FairPlay
Encyclopedia
FairPlay is a digital rights management
(DRM) technology created by Apple Inc., based on technology created by the company Veridisc. FairPlay is built into the QuickTime
multimedia software and used by the iPhone
, iPod
, iPad
, Apple TV, iTunes
, and iTunes Store
and the App Store. Formerly, all songs in the iTunes Store
were encoded with FairPlay. Apple later started offering a selection of songs that, after an additional 50 cents is paid per song, could be downloaded FairPlay-free. Currently, Apple does not sell songs with FairPlay encryption. FairPlay digitally encrypts
AAC
audio files and prevents users from playing these files on unauthorized computers.
The majority of FairPlay-encrypted content is purchased through the iTunes Store, using the iTunes software. The iTunes software relies on Apple's Quicktime multimedia software for decoding and playback of the encrypted files. Every media player capable of using QuickTime is capable of playing back FairPlay-encrypted files, including RealPlayer
, Media Center
, Media Player Classic
and Songbird
.
audio stream. The audio stream is encrypted using the AES
algorithm in combination with MD5
hashes. The master key required to decrypt the encrypted audio stream is also stored in encrypted form in the MP4 container file. The key required to decrypt the master key is called the "user key".
Each time a new customer uses iTunes to buy a track, a new random user key is generated and used to encrypt the master key. The random user key is stored, together with the account information, on Apple’s servers, and also sent to iTunes. iTunes stores these keys in its own encrypted key repository. Using this key repository, iTunes is able to retrieve the user key required to decrypt the master key. Using the master key, iTunes is able to decrypt the AAC audio stream and play it.
When a user authorizes a new computer, iTunes sends a unique machine identifier to Apple’s servers. In return it receives all the user keys that are stored with the account information. This ensures that Apple is able to limit the number of computers that are authorized and makes sure that each authorized computer has all the user keys that are needed to play the tracks that it bought.
When a user deauthorizes a computer, iTunes will instruct Apple’s servers to remove the unique machine identifier from their database, and at the same time it will remove all the user keys from its encrypted key repository.
The iPod also has its own encrypted key repository. Every time a FairPlay-protected track is copied onto the iPod, iTunes will copy the user key from its own key repository to the key repository on the iPod. This makes sure that the iPod has everything it needs to play the encrypted AAC audio stream.
FairPlay does not affect the ability of the file itself to be copied. It only manages the decryption of the audio content.
At this time, it appears that the restrictions mentioned above are hard-coded into QuickTime and the iTunes application, and not configurable in the protected files themselves!
Fairplay prevents iTunes customers from using the purchased music directly on any portable digital music player other than the Apple iPod, Motorola ROKR E1, Motorola SLVR
, Motorola RAZR V3i, the iPhone
and the iPad
.
customer, Thomas Slattery, filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc., alleging the company broke antitrust
laws by using FairPlay with iTunes so that purchased music will work only with its own music player, the iPod, freezing out competitors. Though most of the complaints have been dropped, the case has since been combined with two other lawsuits and continues today under the temporary name "The Apple iPod iTunes Antitrust Litigation".
On June 28, 2004, VirginMega filed a complaint with the French Competition Council against Apple regarding its refusal to license Fairplay to VirginMega for use in their own online music commerce store. The Council (Conseil) rejected the complaint over accused anti-competitive behavior.
The Conseil ruled against the notion that FairPlay was an "essential facility
" for three distinct reasons: 1) Playing purchased music on portable players was a small part of the market; 2) CD Burning provides an adequate work-around to get purchased music from other vendors onto an iPod; and 3) There is sufficient availability of portable players that support Microsoft's WMA DRM as a viable alternative and choice for consumers.
program – was the first to devise a way to circumvent the DRM. The open source
application QTFairUse
intercepted the decrypted output and wrote it to a raw AAC file. Many media players do not support such raw files and the files had to be processed with a tool like FAAD to create normal files. One of the few media players that is able to play raw AAC files is foobar2000
.
The second time around, Johansen reverse engineered
the encryption technique used in FairPlay and created an algorithm to completely remove the encryption without re-encoding the encrypted AAC stream. This method was also used by VLC media player
in order to play FairPlay-protected tracks until a newer version of iTunes and FairPlay broke it.
Only a few days after the release of iTunes 7.0 the experimental version 2.3 of QTFairUse6, a derivative of the python open source QTFairUse
, was released which dumps each track to a raw AAC file which then can be converted to any format.
