After reading all the negative reactions here I am a bit surprised. Perhaps these reactions are due to the fact that quite a number of people dont really understand what this is all about.
First of all, this is not an attempt to break the FairPlay DRM scheme. The software basically works like this: It takes a Real DRM protected song bought from the RealPlayer Music Store and decrypts it and encrypts it again in a way that is compatible with FairPlay. Thats all there is to it no format conversions or loss of quality, because Real also uses AAC as the basis of their music store. If Real didnt make any mistakes the resulting file should look exactly the same as a regular iTMS file.
How exactly did Real achieve this? Well, I dont know, because I am not a employee of Real. But this is what I would do, if I were to create such a program. Thanks to DeDRMS and Hymn a.k.a. PlayFair its not that difficult actually. But first some background information on FairPlay:
If you rip a CD with AAC in iTunes it creates a MP4 container with a standard AAC audio stream. A FairPlay protected file is basically nothing more than a MP4 container with an encrypted AAC audio stream. If you have the key you can decrypt the encrypted stream using the Rijndael algorithm. That is all you need to play a FairPlay protected Everything is based on existing standards: AAC, the MP4 container format and Rijndael encryption. Nothing revolutionary here.
When you buy a song from the iTMS it encrypts the song using a randomly generated key. That key is stored in your account on the iTMS server. When you authorize your computer it will send all the keys in your account to the computer you are using. When you de-authorize your computer it will remove the keys from the computer you are using. So, when your computer is authorized it has the keys it needs to decrypt the encrypted files.
When you transfer a protected song from iTunes to you iPod it makes a copy of the key and places it on the iPod. The iPod basically contains a repository of all the keys it needs to play the protected files you moved to your iPod.
In reality it is a bit more difficult than I explained above. But everything you need has already been reverse-engineered. How to decrypt is known. How to access the keys on the iPod is known. How the access the keys from iTunes is known and Jon Johansen recently even released a program that allows you to contact the iTMS server to receive the keys directly from Apple. Every component that one would need to create such a program is known.
So, what would I do to make files compatible with the iPod? First of all you need a plain AAC file (Real uses DRMed AAC files, but since they created the DRM scheme, they know how to decrypt their own files and turn them into regular AAC files). Next you need to generate a random key and encrypt the AAC file with it and store it into a MP4 container. Creating a random key is simple. The encryption scheme is also a standardized scheme, so that should be pretty easy too. Storing the file in a MP4 container is also easy, because that is also a public standard.
The next thing you need to do is move the file to the iPod and store the randomly generated key in the key repository on the iPod. Since the iPod is little more than a mounted harddrive this shouldnt be a big problem either. The only potential problem is the format of the key repository. Since we already know how to read keys from it, it shouldnt be a big problem to solve though. And that is all there is to it. The iPod has the protected file and the key to play it. Of course, you cant play the file in iTunes, but after reading the description on Reals website it doesnt look like they allow that either.
Finally, I you arent yet bored with this very long post, I also have an opinion on the legality of such an application. First of all, there are several ways to protect IP: trade secrets, copyrights, patents and trademarks.
Apple no longer can use trade secrets to protect FairPlay, because everything you need to know about it is already public knowledge. Once something becomes public knowledge, it cant be protected by trade secrets anymore.
Apple has a trademark for FairPlay, which means Real cant give its application the same name. Since Real uses the name Harmony for this application this isnt an issue.
Apple doesnt seem to have a patent on FairPlay DRM technology. Probably because the system they use is an pretty straight forward implementation of common DRM techniques. Nothing Apple invented, just stuff that Apple implemented based on existing techniques. So stopping Real using patents seems unlikely.
Copyrights are also problematic. Copyright only protects implementations of ideas, not the ideas itself. Two separate implementations of the same functionality is allowed by copyright law. Take for example Safari and Internet Explorer. As long as Real doesnt use any source code that is owned by Apple they are not violating Apples copyrights.
Unlike utilities like Hymn a.k.a PlayFair and DeDRMS, the application Real built does not break the copy protection scheme used by FairPlay, it merely builds files that are compatible with FairPlay. So it doesnt look like a DMCA violation. In fact the DMCA specifically allows reverse-engineering to achieve compatibility.
All that is left is that Real is messing up Apples plans to stay the sole supplier of legal downloads for the iPod. Although I love Apple, that is something they cant prevent from happening. Ive never seen a law that tells us that you cant mess with Apples plans.
