Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

There’s no doubt that the matter of intellectual property has become more prominent in the age of the internet now that some products — like music — have begun to lose their physical properties entirely. This shift has led to an increase in use of licenses designed to protect the IP of certain goods; so when you buy a song from the majority of online music services, that purchase is often accompanied by an agreement between you and the creator of the music. Some argue that manufacturers of electronic products have gone too far with their licenses, an opinion aired over at an article in The New Republic. One particular example of outlandish licensing agreements is that of Canon’s EOS-1D which includes a separate agreement related specifically to the software that runs on the camera — effectively the consumer does not own the software that keeps the camera running; he or she is instead licensed the right to use it. One clause of the disclaimer actually removes Canon’s obligation to service or repair the camera if the software fails. These kind of agreements aren’t completely watertight: courts can invalidate licenses if the company tries to impose excessive limits, the problem is that often they choose to favor companies over the individuals because it is felt that protection is required for fast moving areas like software design. Ultimately though, the threat of aggressive IP will never overrule the consumer’s killer wallet-closing combo move. If consumers are unfairly restricted by certain companies, isn’t it logical to assume that people won’t buy that company’s products anymore?

[Via Against Monopoly]

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Features, Interviews, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Instead of our usual run of interviews with industry luminaries and the like, today we’re aiming the camera a different direction. We had a few things to ask the person whom we’ve identified as Viodentia, the creator of FairUse4WM — the thorn in Microsoft’s (and Yahoo’s, and Napster’s, and Real’s, etc.) digital media business for a month now. Seems at once likely and not that the big DRM scheme developed by the largest software company was broken and broken again by a single person, but here we are — and here’s what Viodentia had to say about the digital music business, where Microsoft went wrong with PlaysForSure, and what s/he thinks about this latest memo and patch.

Thanks for granting this interview. So FairUse4WM caused quite a stir. How long did it take you to crack Microsoft’s PlaysForSure DRM? Was anyone else involved?

Finding a way to extract key information took about a couple of weeks of spare time. Going from a prototype to a more general tool took a couple of months. I am the only developer, although my friends served as early beta testers and sounding boards, and with the initial release I’ve gotten to know some very helpful people.

So apart from any ideological or political distaste you may have for DRM, do you have any personal reasons for wanting to crack Windows Media DRM? Like, are you a Rhapsody or Napster subscriber?

No, due to geographic location, I’m unable to subscribe to those services. Only my selfish rationale is the challenge in pitting my skills against the industry leader.

Without revealing the secret sauce, what were the fundamental flaws with PlaysForSure that allowed you to break it? Did Microsoft know about these flaws?

Once code is released, there’s really nothing secret anymore — Microsoft didn’t follow standard security practices, and left sensitive data unencrypted on the stack while calling routines out of kernel32.dll. Even when they fix this by changing malloc() to alloca(), it’ll still be a big task to audit other sensitive routines for DLL calls. On a theoretical level, they have to send the decryption keys outside of their control, and their only defense is through obfuscation.

Microsoft apparently has teams working around the clock to fix the vulnerability — and on the legal front they’ve started getting their lawyers involved, sending C&Ds to places hosting the software. What do you think of their responses to FairUse4WM?

I think they’re fulfilling their contractual obligations, and I’m looking forward to their improved obfuscation technology. I certainly disapprove of Microsoft claiming copyright to my program, but realistically I can’t do much about that. Nor can I advocate that folks mirror my program against their local laws.

Presently Microsoft has yet to been able to fix this vulnerability — is it possible for them to repair PlaysForSure without totally starting over?

As soon as I release something, Microsoft can certainly patch around it. I can do the same. I don’t believe that either of us has a nuclear option.

What do you think of Microsoft’s latest memo, which claims to patch version 1.2?

I’ll reserve full commentary until I’ve had a chance to examine the new IBX in more detail. I’ll release a new version sometime this week.

