“Users have found a way to skirt copy protection on Napster Inc.’s portable music subscription service just days after its high-profile launch, potentially letting them make CDs with hundreds of thousands of songs for free. American Technology Research analyst PJ McNealy said that no matter how protected a music file is, you can capture the output and save it on the hard drive,” Sue Zeidler reports for Reuters.
“American Technology Research analyst PJ McNealy said that no matter how protected a music file is, you can capture the output and save it on the hard drive. ‘Now, portable subscriptions are a bigger bullseye or goal for people,’ he said. Napster unveiled the portable subscription earlier this month, backed by a $30 million ad campaign attacking rival Apple’s iTunes service and its ubiquitous iPod digital music player,” Zeidler reports.
“Until recently, music subscription services have been somewhat restricted in their ability to transfer songs they provide to portable players, while Apple has sold millions of portable iPods by allowing users to buy songs from iTunes and store them on iPods,” Zeidler reports. “But Napster uses a new digital rights management software from Microsoft called Janus to enable the portable transfers.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s iTunes model works because you at least have to buy the song for 99-cents before you can play it and/or strip off the DRM. Napster To Go’s model does not work for the artists and music labels because a user can simply pay one low monthly subscription fee and strip the DRM off every song in the library. Do the artists and music labels understand the problem here? This new Napster To Go is potentially worse for them than even the original Napster.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Napster-To-Go’s ‘rental music’ DRM circumvented – February 14, 2005
Microsoft’s Janus DRM — I wonder if that was invented by my old friend at Microsoft – Hugh Janus!
I keep getting pop-ups when using Safari, block enabled, but only at MDN. Why? Here is the source of the latest crap.
http://www.partner2profit.com/
magic word GETTING ….like this is getting annoying.
WOW. It Seems BSOD has nothing better to do in life but post on the MDN forums..Oh well, Whatever makes him happy….ROTFFLMFAOBBSODITBFMIEHIAF!!!!
Oh and ANY DRM is Crackable, Including iTunes.
NoMacForYou,
You’re so kewwwt
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> heehee
Happens with Macslash and macosrumors too. I guess we’ll start seeing popups on ALL the mac sites soon
>sigh<
Magic Word NEVER…as in I never thought I’d see the day….
I was also attacked by a pop-up ad. Actually, it was a pop-under ad, which is worse. I saw a brief flash of it when I clicked “Submit” to submit my posting.
What’s up with MDN and its aggressive ad campaign? If they want money, I offered to pay them via amazon.com gift certificates (cuz I hate paypal). But, I didn’t get a response from my e-mail.
The whole argument can be boiled down to this.
The iTunes model is honorable, and encourages honorable behavior. It is honorable to charge a single, low fee, and then grant ownership of something, even if it’s only a perpetual license. The honorable behavior encouraged is downloading of the songs AFTER payment.
The Napster-to-go model is dishonorable, and encourages dishonorable behavior. It makes you keep paying forever if you want to keep the songs you “own,” and thus encourages the behavior of getting around the DRM. And because it’s a dishonorable way of doing business, people don’t feel guilty about stealing the music via getting around the DRM.
Magic word: least, as in “iTunes follows the path of least resistance; Napster is the least-secure system out there.”
No popups, no banners. See: http://www.privoxy.org/
emmyache, your words are eloquent and true. And reveal the psychology of the situation and how human nature reacts.
.99 IS a very good price. I’m 55 years old and remember paying a dollar for a single back in the mid ’60’s when I was in High School. If you adjust for inflation that single should cost about $5 today. It’s true that the record companies save money in production, storage, shipping, etc. (which means that the single today should be CHEAPER for technical reasons) A compressed single will keep it’s level of musical quality FOREVER. Which is a value not to be taken lightly. 45’s started to lose their ‘highs’ after about 100 playings. So I think it averages out very well, and that .99 is a good price for the value.
However, on my $2500 speakers in my living room the songs from iTunes come up a bit… short. Which is odd because the tunes sound pretty good on my $60 Sony earbuds. And pretty nice on my Creature Speakers in my office.
Maybe I need to EQ my speakers. Because I DO want to listen to these songs, and enjoy them, in my living room. Not just everywhere in the world EXCEPT on my decent home system. Any true audiophiles out there with an opinion on this?
David Vesey
Oh yes, one more thing.
Pop-Ups.
I use OmniWeb, a browser that costs $29.95. Very powerful, LOTS of features. I would never use anything else. It’s still just out of beta so it’s not as racy as Safari or Firefox. You have 30 days after download to try it before you need to buy it.
Anyway, it has a pretty good ad blocker. Some things are better than Pith Helmet, some not. But whatever it has, it has powerful Mojo on the MDN web sight. I notice none of the things you guys are being plagued with.
OmniWeb
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/
dv
Thanks Jeff. That helps. And it was only Safari that was getting the pop-ups. Firefox and Shiira were not getting the pop-ups.
Very weird.
This “hack” has been blown out of proportion. Recording the music in real-time is not very practical. Too much editing is involved in this process. When someone figures out a way of stripping off the DRM of a file without having to play and record in real-time, then we will have something to talk about.
By the way, HiJack Pro and Wiretap are two OS X applications that will let you do the same thing with DRM AAC files. Of course the difference is that you have to pay to listen to those files in the first place and besides, iTunes lets you burn them as Audio CDs.