First of all, this is not an attempt to break the FairPlay DRM scheme. The software basically works like this: It takes a Real DRM protected song bought from the RealPlayer Music Store and decrypts it and encrypts it again in a way that is compatible with FairPlay. Thats all there is to it no format conversions or loss of quality, because Real also uses AAC as the basis of their music store. If Real didnt make any mistakes the resulting file should look exactly the same as a regular iTMS file.
How exactly did Real achieve this? Well, I dont know, because I am not a employee of Real. But this is what I would do, if I were to create such a program. Thanks to DeDRMS and Hymn a.k.a. PlayFair its not that difficult actually. But first some background information on FairPlay:
If you rip a CD with AAC in iTunes it creates a MP4 container with a standard AAC audio stream. A FairPlay protected file is basically nothing more than a MP4 container with an encrypted AAC audio stream. If you have the key you can decrypt the encrypted stream using the Rijndael algorithm. That is all you need to play a FairPlay protected Everything is based on existing standards: AAC, the MP4 container format and Rijndael encryption. Nothing revolutionary here.
When you buy a song from the iTMS it encrypts the song using a randomly generated key. That key is stored in your account on the iTMS server. When you authorize your computer it will send all the keys in your account to the computer you are using. When you de-authorize your computer it will remove the keys from the computer you are using. So, when your computer is authorized it has the keys it needs to decrypt the encrypted files.
When you transfer a protected song from iTunes to you iPod it makes a copy of the key and places it on the iPod. The iPod basically contains a repository of all the keys it needs to play the protected files you moved to your iPod.
In reality it is a bit more difficult than I explained above. But everything you need has already been reverse-engineered. How to decrypt is known. How to access the keys on the iPod is known. How the access the keys from iTunes is known and Jon Johansen recently even released a program that allows you to contact the iTMS server to receive the keys directly from Apple. Every component that one would need to create such a program is known.
So, what would I do to make files compatible with the iPod? First of all you need a plain AAC file (Real uses DRMed AAC files, but since they created the DRM scheme, they know how to decrypt their own files and turn them into regular AAC files). Next you need to generate a random key and encrypt the AAC file with it and store it into a MP4 container. Creating a random key is simple. The encryption scheme is also a standardized scheme, so that should be pretty easy too. Storing the file in a MP4 container is also easy, because that is also a public standard.
The next thing you need to do is move the file to the iPod and store the randomly generated key in the key repository on the iPod. Since the iPod is little more than a mounted harddrive this shouldnt be a big problem either. The only potential problem is the format of the key repository. Since we already know how to read keys from it, it shouldnt be a big problem to solve though. And that is all there is to it. The iPod has the protected file and the key to play it. Of course, you cant play the file in iTunes, but after reading the description on Reals website it doesnt look like they allow that either.
Finally, I you arent yet bored with this very long post, I also have an opinion on the legality of such an application. First of all, there are several ways to protect IP: trade secrets, copyrights, patents and trademarks.
Apple no longer can use trade secrets to protect FairPlay, because everything you need to know about it is already public knowledge. Once something becomes public knowledge, it cant be protected by trade secrets anymore.
Apple has a trademark for FairPlay, which means Real cant give its application the same name. Since Real uses the name Harmony for this application this isnt an issue.
Apple doesnt seem to have a patent on FairPlay DRM technology. Probably because the system they use is an pretty straight forward implementation of common DRM techniques. Nothing Apple invented, just stuff that Apple implemented based on existing techniques. So stopping Real using patents seems unlikely.
Copyrights are also problematic. Copyright only protects implementations of ideas, not the ideas itself. Two separate implementations of the same functionality is allowed by copyright law. Take for example Safari and Internet Explorer. As long as Real doesnt use any source code that is owned by Apple they are not violating Apples copyrights.
Unlike utilities like Hymn a.k.a PlayFair and DeDRMS, the application Real built does not break the copy protection scheme used by FairPlay, it merely builds files that are compatible with FairPlay. So it doesnt look like a DMCA violation. In fact the DMCA specifically allows reverse-engineering to achieve compatibility.
All that is left is that Real is messing up Apples plans to stay the sole supplier of legal downloads for the iPod. Although I love Apple, that is something they cant prevent from happening. Ive never seen a law that tells us that you cant mess with Apples plans.
