PlayFair - Stripping AAC DRM

[puggsly]

What creates so many idiots

Yes, writing this and or using this is illegal.

>>But we just want the same access that I could have had with a CD<<<

Then buy a CD! You all knew full well the DRM restrictions on these songs. If you use Linux and CD rips are not good enough for you DON'T BUY ITMS MUSIC!

>>Well they let you burn to CD and re-rip so this is no different<<<

Yes it is different. You get full quality reproduction and it is faster and easier to do. This is why nobody stopped people from recording songs from the radio and splicing together tapes. It was too time consuming to really hurt the industry and because of the reduced quality, if you really liked a song. You would buy it eventually.

>>But I'll only us it for myself<<

It is still illegal. You agreed to pay for the songs with certain restrictions. Abide by your contract

>>>The RIAA/Apple is evil for forcing DRM on me<<<

Then purchase songs from bands that don't use DRM. You'll show them!

>>>I have the right to listen to what I want<<<

NO! YOU DON'T. Someone created that music and it is THEIRS to distribute as they wish. If they want to give it away for free, they can. If they want to charge for it, they can. I write code for a living. If I write something and sell it, I have the right to determine how I should be compensated for that code. If you don't like what I ask for, don't use the code.

I hope Apple can figure out a good way to increase security on these files such that this is no longer possible. Unfortunately, this may increase restrictions on how the files work.

 

[Veldek]

all this discussion of legality is annoying- who cares. BLAH BLAH BLAH. our country is overly puritanical as it is. just let me and my copied cds be. By the way anybody have an actual law that pertains to the situation that we're talking about here? I mean something that says I cannot copy a cd to my harddrive and then sell it. And if I do sell it I have to erase said songs from my harddrive- and my iPod? Do laws say iPod? specifically?

or are we just spewing around trash, assumptions and law school ideology??

Well, if you don't care that something isn't legal, ok, that's your choice and nothing we can argue about. But you can't say something is legal that isn't, thus making it legal for you.

 

[Veldek]

true.

so the not so clear issue is whether you can sell the CD back and still retain the backup copy or ripped copy...

Well, perhaps it's not clear for you, but I know that it isn't legal.

 

[Veldek]

Ever been to a used cd store?? I sure have. All of my cd's are in perfect condition and I can sell them back to the store after using it once- or on ebay, half.com, amazon etc.

Of course, you can. I never said you can't. You just have to delete all copies you made of it (if you want to do the right thing ).

 

[0 and A ai]

So how long for a link to a compiled windows/mac version?

 

[iMeowbot]

so the not so clear issue is whether you can sell the CD back and still retain the backup copy or ripped copy...

Nope, that's been made very clear in AHRA. All backup copies have to either be given to the new owner of the CD, or destroyed.

 

[wordmunger]

NO! YOU DON'T. Someone created that music and it is THEIRS to distribute as they wish. If they want to give it away for free, they can. If they want to charge for it, they can. I write code for a living. If I write something and sell it, I have the right to determine how I should be compensated for that code. If you don't like what I ask for, don't use the code.

Of course you have the right to sell or license your code any way you wish. But shouldn't you listen to your customers, especially if they're telling you things like "I'd buy more of your code if it wasn't DRMed"? Isn't it smart business to give your customers what they want and not treat them like thieves?

I hope Apple can figure out a good way to increase security on these files such that this is no longer possible. Unfortunately, this may increase restrictions on how the files work.

I hope they can *decrease* the restrictions on how the files work. Shouldn't I be able to play my music over my airport network on my stereo? Right now, Fairplay doesn't allow it, so I don't buy much Fairplay protected music. I've been a loyal Apple user for 20 years, but if Apple can't provide the services I want, I won't be buying their products.

 

[biw314]

for 10.3

First double click to untar and unzip the thing.
Then open terminal or x11.
cd to the unzipped directory eg: 'cd /Desktop/playfair-0.2'
type './configure'
when all that is finished type 'make'
and when all that is finsihed 'sudo make install'
you will be asked for your password
then use 'playfair <infile> <outfile>' to use. make sure your ipod is plugged in. and /usr/local/bin/ is in your path.

 

[mrsebastian]

as it's been said this was all a matter of time and we all knew it. will it be bad for business? not so sure, because people who wanted to "share" their itunes music and circumvent the copy protection, were already doing that by burning a cd and then ripping the music back to mp3 (it takes what, like 5 minutes and a 5 cent cd). as far as this pissing of the record industry, well they're hanging on for dear life anyway. what's most important is that a new system has to be created, that will allow artists to be in control, but furthermore be in control of selling their music. that's why i see this whole "piracy" whining from big record companies as a good thing. put the artists in control of their music, if it's good and we like, then we'll buy it directly, and then piracy for the most part won't even be an issue.