How do you think FairUse4WM affects the industry? Do you worry that cracking PlaysForSure is going to lead to the end of subscription-based services?

I think FairUse4WM is a good thing for the industry — it demonstrates that the entire world doesn’t turn upside down when there’s no effective protection on content. I doubt subscription based services are impacted — programs exploiting the analog hole were already widely spamvertised. The value of a subscription is the continuing access to new titles, which isn’t dependent on the protection. I wonder if any subscription company will publicly admit that FairUse4WM was good for them.

Microsoft supposedly has a new DRM scheme they’ve cooked up for their forthcoming Zune media player. What do you think about their jettisoning PFS for their own device, and this new DRM system of theirs?

I don’t have any insight into the politics at Microsoft. If I come across a Zune, I might have more comments on their DRM system at that point.

I know a lot of people at Microsoft and its PlaysForSure partners read us — what do you have to say to them?

I think the biggest mistake with the PlaysForSure / WM design is that it’s targeted too broadly. By incorporating forced product obsolesence and platform restrictions, it misses the mark in managing content rights. My suggestion to future designers is simple: don’t bother with weak client-side decryption. Instead, provide a public specification for licenses using digital signatures, manage the PKI through a not-for-profit organization, and apply social and legal pressure to programs that don’t comform. Accept that folks can trivially patch around the system, but if the restrictions aren’t onerous most people won’t go through the hassle. If WM files were already interoperable and the license terms were clearly communicated, there wouldn’t be anything left for a program like FairUse4WM to accomplish.

Thanks!

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Portable Audio

Mere days after Microsoft started pushing a new IBX version for “protecting” PlaysForSure files from its users, the FairUse4WM guys have thrown down a new version that deals with that and other little DRM-circumvention obstacles. The new release — version 1.2 — knocks out DRMv1 files you’ve ripped yourself with protection, breaks down individualized WM9 files and has a workaround for WM11beta2. Of course, we’re guessing it won’t be long until Microsoft has another quick update to break FairUse4WM again, but it seems like a more drastic update might be in order to shut down this hack for good. We’re sure you’re well familiar with our stance on this whole issue, and hope that version 1.2 treats you right.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

Earlier this week we told you about the first tool we’ve yet heard of that strips the FairPlay DRM from the iTunes Music Store v6 tracks you bought, called QTFairUse. Unfortunately, because this tool was still very raw and in Python, so it didn’t seem entirely there yet for the rest of us; well, today we’re one step closer with myTunes, a small (50KB), simple, graphical Windows app designed to strip the DRM off your iTunes tracks lickety split. Based on the QTFairUse Python code (and not that of the original myTunes from way back in the day), this app unfortunately only strips DRM in real time, meaning that while it automates the process as you churn through your playlist, it also requires you to play through your library song by song (compared to FairUse4WM, which strips PlaysForSure DRM en masse). Also, after the FairPlay has been stripped, you still have to use another tool to reconstruct your track from your raw AAC file (which also means you have no metadata). In other words, even though this tool simplifies a lot of the process, it’s still also a huge pain to use, so you’d better be prepared to bust out some shell scripting until the next version of myTunes is released (when they intend to automatically add the headers and metadata, making it a one step process). But it did most definitely work, click on to get an idea of what you’re in for with this early version of myTunes.

[Thanks, Pete]

So the first thing we did was, of course, update to the very latest version of iTunes for Windows (6.0.5.20) and buy a song from the iTunes Music Store.

We love Ultravox, so we picked an appropriate song…

As you can see, we’re prepared for major cash outlays for our editorial.

Once you have your track ready to play, fire up myTunes, set your decoding path, and enable myTunes.

Then, just hit play on your DRMed track, and it will begin the DRM stripping process.

Like we said, it goes in real time, so be patient. You’ll probably want to leave this thing running overnight (hey, that’s 8 hours of un-DRMed music a day, not too bad).

