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.
Oct 2, 2006 View in Crawl 4
merrebornOct 2, 2006
One 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.
skellenerOct 2, 2006
If 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).
felchdonkeyOct 2, 2006
I don't think Apple will ever take that functionality out. There are some very legitimate fair-use reasons to make a CD of your music, whether it's for backup purposes, or to play it in a CD player if you don't have a way to hear your iPod through speakers.Apple knows damn well that people burn CDs to break the DRM, or to make mixes for friends. They've been following the letter of the law instead of the spirit when it comes to the RIAA. It's in Apple's interest for people to do what they like with music, because it sells more iPods. They just keep the DRM on there because they couldn't work with the record labels if they didn't.
honoredmuleOct 2, 2006
If apple has a problem with their protection scheme being supported by 3rd parties, then maybe they can sue based on patent ownership, but the sued could file an antitrust countersuit. Disallowing others to make/sell compatible hardware/media would be anticompetitive.PS - I wish ppl would stop trying to hijack this thread. Is it possible to actually have a DRM-related topic WITHOUT making it all about cracking?
millixawOct 2, 2006
Smells like Slashdot comments to me.
delmonteOct 3, 2006
If the iPod and iTMS never existed, this burning feature would already be long-gone and all audio CD's would only contain DRMed WMA.I'm pretty sure Apple is holding its own against RIAA's pressures to remove the feature, just like they are trying to keep the price at 99 cents a tune, and have the most liberal DRM restrictions on the market.
delmonteOct 3, 2006
Do you really think the major online music stores will invest tons of money to get their millions of tunes in another format, based on a hack that could stop working in two weeks?The Major studios would not be able to allow this anyway, as much as they want to, they simply cannot encourage the use of a cracked DRM scheme.
delmonteOct 3, 2006
Thank 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.
delmonteOct 3, 2006
Yeah and that was a good argument companies could use to pressure the RIAA to stop using DRM.But now, thanks to Jon, this point is moot...