a black box environment. That is, DVD Jon would've had to developed this without looking at any of Apple's FairPlay code, talking to anyone who knew of Apple's FairPlay code and would need to prove that he reverse-engineered it in that manner.

    If not, there's no scary legal ground. The second a company uses this, they'll be sued out of existence.
  • DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Thank you Jon, now the RIAA will force Apple to have a much more secure and limited DRM that's hardware tied just like the Zune.

    The end result may be worse than what we started with.
  • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Actually, the DMCA makes it illegal to create, possess, or use software that circumvents and access control. In this instance, his software is not circumventing, rather it's creating an access control -- namely he's selling software that puts iTunes-compatible access control on the files so you can lock them down (more or less, FairPlay was cracked long ago)."

    The DMCA actually does prevent users from recreating the DRM system (it covers reverse engineering, encryption and decryption, all three of which DVD Jon would need to use here). Selling it is going to be illegal anywhere that FairPlay is patented, and in the United States, it's a felony offense.
  • millixaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Like iPod customers are gonna buy from a store other than iTMS, yeah right.
  • TexasScott, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hope he checked with his attorney :-)
  • JackAxe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It also hasn't worked for about 2 years. :)
  • millixaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2DVD Jon sold out. No surprise, though.

    I guess when you're a CSS-cracking rogue in Sweden you're a champion of freedom. But nowadays he lives in the US (San Francisco, no less) and has a company, so I guess it didn't take long for the American way (Step 3: Profit!) to steal his soul.
  • DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"Why move away from Norway(the best country to live in according to UN) and to USA, where cracking digital mediums are illegal? It is legal in Norway."

    Money. He has the opportunity of becoming more wealthy in the US.
  • yasth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Apple's system is much less protected by patents then MS's system. Mostly because it just isn't nearly as good (or bad depending on how you look at it). Thus no rentals, play x number of times, and all the fancy stuff you can do with MS DRM.

    The reverse engineering protection is there, but limited. My guess is this why Jon is working with a partner he writes the specification and someone else writes the code to it. They will still probably be sued, but the damages would be hard to calculate (particularly if the content isn't in iTunes). Also by throwing their weight around too much they risk bringing anti trust heat to bear on themselves.
  • skellener, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If he can make money on it, more power to him.

    Of course any company can sell music right now to play on iPods (or Zunes) by simply NOT using DRM at all and selling open MP3s and AAC files (or AIFFs or WAVs, etc).
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