Hopeless Geek

Personally I am glad that the update has killed another selfish attempt to circumvent Apple’s DRM. When will people learn that stealing is wrong ?

Not true…My playfair decoded AAC files play fine on iTunes 4.5.

Guest: In what way is it stealing to convert songs that I paid for at the iTunes music store to AAC so they can be played on devices such as ROKU’s musicbridge?

Anonymous: My copy of iTunes starts to play them and then moves on. These were downloaded on a machine other than this one, but on the same account.

To reiterate: My Playfair-processed AAC files play just fine in iTunes 4.5. I don’t know where the rumor started that iTunes was somehow ‘killing’ de-DRMed files.

mithras: Are you using files you downloaded on that machine or another? (I’m presuming the same account since that’s my situation where they fail to work.)

It’s not “stealing” to remove the DRM. It is, however, a violation of the terms of service you agreed to when you bought the songs. It’s stealing if you share those files with anyone.

Actually, that’s not stealing, that’s a copyright violation.

Actually, that’s not a copyright violation either… at least not in Canada.

>> Tracks decoded with PlayFair do not play in iTunes 4.5.

Incorrect. They play w/o problem.

>> Track bought with iTunes 4.5 do not decode in PlayFair.

Incorrect. I bought a track with Playfair 4.5 on a Mac, copied
it to a Windows PC get the decrypted keys, copied the keys
to the Mac and ran Playfair 0.5 : no problem, the decrypted
tracks plays w/o problem.

P.

Well, you’re doing it differently than I. I’m using the iPod method and have applied the new iPod firmware. So, this is what I get, with the iPod connected:

$ playfair protected_track.m4p .
Couldn't get DRM key for user.

So perhaps it was the iPod 2.2 update? In the iPod_Control dir the key is now at iSCInfo2. Anyone have an old iPod and wants to check? The Slashdot story concurs that new decoding is broken, but perhaps it’s just the iPod key method because of the update.

OK, I did some more test and indeed, there’s a change in the way 4.5 encrypts the user keys that breaks VLC...
It still works though if you used 4.2 to authorize the computer.

OK, I did some more test and indeed, there’s a change in the way 4.5 encrypts the user keys that breaks VLC...
It still works though if you used 4.2 to authorize the computer.

also one thing that i noticed that is kind of weird: on iTunes 4.2, a machine using rendezvous sharing of an iTunes library can not play the PlayFair’ed AAC files from the server. they work find on my Slimp3 though, so i dont care. i dont understand this as in theory those files should look like regular old AAC files. maybe they are missing some atoms or something.

Lots of software products and online services have terms of service or license agreements that prohibit reverse engineering (such as the clause that was bold-faced in the iTMS TOS quoted above). The thing is, such clauses are generally illegal and unenforceable in the United States.

However, because of the DMCA, disseminating software that cracks the DRM (however brain damaged) on any “encrypted” file is illegal. That’s why PlayFair got yanked from SourceForge.

I’m one of those people who believes that click-through licenses (which the iTMS TOS “agreement” constitutes) are not valid contracts. I also believe that shrink-wrap licenses are not valid contracts either. Unfortunately, there isn’t a very good body of case law leaning either way. (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but I am an avid follower of legal discourse.) Many corporations are trying to codify laws to declare that click-through and shrink-wrap licenses are indeed valid contracts, but I don’t know that such laws would stand up to a legal challenge either.

Having said all that… even if you consider the iTMS TOS agreement to be a valid license, the clause prohibiting reverse engineering is probably illegal and unenforceable in the United States. Reverse engineering is a time honored tradition in the United States, and many companies base their entire business model on the practice. (I used to work for one such company. We developed software that allowed the reading from and writing to of many closed, proprietary file formats, including Microsoft Word documents.) Until someone in Washington comes to their senses and fixes or repeals the DMCA, it’s the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA you have to worry about, not Apple’s TOS document.