Once it’s done decoding, you have to use another tool called faad.exe to construct a playable AAC ADTS file. Kinda sucks, but it only took 2.8 seconds for Hymn to get built back up. Then we moved all our files (the FairPlay DRMed file, the raw AAC file, and the reconstructed AAC file) to our other machine for testing.

As you’d expect, this is what happened with the AAC file tried to play in VLC. No go — that’s copy protection for ya!

Neither would the raw AAC file play, but that wasn’t a surprise either. The resulting file from faad worked just fine, though.

Unfortunately it had no metadata (as expected).

However, as you can see the bitrate was kept intact, and the file size was almost identical to its original. We can’t yet confirm that this was a lossless DRM stripping method, but we’d wager it is (or at least very close to it). For what it’s worth, we heard absolutely no discernable loss in sound quality. Happy fair use everybody!

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Filed under: Portable Audio

By all accounts we saw the French iPod law pass late last month, but it would appear it was still yet to undergo further revisions and last minute addendums before hitting the executive branch. Those additions to the law were approved by France's Constitutional Court late yesterday, providing for some interesting loopholes. Apparently the crux is still intact, as Apple's FairPlay could be pried open by its competitors, however, under the law a newly appointed French regulatory authority would keep watch over the process in both directions, providing "protection" for companies developing DRM technology (like Apple) by preventing open-source derivatives from existing in the marketplace. In other words, while Apple is legally mandated to open up its DRM to, say, Napster, any open-source FairPlay DRM projects could find their creators in the slammer for up to three years, and fined up to $375,000. Sure, it's still at heart pro consumer -- they don't want open source giving away the DRM shop -- but what happens to the open source DVD players already around, and other open source fair use software projects? Are French anti-DRM open source freedom fighters about to get locked up in a strange turn of events because of this law? In addition to this, fair use statues are also being molded by the law; apparently DRM may now be used to enforce certain aspects of fair use in home media, like creating x or y amount of backup copies of your media. However, there is a bright side: President Chirac has still yet to sign the law into existence, and France's Socialist Party is supposedly trying to push this into evaluation to determine whether it's even constitutional. Sorry kids, we're not through with this biz yet.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

Sanyo’s got a new digital audio player poised to drop on the Japanese market, though it’ll mainly be of interest to folks with a couple of extra SD cards laying around, as the DMP-M400SD contains neither a hard drive nor any flash memory. What you are getting with this latest member of the Diply Music line is a pendant-style device sporting a backlit screen that supports MP3 files as well as WMA tracks with or without DRM. Clearly stressing size over features, the M400SD is pretty lean when it comes to extras; in fact, besides acting as a USB mass storage device, there’s really nothing that makes it stand out from the crowd — especially the rather ho-hum 12-hour battery life. If this still sounds like an attractive option to you, then $60 is all it will take to pick one of these up when they’re released on the first of next month.

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

From the looks of it our own Stephen Speicher was on to something in his latest edition of The Clicker. We've received word from a trusted insider (no, not Mr. Speicher) that the shape everyone's been expecting the Zune to take may not be the approach most people (including us) assumed. Here's what we learned:

• The Zune name isn't being kicked around with Microsoft; so as far as we know that's still a project codename, but probably will not be the device's final title. This is no surprise.
• Microsoft's forthcoming portable will not use Microsoft's established media platforms. This includes Windows Media, Windows Media Player, URGE, PlaysForSure DRM, and probably also Portable Media Center. Instead it will use its own software, music store, and DRM that will be incompatible with all the major stores, systems, and device out there right now. Yes, this will piss off the industry (and some of the Microsoft faithful) to no end.
  
• Due to this approach, the system is being referred to as the "Integrated Experience." This, we can assume, is not going to be positioned as the final name for the device, but the implications of the description and MO are clear.
  
• It will be wireless and not flash-based, so large storage capacities are to be expected; wireless music trading is an important part of the device's feature set and marking presence. This we all already knew.
  