 

[jxyama]

Nope, that's been made very clear in AHRA. All backup copies have to either be given to the new owner of the CD, or destroyed.

thanks. just what i wanted to know, not just "of course it's illegal..."

 

[SiliconAddict]

First double click to untar and unzip the thing.
Then open terminal or x11.
cd to the unzipped directory eg: 'cd /Desktop/playfair-0.2'
type './configure'
when all that is finished type 'make'
and when all that is finsihed 'sudo make install'
you will be asked for your password
then use 'playfair "filename"' to use. make sure your ipod is plugged in.

Also if I'm not mistaken even doing the above is a violation of the DMCA. Don't ya just love ambiguous laws?

 

[Veldek]

thanks. just what i wanted to know, not just "of course it's illegal..."

Okay, got it...

 

[Quarkie]

Nothing personal, but I find this whole thread funny. At the moment, Digital Music Stores are a cruel consumer joke, not to mention the mediocre audio quality they provide, which is, in part, a reality of storage and playback technology.

I love the quote from Apple's site which reads:

In fact, some expert listeners have judged AAC audio files compressed at 128 Kbps (stereo) to be virtually indistinguishable from the original uncompressed audio source.

After the words "listeners" and "judged," it seems like they forgot to include the phrase "from our vast audio consulting pool of the hearing-impaired elderly."

Or, in other words, would you pay 80-85% of the price for a book that was printed missing every 6 or 7th word? OH - but it's so close to the original that our illiterate test subjects said it was virtually identical!

Nothing you do will ever make that book as good as the original. Similarly, nothing you do will ever give you full CD quality out of those lossy/compressed sound files. So, who cares if you can decrypt .AAC files (or any format)? You're buying the wrong source material! Is paying slightly less for "good enough" material really "good enough?" Not for me, I guess.

For a little more, you can buy the CD and rip it yourself for portability IN ANY FORMAT without multiple pass compression loss, if you so desire. Oh yes...what about copy-protected CD's? That's what sound input cards are for, if there doesn't already happen to be a ripped version on the CD that you can use (Sony, etc.).

The only advantage that DMS's have is that it's nice to be able to buy individual favorite songs off of entire, or otherwise unwanted, albums. If you know you like the album, BUY THE CD!

But...AAC is cracked! What about the pirates? You can't stop them. Sue everyone...and their infants, pets, and any microbes who may be listening. There is no doubt but that the underground music network continues to thrive, despite the RIAA's draconian actions. The gophers just dig deeper, and I hear they now have a stargate to go off-world!

In the grand scheme of things, deprotecting AAC files for legitimate, personal use is off in the weeds. EVERY copy protection scheme can be broken and has been, over time. Anyone who thinks it won't happen needs to take another hit of "crack," or maybe "anti-crack." The anonymous infrastructure for music sharing (Internet) is really "the problem," since it extends to everyone, everywhere, and no file format, protected or unprotected can stop that.

I'm still waiting for Apple to send me a transparent aluminum, well-ventilated, branded garbage can with a lock on it and a little door so that I can see and smell the garbage inside, add more one piece at a time, and the garbage collectors can't open the lid. Codename: GUX-6000! It's the RoboCan and it's ultra-secure!

Actually, it would be really nice if they included a picture in protected .AAPEG format that was keyed to my personal computer, viewable only via the QuickTime Pro browser plug-in, for Safari only, on OSX only, on a G5 only, in case I missed my real garbage can and wanted to see it. (Note: original MacPaint format available for iPod for a small fee.) And I could do it too, if it weren't for all those garbage can image pirates ruining it for everyone, even though the whole world has been able to see everyone's garbage for all of time.

Another problem: What happens when proprietary music/device combos don't have the music you want, and the store that does have it won't support your player's format without additional quality loss of already compressed/compromised audio? It's YOU, the consumers, who suffer after giving the DMS your money. It's your special reward from the Rewards Program!

At some point, stores or players will have to support all formats with one-pass, optimum compression quality, since not all songs will be available from all stores. The closed competition model, or elevated premiums for specific formats, isn't going to work. In other words, DH APLE! (compressed for distribution). Wait! Get Marketing to tell me that an iPod is just like a Ferrari! That will convince me! NOT. Or, maybe I'll be lucky and the defective battery in my cell phone will run out during the call.

The digital music distribution business is still in its infancy, and from a global perspective, Apple's current iTMS sales and perennial SpinDoctoring™ are insignificant. We'll see where they are in a year or so once the competition and supporting technology really emerge. It's probably only a matter of time before Apple is eclipsed by music industry giants, such as Sony, and left with similarly small marketshare.

So, someone cracked iTMS. Boo hoo. It's about time. If Apple wants to make a believer out of me, they will have to offer me one-pass, optimum compression quality on all formats and support them in hardware. They will also have to offer FULL QUALITY CD's at a small incremental cost available after purchasing a complete iTunes album.