Jon Johansen himself also released a tool to remove the encryption, called DeDRMS. Later he released FairKeys, which uses Apple’s own servers to retrieve the keys needed by DeDRMS.
All these applications have two things in common. First, they employ the user keys from either the Apple servers, the iTunes key repository, or the iPod key repository, which ensures they can decrypt only files that are legally bought; a user cannot use these applications to decrypt files that another user bought. Second, they keep user specific metadata inside the MP4 container intact, so it is possible to identify the user who originally bought the file after it is decrypted.
In March 2005, it was revealed through a front end of the iTunes Store called PyMusique that the FairPlay DRM was added only as a song was being purchased from the store by the client software itself.
In October 2006, Jon Johansen announced that instead of breaking FairPlay, he had reverse-engineered it so that other companies could play their DRM-protected music and movies on iPods and Apple's new Apple TV. His company, doubleTwist
, would license the technology to media companies who wished to have their media playable on the iPod or Apple TV, with the protection of FairPlay DRM, but without having to go through Apple.
– created by an anonymous author – also appeared. It can remove the encryption from files using the FairPlay DRM mechanism. The author of Playfair used the source code written by Jon Johansen for VLC. Apple's legal department forced PlayFair to be first removed from SourceForge.net
, and then when the Indian open source web site Sarovar.org hosted the project they too were sent a cease and desist
by Apple's lawyers. However, Playfair's successor Hymn
(a backronym
for "Hear Your Music aNywhere") has become JHymn
, a Java
variant of the program, and iOpener, a Windows variant.
Apple Computer introduced iTunes 6.0 in October 2005, which included changes intended to stop programs like JHymn from decrypting FairPlay encrypted files. Furthermore, once iTunes 6 has been used to purchase songs or authorize a computer with a particular iTMS account, that account will be blocked from making purchases or activations on earlier iTunes versions, thus JHymn can no longer be used.
Apple Computer introduced iTunes 7.0 in September 2006, which once again included changes intended to stop programs similar to JHymn.
introduced their Harmony technology. The Harmony technology is built into RealPlayer
and allows users of the RealPlayer Music Store to play their songs on the iPod
. Before the introduction of Harmony this was not possible, because the RealPlayer Music Store uses a different DRM scheme, called Helix DRM, that was incompatible with that used by Apple. While using RealPlayer to transfer a Helix DRM-restricted song onto the iPod, Harmony transparently converts it to a FairPlay-compatible protected file. Real argued that Harmony was a boon to consumers that "frees" them "from the limitation of being locked into a specific portable device when they buy digital music." Apple responded:
RealNetworks launched an internet petition
titled "Hey Apple! Don't break my iPod", encouraging iPod users to sign up to support Real's action. The petition backfired badly. The overwhelming majority of posters reacted negatively. The main points of criticism against Harmony were:
Apple did disable Harmony around the time of the iPod photo
launch, and to older versions shortly after in firmware updates. The change makes it so that all music (past and present) purchased through the RealPlayer Music Store will not work on Apple's iPod
. In response, Real said they would get it working again.
In August 2005, an SEC filing by RealNetworks disclosed that continued use of the Harmony technology put themselves at considerable risk because of the possibility of a lawsuit
from Apple, which would be expensive to defend against, even if the court agreed that the technology is legal. Additionally, the possibility that "Apple will continue to modify its technology to 'break' the interoperability that Harmony provides to consumers" would mean that "Harmony may no longer work with Apple's products, which could harm our business and reputation, or we may be forced to incur additional development costs to refine Harmony to make it interoperate again."
Harmony never resurfaced as an option by RealNetworks.
Requiem works by decrypting the iTunes configuration files that are in "/Users/Shared/SC Info". In Mac OS X, the key to decrypt these config files is an obfuscated version of the MAC address
of one's computer. In Windows, an amalgamation of hard drive volume information and registry keys are used instead of the MAC address. The initialization variable for this decryption is a hard coded constant. The program then decrypts the keys in the config files as well as the private atoms in the audio/video files and creates unencrypted versions. An updated iTunes 7.6.2
disabled Requiem, however, versions 1.4 and 1.5 again circumvented the protection. Apple again disabled Requiem with iTunes 8
, but the author released version 1.8.2 which circumvents iTunes 8 DRM on Mac OS and Microsoft Windows systems. Apple responded by releasing iTunes 8.0.2, which again disabled Requiem.