• All this information does not conflict with information we've received from our other trusted sources.

We know, we know, this raises more questions than it answers. When Microsoft has already invested millions in establishing their software and DRM platforms, hooking up with huge names like Napster, Yahoo, Real, and MTV, and encouraging hardware partners to get Microsoft-centric devices on the market, now they're going to throw all that away and compete with everyone else (and themselves)? Well, the answer is very simple. In order to fight fire with fire against Apple, it's obvious a music service + device ecosystem like what Microsoft offers now can't compare to the user experience of an incredibly tight vertical integration. Microsoft can't take on the iPod without taking on its own platforms and partners -- they have to fight fire with fire.

If J. Allard and his crew at Microsoft really are behind this project, these details make perfect sense. The corporate culture of the company is such that Allard's team is expected to work outside the confines of Microsoft's typical boundaries, which might otherwise hinder the company getting a foothold in previously unentered markets. Does anyone actually think the Xbox 360 is anything like the normal Microsoft product and marketing experience? No. But it's definitely shaping up so Microsoft's media player is going to be more media player than Microsoft.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

It's not like some sort of DRM floodgate has been unlocked, and now unrestricted files flow freely from the Yahoo! Music vaults, but one unrestricted MP3 file has made its way onto their site, so we're going to milk it for all its worth. The song, "A Public Affair" by Jessica Simpson, can be "personalized" by choosing your name before downloading, which gets yourself inserted into the lyrics. If you'd rather not have Jessica singing your name, you can at least sit on the sidelines with us and debate the ramifications of the release. Yahoo! Music's official blog discusses the future of unprotected MP3 releases, stating the premium price was for the custom content, and mulls over the possibility of a $1.09 price point for straight up MP3 files. They don't see much hope of getting the labels to go for it just yet, but with experiments like this it shows we at least have Yahoo! on our side trying to make the music market more of a free one.

[Via paidContent]

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Filed under: Portable Audio

UK DAB enthusiasts now have yet another way to listen to those sweet digital broadcasts on-the-go thanks to a new portable radio from Genus; and as if that alone weren't exciting enough, the so-called SLM also includes an FM tuner and SD slot for rocking out to MP3s. Actually, there's really nothing here that we haven't seen before from manufacturers like Pure Digital and MPeye, but it can never hurt to have another product on the market driving down prices, right? One feature you're not getting with this unit -- besides the inability to record OTA programming -- is DRM support, so if you want to load up your PlaysForSure- or FairPlay-protected tracks, you'll need to strip out the copy protection with one of those handy pieces of software first (not that we'd ever encourage that sort of behavior, of course). It looks like you can pick up the OLED-equipped SLM right away from either Curry's or directly through Genus, and at $182, it's pretty reasonably priced -- though you'll have to shell out more loot if you're in need of a blank SD card for storing tunes.

[Via Shiny Shiny]

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Filed under: Portable Audio

After all sorts of protesting, name calling and backtracking, the French legislature has finally managed to pass their DRM law that could spell a bit of trouble for iTunes and other companies bent on locking down their own respective file formats. The language has been toned down a bit from the original draft, and we don’t have a new response from Apple or a hint of how this final version might be implemented, but the basic requirement of the bill is that Online music stores provide a method for users to play downloaded files on any device, as long as device manufacturers ask nicely. More recent revisions allowed some exceptions to this rule, including if the copyright holders weren’t willing to have the DRM opened up, but from the sounds of it there are industry types on both sides of the argument. Some are jumping at the chance to price DRMed songs independently of Apple, yet still land them on the iPod. Apparently there are still a couple weeks for the law to be challenged and struck, but once it goes in action we’ll be quite interested to see how Apple and others react — a France sans iTunes?