If they wanted to go the extra mile, it would be great to be able to get full-quality, custom CD's based on some minimum quantity of individual tracks, but that would require a further industry paradigm shift. I guess, among other things, this might depend on how the dual-session lawsuits turn out, or maybe it might require surrendering download rights (but that would be counter-productive).

Until then, CD's work just fine for me and I am an mp3 phone user. For those who are dedicated and honest iPod users, three cheers for the author(s) of PlayFair. Good job.

 

[iMeowbot]

as it's been said this was all a matter of time and we all knew it. will it be bad for business?

I don't think so. Steve Jobs' argument for getting labels to buy into the iTMS idea was "We have PhDs here who know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content." The Rolling Stone interview where he said that appears to have been archived, but a summary is here.

 

[Spades]

It was a long time ago, perhaps even before I was born, but as I have been told, the MPAA made a huge stink about VCRs when they were first introduced. They went through this whole thing back then, trying to get VCRs outlawed, or limited. I think that most of the concept of fair use comes from the legal cases revolving around the VCR. Unless I've been misinformed, nothing, in fact, has changed since then. They were simply forced to back off the last time they tried this.

In those days, the recording industry was not as worried since a copy was not near as good as the original.

However, these days in the age of digital copies, this situation has changed. I can now make an exact duplicate (digitally) of a CD. Therefore the copy is the same as the original in sound quality.

 

[jxyama]

After the words "listeners" and "judged," it seems like they forgot to include the phrase "from our vast audio consulting pool of the hearing-impaired elderly."

Or, in other words, would you pay 80-85% of the price for a book that was printed missing every 6 or 7th word? OH - but it's so close to the original that our illiterate test subjects said it was virtually identical!

...

For a little more, you can buy the CD and rip it yourself for portability IN ANY FORMAT without multiple pass compression loss, if you so desire. Oh yes...what about copy-protected CD's? That's what sound input cards are for, if there doesn't already happen to be a ripped version on the CD that you can use (Sony, etc.).

...

several points:

AAC is not "missing" sound in the same sense a book with missing words, as you had described. parts that are missing are either deemed inaudible or unimportant. and if you want to talk about missing sound - then nothing short of live performance will get you the full sound. audio recording is a sampled copy, afterall, even if it's sampled at a very high rate.

if you can hear the difference, good for you. i can't. all that means is that you have superior listening capabilities. it doesn't mean online music distribution is stupid or without viable market. or that people who use the service are somehow duped into buying something stupid.

i can read japanese. can you? assuming you can't, can i declare that you'd be stupid to pay for introductory japanese books because it doesn't have much of a content in japanese? i think not.

also, one of the greatest things about iTMS is the fact you can pick and choose songs. yes, you can buy a CD and it would be a viable alternative if you liked most of the songs on the album. but such is not the case all the time.

edit: man where are the hardware updates? so we can talk about something other than stupid lawspeaks.

 

[spice weasel]

I haven't read all the posts in this thread, so I apologize if someone else made the same point, but here is my two cents.

I see no problem with the playfair application. While it is true that Apple's Fairplay DRM is a much better alternative than what most of the other competitor's are offering, it is still DRM. What really bothers me about it is that it assumes that every individual who purchases music intends to commit a crime by illegally sharing that music. If I go to a brick and mortar music store and buy a CD, there is nothing (as of yet, anyway) stopping me from digitizing it and making as many copies as I want. What stops people from doing so is either the law/fear of getting caught, or their ethics, or a combination of both. The same should apply to legally downloaded music. This is especially the case given that you are essentially getting an inherently inferior quality product when you buy music off any online site, since it has already been encoded using a lossy process. To offer people the option of buying compressed audio and then impose extra-legal restrictions on their use of that audio is ridiculous.

This is why I have no qualms about the RIAA going after file sharers. While I think their tactics are a PR nightmare, and I have serious questions about the legality of court clerks issuing subpeonas rather than actual judges, they have a right to stop copyright infringement and to take legal action AFTER IT HAS BEEN COMMITTED!!! and not before.

Here is to cracking all DRM!

 

[entropy1980]

Firstly, this does work on the mac. Yesterday I downloaded it and converted about 20 songs to test it. Unfortuneately not all of them converted properly and those that didnt work continued not to work.

For the files that didnt work, it would cause Quicktime or iTunes to crash.

But I can tell you I did get about 15 or so songs that came out fine. It even copied the album art and complete song info. The only thing mising was the copy protection.

For anybody with issues getting the file, try the unc mirror on sourceforge, because thats the only one that worked for me.

How did you get it to compile cleanly?

