Napster-To-Go’s ‘rental music’ DRM circumvented

“You know, if you sign up for Napster-to-Go and don’t realize that your music is going to disappear when you stop paying them money, you’re not a victim of the bloodsucking media barons—you’re a tard,” Gizmodo writes. “Here’s a way to record music you’re getting from Napster-to-Go into WAV files, to be burned to CDs or re-encoded to your compressed music file of choice.”

Gizmodo links to “marv on record’s” step-by-step instructions on how to rather easily circumvent Napster’s Microsoft JANUS DRM. Full article here.

Find “marv on record’s burning through Napster’s collection for free” instructions here.

MacDailyNews Take: The obvious has happened and rather quickly, too. Let’s see how the music industry likes Napster-To-Go, Microsoft’s JANUS DRM, and the “rental” model now. Hint for music industry execs: if you can hear the music, the music can and will be recorded regardless of the DRM. The best way to make “rental” music’s DRM work is to rent music that people cannot hear or is of a quality that’s so bad it’s not worth recording. Does that sound like a good business model to you?

Related MacDailyNews articles:
‘Napster To Go’ forces you to pay to keep your existing music – February 14, 2005

67 Comments

  1. We should have had a running ticker to see how long it took for “Janus” to be circumvented. Does anyone know of a ticker for the delivery date of Loooooooonghorn?

  2. This was Napster’s grand scheme from the very beginning. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />

    Shall we call it Napter’s Revenge?! HE HE HEE………. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”LOL” style=”border:0;” />

  3. Well that didn’t take long, even by “Internet time” standards.

    I wonder how many lawsuits will be filed when the courts open tomorrow.

    Today’s magic word: SHUTDOWN

  4. Cool. Too bad the sound quality will suck after you’ve re-encoded a previously WMA compressed song back on to your computer though. I’ll just stick with iTunes instead. But here’s hoping it’ll piss off the RIAA enough to get Napster in some deep sh*t.

  5. If this doesn’t prove that Microsoft and DRM (and security of all types for that matter) are contradictory of one another then I don’t know what does. The day Microsoft makes anything that is “secure” will be the same day that pigs fly…

  6. JB: WMA© is so superior to AAC in every respect that even re-encoding a WMA© song several times would still result in an acoustically superior specimen compared to anything you could get from iTunes®. At least, that’s what I’ve found after listening to both through my Dell®’s speakers.

  7. “Circumvented”? Nah…

    I could make the same claim about Apple’s FairPlay DRM. I could use Audio Hijack to snag the audio. Of course, I’ve already payed Apple for the song, so it really doesn’t matter.

    What’s interesting is that, according to Napster’s End-User License Agreement, Napster tracks the number of times each song is played in order to give the money to the owners of the song (ie, the Record Companies). So when you plug in your music player once a month, it will report back to Napster what songs you listened to and how many times you listened to them.

    Also, Marv’s comment that the music was obtained legally, that’s a bit debatable. IANAL, but the Napster EULA also explicitly states that the music you download is owned by Napster, not by you.

  8. As has been mentioned – this can be done with ANYTHING that can be heard from your computer, regardless of DRM – yes, even with iTunes. However, it’s such a hassle. Why bother. It’s so much easier to just use iTunes and buy an iPod. Bam. You’re done.

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