Fairtunes, Playfair, and iTunes

[MacBytes]

Category: 3rd Party Software
Link: Another crack at iTMS
Posted on MacBytes.com

Approved by Mudbug

[1macker1]

how about Mp3 and AAC formats.

[Captain Canuck]

Roxio's Toast 5.x does the same thing:

01) Just drag and drop the protected song files onto a new Audio CD window and it converts them to AIFF.

02) Instead of burning the CD select "Save" and it will create a folder with all the AIFF files in it for you.

03) Re-encode them back into AAC or MP3 using iTunes.

WARNING: Both FairTunes and Toast strip all of the Tags and Album Art when you do this.

cc

[PlaceofDis]

so why does this one have "longevity"??

[idkew]

because this is no different than burning a cd.

[0 and A ai]

Originally Posted by idkew

because this is no different than burning a cd.

Point is it works.

[mainstreetmark]

I wonder if people really need these songs on more than 3 simultanous computers, or if this thing boils down to just not wanting any restrictions whatsoever.

[0 and A ai]

Originally Posted by mainstreetmark

I wonder if people really need these songs on more than 3 simultanous computers, or if this thing boils down to just not wanting any restrictions whatsoever.

SOme people not me might want to send songs to their friends. Some people not me might have more than 3 computers at home.

[Captain Canuck]

Originally Posted by mainstreetmark

I wonder if people really need these songs on more than 3 simultanous computers, or if this thing boils down to just not wanting any restrictions whatsoever.

In my case I have a Rio 800 MP3 player, emphasis on the MP3!! It still works great, so until it dies there is no reason to buy an iPod, I just have to convert some of my iTunes purchases if I want to take them with me on the Rio.

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[LFrascogna]

converting to aiff and then back to aac, assuming that there is no difference between protected and unprotected aac is there any loss of quality? Just wondering about the pros and cons.

[shamino]

Originally Posted by mainstreetmark

I wonder if people really need these songs on more than 3 simultanous computers, or if this thing boils down to just not wanting any restrictions whatsoever.

Plenty of reasons why:

• You own more than three computers. (I personally have 5 at home and 4 at work. Plus two Apple-IIs, which aren't capable of playing digital music.)
• You have a computer that's not running Windows or MacOS. Linux PCs and Sun workstations come to mind. For these, you'll need a more generic format like MP3 or OGG-Vorbis.
• You have an older Mac that can't run OS X.
• You have a portable music player that's not an iPod
• You want to burn an MP3 CD to play in your car. (Having 10 hours of music on a single disc is really nice )

All perfectly legal and legitimate reasons why one might want to remove DRM from ITMS purchases.

[syco]

Here's an idea. Encourage fair use and not sharing by encoding losslessly at AIFF. It's a great boon to filmmakers like me who want to use iTMS'd songs in their apps without having to worry about burning a CD.

I for one really appreciate the work that's gone into the app.

[TheInevitable]

How long will it be until this ones shut down?

[punter]

it's very much illegal, but to some extent unstoppable. At least Apple can try to make sure the mainstream doesn't know about it.

[J-Squire]

I have few concerns about the use of these programs. The main reason is that I think people who are already using iTunes are doing so as an alternative to file sharing, so won't bother going to such efforts to remove the DRM.

Those who do will probably be people who use iTunes but want to play music on their Linux machine or in some other way use the song for personal use that is currently being restricted by the DRM. I don't see this hindering iTunes either.

Having said this, it is still an illegal program, and the writers are clearly going straight to hell.

[ryanw]

Originally Posted by TheInevitable

How long will it be until this ones shut down?

Well, the better question is "how long did they expect to go without it being circumvented?".

Whats crazy is in this circumstance the tables have turned. We're seeing it first hand. Mac guys talk about little to NO viruses for MacOSX and millions for Windows. The windows guy's argument is if macosx was the #1 OS there would be more viruses for MacOSX.

Well, we have Apple's FAIRPLAY DRM & Microsoft Windows Media DRM. Which DRM got circumvented first? iTMS DRM. Which store is #1? iTMS. I gaurentee if iTMS had bombed and Napster had taken off this wouldn't have happened yet. Quite possibly never would have happened.

[switcheroo]

wow, fairTunes works quite well, but it does not produce a decrypted aac file so its as useful as burning to a cd and ripping -- ie it is not lossless. i would like a lossless method to play purchased music on a linux machine that is my music server.

in the end though apple has nothing to worry about with programs such as this, the itunes drm is unrestrictive enough to allow most users to have no such need.

[Rocketman]

I rated this article positive and was seemingly the first to do so.

I look at it this way. The song is property and its use is a lisence. The rightful owner of the license can "back it up" but iTunes and related procedures already let you do that.

The issue is literally open blatant copying of music on the internet without any means of collecting "fair price".

I have to stand by the side of the rights holders and say that even though the technology readily exists to copy even copy protected music, that does not make it right, and going after illegal copiers is right and fair.

Since the only valid purpose of the program is to violate the law and commercial rights, that makes the program a "bad thing" as well.

Comments?

Rocketman

[bathysphere]

this isn't the same as playfair at all, and it doesn't do anything that you can't do with software already provided by apple. playfair stripped the drm from an aac file, with a resulting aac file, no recompression necessary. this one just converts it to an aiff or other uncompressed format, which you can do with itunes, imovie, etc.

[dukemeiser]

I give it 5 days.

[jwhitnah]

Originally Posted by dukemeiser

I give it 5 days.

Kill it now. What do you guys think about the Janus?

[iMeowbot]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

FairTunes offers the same functionality as PlayFair

This program does not do what Playfair does. Rather, it is a less-capable clone of QTConvert.

It saves you from using an intermediate CD, but otherwise it does nothing that unmodified iTunes won't allow you to do.

[slowtreme]

I dont see the point of this. playfair works great, and lets me listen to my iTMS files at work... where the connection to iTMS is blocked at the firewall and I won't bring an iPod to work.

[dongmin]

Originally Posted by iMeowbot

This program does not do what Playfair does. Rather, it is a less-capable clone of QTConvert.

It saves you from using an intermediate CD, but otherwise it does nothing that unmodified iTunes won't allow you to do.

FairTunes is actually less useful than a CD since it won't let you do batch processing. One bloody m4p at a time.

BTW, if someone would be generous enough to email me (dshim@hotmail.com) a copy of PlayFair, I'd much appreciate it. It'd be nice to able to stream some of my iTMS purchases ($275 and counting).

[greenstork]

FairTunes is actually useless. It does nothing different than what iTunes itself does. It takes an m4p DRM'd song and converts it to a .wav or .aiff file and then if you want it in AAC format you have to re-encode it, losing audio quality. iTunes does the VERY SAME THING, if you care to rip .m4p protected songs and then re-rip to AAC. This too strips the DRM from iTMS songs.

So unlike PlayFair, FairTunes is a lossy program, which poses no greater threat than built-in iTunes features itself. I doubt there will be any lawsuits or legal action over this program.