 

[xhost_plus]

Using Toast

You can convert your AAC files to AIFF files using Toast. When you start to create an audio CD and drag over your AAC files, there is an option to save the converted files. You can save these files as AIFF (uncompressed).

There is really no way around DRM except Paladium, which is M$'s hardware based approach...

 

[entropy1980]

First double click to untar and unzip the thing.
Then open terminal or x11.
cd to the unzipped directory eg: 'cd /Desktop/playfair-0.2'
type './configure'
when all that is finished type 'make'
and when all that is finsihed 'sudo make install'
you will be asked for your password
then use 'playfair "filename"' to use. make sure your ipod is plugged in.

I get playfair command not found..... any ideas?

 

[jsw]

Personally, I think that this is terrible, terrible news for the music industry. People might be able to more easily access music which they have purchased and share it with others. Since I'm convinced that the musicians whose songs might be stolen need to maintain a lavish lifestyle with incomes that are orders of magnitude above other, less useful citizens (teachers, heart surgeons, police officers), I propose the following:

(1) No new music is released onto any format, ever. What isn't released cannot be copied.

(2) New music can be heard only in sound-proofed, radio-isolated chambers after being strip-searched and run through an intense magnetic field.

(3) New music will always be performed, never played from a recording, and never in public (only in the aforementioned chambers).

(4) A permanent, national, one percent income tax will be leveled against all citizens to support the music industry.

In this way, there is no possibility of recording and then sharing music.

Or, of course, the industry could produce a decent product at a good price wherein there is some value to purchasing the item.

 

[Soire]

This is a very interesting topic, and it's good that we're forgetting about new hardware updates for a spell. I happen to be a graduating college student and as part of my studies I have researched media issues like digital piracy. While I agree with the point that copyright laws exist for a reason, and artists are entitled to make money, I am also a cheap college student who likes to listen to free music.

So every time I hear this argument I must logically agree that pirating music is wrong (movies and other media I would never want to pirate) yet at the same time I can't help but feel good at getting even with the system. You see, for as long as the recording industry has existed they've done nothing but try and turn a profit on the talent of artists. And artists who started out wanting nothing more than to play music to fans all wind up doing it for the cash. Not that I blame them, because they have the right to do that and I probably would sell out as well. But here's the thing- music is an artform, this art is copied, the copies are sold, the copies are copied, and suddenly lawsuits are issued for some binary code you downloaded.

It's like photocopying a beautiful oil painting. It's not the original, but it will suffice. Just as a CD is not the original live performance, but a copy. But you're not allowed to copy a copy because you didn't clear it with the original copier! The whole thing winds up being frustrating and confusing, and it all boils down to why shouldn't one person be able to share something with another. That's the hardest part for many people to handle. Nobody is making a profit off of music piracy. It's all done in the spirit of "goodwill".

So now that I just ranted on, let me end by saying that technology will always find a way to benefit the people who use it, and not those who control it. I wonder if the RIAA would have released the CD format 20 years ago knowing what they know now, or just stuck with 8-track...?

 

[jxyama]

You can convert your AAC files to AIFF files using Toast. When you start to create an audio CD and drag over your AAC files, there is an option to save the converted files. You can save these files as AIFF (uncompressed).

There is really no way around DRM except Paladium, which is M$'s hardware based approach...

you can already do this with iTunes...

just for clarity, AAC Fairplay DRM can be removed, perfectly legally, by converting AAC+FP into AIFF. the resulting AIFF is DRM free. from there, you can compress back to AAC or MP3 or whatever format you want. the complaint was that the sound quality is worse - which is precisely why jobs was able to convince record labels that iTMS purchased songs will not add to p2p piracy, because resulting MP3 will have worse sound quality.

this news describe a way to go from AAC+FP directly to AAC, stripping the DRM. no sound quality loss.

one saving grace is that it does require purchaser login. so AAC+FP cannot be shared on p2p and then downloader to strip the DRM...

 

[mdesbiens]

You know what?

 

[jxyama]

Since I'm convinced that the musicians whose songs might be stolen need to maintain a lavish lifestyle with incomes that are orders of magnitude above other, less useful citizens (teachers, heart surgeons, police officers),

i don't want to turn this into an economic debate, but if you are talented musicians, you deserve "lavish lifestyle" to some extent. people providing social services are often underappreciated, no doubt, i won't argue on that point. but in this capitalistic economy, using superior talent as an economic leverage is perfectly acceptable. what you get paid is often what the market determined to be your worth. just because someone makes a lot of money doing not so noble things doesn't mean he/she doesn't deserve that money.

there are many people who has the talent to be a teacher. there aren't that many who can make music that will sell millions of copies or athletes who can sling a ball 60.5 feet at 100 mph. are their professions as "noble" as teaching the youth? maybe not. but they are rare, so they have the potential to be well compensated.