For David Vessey:
You HAVE to try out the “WOW Thing” from http://www.srslabs.com. It costs $29. You won’t have a need to complain about the sound quality of iTMS songs on your high end system no more. I’ve been using the sound-enhancing “WOW Thing” for quite awhile and have been very pleased with the sounds coming from compressed music such as mp3’s and AAC’s.
(You’re welcome in advance
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
to: david vesey
Your iTunes tunes simply are not going to sound great on a great sound system. Excellent speakers will let you “hear what’s missing” if you know what I mean. ACC compression loses some of the quality of a good recording, especially in music with a wide spectrum of sound. Pop music is not so bad, but symphonic, classical, etc. just loose some of their “sheen.” When I encode stuff at 128kbps, i can tell the difference on good speakers. If I encode stuff at 192kbps it’s much harder to discern the original from the encoded version.
Anyways, don’t EQ your speakers for iTunes unless you can easily go back and forth between settings for iTunes and higher quality sources.
David Vessey:
Don’t listen to that turd synthmeister he is absolutely ignorant of the fact that you CAN enjoy iTMS songs with your sound system. The “WOW Thing” is a little box that you connect to the AUX of your stereo and your iPod (iPod -> WOW Thing -> stereo). You will be amazed at the difference in sound quality in compressed music! I recommend the WOW Thing to synthmeister too..
Jeff wrote: “Add this line to your /etc/hosts file:
127.0.0.1 z1.adserve.com”
Thanks, Jeff,
Very useful tag line there!
One word of advice: you have to either su as root or sudo first to allow your editor to save the hosts fiie. Just thought I’d throw that in there.
Do the ads bother you that much?
magic word ‘special’ as in
heres a special way to make safari block all ads
http://67.15.54.122/article.php?story=20030910162652193
I just read a story on cnet which contained the following statement:
“More recently, Apple has repeatedly changed its iTunes software to block hackers who have figured out ways to remove the copy-protection software from songs purchased at its online store.”
Is there any truth to this statement?
Yeah, the hackers they refer to is Real Networks.
: )
Optional,
I’m know that your comment was made tongue-in-cheek… and I did find it amusing.
But…. Real Networks “hack” doesn’t match what the statement implied.
The following quote explains what RealNetworks “hack” accomplished. In no way did RealNetworks remove Apple’s copy protection (i.e. Fairplay) from songs purchased from iTunes and convert them a non-protected format. So, I’m still interested in understanding the “truthfullness” of the cnet statement… since I don’t believe that there is any.
“Back in April, RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser asked Apple to license FairPlay to them as part of a “tactical alliance” against Microsoft. Apple declined. Locked out by Apple, RealNetworks then proceeded to crack FairPlay in July. Called Harmony, RealNetwork’s DRM software mimicked FairPlay and allowed RealRhapsody to offer tracks at their music store which would play on the iPod. Apple responded angrily, accusing RealNetworks of having the “ethics of a hacker,” going on to say that it was “highly likely” that Harmony would stop working on the iPod at some point in time.
That point in time came in November, when Apple released an iPod firmware update that thwarted Harmony on some iPods.”
Safari and pop-ups on MDN: I got nothing, zero, zilch.
Clear your cache, re-enable the block on Safari.
A 100% pop-ups Safari user here, even on MDN.
David Vessey et. All:
I have used my iPod with songs purchased from the iTunes music store on professional sound equipment at my church. Haven’t had any problem with the way it sounds. Although… Being a sound tech I do tend to play with the EQ on just about every song because it sounds BETTER when you do. That’s what I love about iTunes, I set the EQ in iTunes for the song so that it sounds good to me, and then I’m done. With my iPod I’m used to changing the EQ from my truck, to the sound system at my church, to the ear phones… So why bother listening to badly EQ’ed music when you can very easily set it in iTunes?
Magic word: Saying…. As in, “That’s all I’m saying Do what sounds good to your ears”
This is an authentic note posted on the Napster web site:
A note from Napster’s CTO
It has come to our attention that there are a number of inaccurate statements posted by various sources on the Internet regarding the security of Napster and Napster To Go. As Napster’s CTO, I would like to officially state that neither Napster To Go, Napster, nor Windows Media DRM have been hacked. In the interest of providing the most accurate information to consumers, the following is some background on the subject.
There is a program that allows a user to record the playback of tracks directly from the computer’s sound card. This process can be likened to the way people used to record songs from the radio onto cassette tapes, but instead of capturing the music on a tape, the file is converted into a new, unprotected digital format. This program does not break the encryption of the files, which can only be recorded one at a time making the process quite laborious. It would take 10 hours to convert 10 hours of music in this manner. It is important to note that this program is not specific to Napster; files from all legal subscription and pay-per-download services can be copied in this way.
We hope that the information provided above clarifies the matter and puts questions regarding the security of Napster and Napster To Go to rest. Napster’s mission is to provide consumers with a legal environment in which they can experience and discover the world’s largest collection of digital music. We believe that artists should be compensated for their work and intellectual property rights should be respected. While we acknowledge there are always going to be those who do not share our belief, we remain committed to providing the most enjoyable and flexible digital music experience for those who do.
TO WHA . .
“You HAVE to try out the “WOW Thing” from http://www.srslabs.com“
windows media player on the wintel platform (version 8 and up I think) includes a WOW/SRS option with their EQ. I listened to it and was not really impressed. Manual EQ still got a better sound. Furthermore, when the audio is encoded to a manageable file size the sound information is actually stripped away, so no eq/sound enhancer will bring it back.