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

It would appear that the watering down and corporate-sponsored evisceration of the French iPod law has ceased, as today the French legislation cemented the final wording of the law, which is to be put before the French Senate and National Assembly in a vote without debate. It sounds as though the bill has attracted some chaff along the way and lost some weight around its DRM waistline, so what the latest down version will actually mean for Apple and French consumers if passed is a little unclear — but what is remarkably apparent is Cupertino’s steady and vehement opposition to the bill, or any that would imply FairPlay be gutted itself.

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

France’s iPod law came and went, and Denmark‘s anti-iTunes Music Store pressure didn’t really seem gather a whole lot of steam; we just saw Norway turn to their own national consumer ombudsman for assistance in prying open Apple’s FairPlay DRM so Apple music will, um, play fairly on other devices. But now we can tack on another to the growing number of European nations dissatisfied with Apple’s DRM lockbox: Sweden. The Swedish Consumer Agency spokeswoman Marianne Aabyhammar had this to say about the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish anti-iTunes triumvirate: “iTunes’ terms and conditions are illegal in all three countries,” and “If iTunes fails to improve its terms and conditions in Sweden, we may take the case to Sweden’s market court.” Funny how this same spirit of Swedish openness drove Jens of Sweden out of business, but let’s keep focused; there’s no denying that we’re past the tipping point, and the pressure by European states for Appleto open its music systems is only going to increase in virulence. If Apple’s going to make it out of this one unscathed, it seems like they might have to seriously reconsider their business model — at least in Europe.

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Filed under: Peripherals

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Filed under: Gaming, HDTV, Home Entertainment

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Filed under: Portable Audio

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Filed under: Features, Gaming, Home Entertainment, Portable Audio

Elsewhere in the media, The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg caused a stir with a column on Apple Computer’s “device model” vs. Microsoft’s “component model.” And, although Mossberg’s assertion was that Apple’s model of end-to-end control over its product line had, in the “post-PC era,”  benefited consumers more than Microsoft’s model of allowing PC makers to sort out the details, that’s not what caused a new cycle of debate in the blogosphere. Instead, it was one line in the column, where Mossberg stated: “Now, Apple is working on other projects built on the same end-to-end model as the iPod: a media-playing cellphone and a home-media hub.” If any other journalist had written this statement, it would likely have been dismissed as a mere assumption based on Apple’s current direction and rumors that have been floating around for the past year. However, given Mossberg’s stature, and the care he takes at presenting information, the comment was instantly hailed as conclusive evidence that Apple is indeed working on such products. And given word that leaked out later in the week that Apple may be working on an iPhone with Japan’s Softbank, and that the company plans to host the media at its New York store next Thursday, Mossberg’s assertion may turn out to have been quite accurate, quite soon.

Mossberg wasn’t the only one making controversial statements about Apple this week. Reuters reporter Duncan Martell dared to point out that you don’t really “own” music you download from the iTunes Music Store, since “owning implies control and if you bought the tracks on iTunes you don’t have complete control.” That, of course, is essential to Apple’s razor-and-blades model of linking the iPod to iTunes, but it pokes a hole in a major defense of iTMS vs. the PlaysforSure-based subscription model. After all, fans of iTMS have long stated that it’s better to own music than to “rent” it, via the subscription model. However, Martell rightly points out that you don’t really own anything you download from iTunes. You’re licensing it, as you do with software, and Apple can change the terms of that license at will.

USA Today – Videogame makers unveil the fun to come
LA Times – E3 2006
San Francisco Chronicle – Nintendo’s hot controller, booth babes under control
Time – A game for all ages

The Wall Street Journal – In our post-PC era, Apple’s device model beats the PC way
Reuters – Do you own songs bought online? Well, sort of

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Filed under: Multimedia, Windows Mobile, NTT DoCoMo, HSDPA

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Filed under: Portable Audio

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

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Filed under: Portable Audio

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Filed under: Portable Audio

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

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Filed under: Handsets, Multimedia, Software, Nokia, Symbian, UMTS

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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video

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Filed under: Gaming

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