Apple has taken steps to remove references to Requiem from the JHymn forums. A post on the JHymn forums explains Apple's cease and desist
order against the forum regarding posting information on circumvention technologies like Requiem. Since the C&D order, the author of Requiem initially made it available with source code on the anonymous Freenet
network, but then moved it to a Tor
hidden service. From there it has been copied onto popular BitTorrent public trackers, such as The Pirate Bay
.
On March 16, 2009, the day that iTunes 8.1 was released , Requiem was updated several times, ending up with version 1.8.8. Requiem 1.8.8 decrypts files with iTunes 8.1.0.51, but, as before, Apple responded by releasing iTunes 8.1.0.52, which appears to again disable Requiem. As of May 5, 2009, Requiem 1.8.10 decrypts files with iTunes 8.1.1. On January 5, 2010, Requiem 1.8.16 was released for iTunes 9.0.2. On January 21, 2010, Requiem 1.8.17 was released for iTunes 9.0.2 as a bug-fix to process files with a size greater than 4GB. The most recent version is 2.0.1, for iTunes 10. Version 2.0 and beyond require use of an iPod, iPhone, or iPad to decrypt music. Apple plans to have iTunes update the DRM coding on videos bought from the iTunes Store automatically by checking the files to see if the coding is up to date.
it.
The second method is to use a recording software and sound card, using the so-called "analog hole
", for example, Replay Music which records and also identifies and tags the songs using an audio fingerprinting algorithm.
, CEO of Apple Inc., published an open letter entitled Thoughts on Music on the Apple website calling on the "big four" music companies to sell their music without DRM. According to Jobs, Apple does not want to use DRM but is forced by the four major musical labels with whom Apple negotiates contracts for iTunes. Jobs's main points were:
Jobs' letter was met with some praise but many others criticized Apple's hypocritical approach to DRM. While openly criticizing DRM, Apple has been actively threatening or suing anybody trying to open their own DRM or make it interoperable. Critics claim that this is not because Apple is afraid of illegal copies but because it gives them an advantage in their market position as a leader in both electronic music sales (iTunes) and in music players (iPod), reinforcing each other due to the FairPlay DRM.
on February 6, MP3.com
founder Michael Robertson on February 8, Warner Music boss Edgar Bronfman
and the open DRM Coral Consortium
on February 9, head of Yahoo Music
Dave Goldberg on February 11, Fred Amoroso of Macrovision
on February 16 and the Free Software Foundation
on March 7.
, Jon Lech Johansen
, criticized Jobs' statistical evidence that users are not locked into using the iPod
by using the iTunes Store
to download music with Apple Computer
's FairPlay (DRM).
responded with an invitation to incorporate their technical specifications for interoperability into the iTunes framework.
announced DRM-free music for EMI's complete music library for a 30¢ premium above the standard price. This began in May 2007. Soon after, Amazon.com
began selling unrestricted music files for 99¢ and Apple dropped the price of its DRM free music back to 99¢.
that they had reached an agreement with major record labels to sell all music on the iTunes Store free of DRM restrictions. Eight million tracks were available with FairPlay restrictions removed from that day with the remainder of the music store to be DRM-free by the end of March 2009. However, movies and television shows purchased from the iTunes Store still contain FairPlay restrictions.
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
(DRM) technology created by Apple Inc., based on technology created by the company Veridisc. FairPlay is built into the QuickTime
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
multimedia software and used by the iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
, iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
, iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
, Apple TV, iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
, and iTunes Store
ITunes Store
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...
and the App Store. Formerly, all songs in the iTunes Store
ITunes Store
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...
were encoded with FairPlay. Apple later started offering a selection of songs that, after an additional 50 cents is paid per song, could be downloaded FairPlay-free. Currently, Apple does not sell songs with FairPlay encryption. FairPlay digitally encrypts
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
AAC
Advanced Audio Coding
Advanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
audio files and prevents users from playing these files on unauthorized computers.
The majority of FairPlay-encrypted content is purchased through the iTunes Store, using the iTunes software. The iTunes software relies on Apple's Quicktime multimedia software for decoding and playback of the encrypted files. Every media player capable of using QuickTime is capable of playing back FairPlay-encrypted files, including RealPlayer
RealPlayer
RealPlayer is a cross-platform media player by RealNetworks that plays a number of multimedia formats including MP3, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media, and multiple versions of proprietary RealAudio and RealVideo formats.-History:...
, Media Center
Media Center (software application)
Media Center, or formally, "JRiver Media Center" is a multimedia application that allows the user to play and organize various types of media on a computer running Windows....