I’ve tried m4p2mp4.exe on several computers with iTunes 4.5, it no longer works. Here is something that does:

Requirements to extract your DRM key file:
1. Windows PC running older version of iTunes
2. VLC (Video Lan Player, an open-source media player)

Stuff you’ll need on the PC running iTunes 4.5:
1. DeDRMS source
2. Monodevelop enviorment, installed
3. Microsoft .NET runtime (It’s on Windows update)

Google will help in your quest to find the above.

Steps to get keys:

#1 Copy a “FairPlay Version 2” song to the PC with the older version of iTunes. Authenticate the machine with Apple to allow playback.

#2 Open the song in VLC.

#3 Look in the folder: \Documents and Settings\(YOUR USERNAME)\Application Data\drms for some tiny files with funny random names. Copy the contents of folder to a \Documents and Settings\(YOUR USERNAME)\Application Data\drms folder on your computer with the 4.5 version of iTunes.

You now have your keys. Now, it’s time to patch DeDRMS and compile it on the computer with iTunes 4.5:

#1 Open the DeDRMS.cs source in Notepad. Remove this section of code:

if( Encoding.ASCII.GetString( adPRIV, 0, 4 ) != “itun” )
{
throw new Exception( “Decryption of ‘priv’ atom failed” );
}

Save the file.

#2 Compile with the command mcs -out:DeDRMS.exe *.cs

#3 Make a copy of your music to unprotect – DeDRMS overwrites the original file! Use the command DeDRMS (FILENAME).m4p, then rename the file to *.M4A. Unprotect your FairPlay Version 2 files to your heart’s content, but please keep them to yourself. Don’t be a pirate.

Well, apparently the DRM for iTunes 4.5 is already broken by David Hammerton, so this will be a non-issue.

http://craz.net/programs/itunes

From that page:
A library for connecting to iTunes shares and streaming audio files

That doesn’t do anything for PlayFair, which is what this entry is about. The new key file encryption has not been broken, just the way to stream it.

Whoops, you’re right…the DRM itself isn’t cracked. I guess it was hasty wishful thinking.

Thanks for the clarification.

Bhavesh

I confirm that my machine, after upgraded to iTunes 4.5, can still decode all FairPlay protected files, new and old. I’m running playfair 0.2 on a Mac and using an iPod w/o the latest update for keys.

Rob said:
also one thing that i noticed that is kind of weird: on iTunes 4.2, a machine using rendezvous sharing of an iTunes library can not play the PlayFair’ed AAC files from the server. they work find on my Slimp3 though, so i dont care. i dont understand this as in theory those files should look like regular old AAC files. maybe they are missing some atoms or something .

It’s funny how iTMS files stripped of their DRM using VLC (http://wiki.videolan.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=4) are able to be streamed, but files stripped with Playfair can’t. The only difference I can see between the two is that the VLC files have their bit rate listed as “Unknown” and the Playfair files’ bit rates are listed as being between 117-127. This makes me think that the Playfair tool could be modified to somehow “fix” the files. Perhaps it has to do with the way the files get tagged? I wish the Playfair project was still accessible so this could be logged as a bug…

The new version of Playfair, now called Hymn, create files that can be streamed ! Also, most tags are now preserved, including non-standard ones like the copyright, the clean/explicit lyrics…

http://hymn-project.org/

yeah Hymm is cool. a little trick: if you wanna re-strip your songs but don’t want to lose all the iTunes database info (ratings, eq, play count) you can replace the files in the iTunes library on your hard drive and the next time iTunes tries to play the file, it will see the new one and use it, keeping the ratings and everything else even though the file is different. just make sure the names are the same.

i imagine you could automate the whole thing with applescript. i did it the hard way though…

Trackback from 2lmc spool:

iTunes 4.5 released...

Trackback from “groovy mother”:

From the extreme FUD of “iTunes 4.5 won’t play back files you decrypted using playfair”, we now reach the honest truth: iTunes 4.5 (and the accompanying iPod update) only fix the loophole that allowed playfair to get to your DRM keys…....