, Media Player Classic
Media Player Classic
Media Player Classic is a compact media player for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows. The application mimics the look and feel of the old, lightweight Windows Media Player 6.4 but integrates most options and features found in modern media players...
and Songbird
Songbird (software)
Songbird is a free and open source software audio player and web browser, with a stated mission "to incubate Songbird, the first Web player, to catalyze and champion a diverse, open Media Web."...
.
How it works
FairPlay-protected files are regular MP4 container files with an encrypted AACAdvanced Audio Coding
Advanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
audio stream. The audio stream is encrypted using the AES
Advanced Encryption Standard
Advanced Encryption Standard is a specification for the encryption of electronic data. It has been adopted by the U.S. government and is now used worldwide. It supersedes DES...
algorithm in combination with MD5
MD5
The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm is a widely used cryptographic hash function that produces a 128-bit hash value. Specified in RFC 1321, MD5 has been employed in a wide variety of security applications, and is also commonly used to check data integrity...
hashes. The master key required to decrypt the encrypted audio stream is also stored in encrypted form in the MP4 container file. The key required to decrypt the master key is called the "user key".
Each time a new customer uses iTunes to buy a track, a new random user key is generated and used to encrypt the master key. The random user key is stored, together with the account information, on Apple’s servers, and also sent to iTunes. iTunes stores these keys in its own encrypted key repository. Using this key repository, iTunes is able to retrieve the user key required to decrypt the master key. Using the master key, iTunes is able to decrypt the AAC audio stream and play it.
When a user authorizes a new computer, iTunes sends a unique machine identifier to Apple’s servers. In return it receives all the user keys that are stored with the account information. This ensures that Apple is able to limit the number of computers that are authorized and makes sure that each authorized computer has all the user keys that are needed to play the tracks that it bought.
When a user deauthorizes a computer, iTunes will instruct Apple’s servers to remove the unique machine identifier from their database, and at the same time it will remove all the user keys from its encrypted key repository.
The iPod also has its own encrypted key repository. Every time a FairPlay-protected track is copied onto the iPod, iTunes will copy the user key from its own key repository to the key repository on the iPod. This makes sure that the iPod has everything it needs to play the encrypted AAC audio stream.
FairPlay does not affect the ability of the file itself to be copied. It only manages the decryption of the audio content.
Restrictions
FairPlay-encrypted audio tracks allow the following:- The track may be copied to any number of iPodIPodiPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
portable music players (including the iPhoneIPhoneThe iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
). (However, each iPod/iPhone can only have tracks from a maximum of five different iTunes accounts) - The track may be played on up to five (originally three) authorized computers simultaneously.
- A particular playlist within iTunesITunesiTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
containing a FairPlay-encrypted track can be copied to a CD only up to seven times (originally ten times) before the playlist must be changed. - The track may be copied to a standard Audio CD any number of times.
- The resulting CD has no DRM and may be ripped, encoded and played back like any other CD. However, CDs created by users do not attain first sale rights and cannot be legally leased, lent, sold or distributed to others by the creator.
- The CD audio still bears the artifacts of compression, so converting it back into a lossy format such as MP3MP3MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
may aggravate the sound artifacts of encoding (see transcoding). When re-ripping such a CD one could use a lossless audio codec such as AIFFAIFFAudio Interchange File Format is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices...
, Apple LosslessApple LosslessApple Lossless Apple Lossless Apple Lossless (also known as ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), or ALE (Apple Lossless Encoder) is an audio codec developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music. After initially being proprietary for many years, in late 2011 Apple open sourced...
, FLACFLACFLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...
or WAVWAVWaveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...
however such files take up significantly more space than the original .mp4 files.
At this time, it appears that the restrictions mentioned above are hard-coded into QuickTime and the iTunes application, and not configurable in the protected files themselves!
Fairplay prevents iTunes customers from using the purchased music directly on any portable digital music player other than the Apple iPod, Motorola ROKR E1, Motorola SLVR
Motorola SLVR
The Motorola SLVR is a series of mobile phones from Motorola, and is one of the series in the 4LTR line. The first phones were out in early 2005. They are designed to be very thin and lightweight.-L2:The SLVR L2 was introduced in 2005...
, Motorola RAZR V3i, the iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
and the iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
.
Legal issues
On January 3, 2005, an iTunes online music storeOnline music store
An online music store is an online business which sells audio files, usually music, on a per-song and/or subscription basis. It may be differentiated from music streaming services in that the music store offers the actual music file, while streaming services offer partial or full listening without...
customer, Thomas Slattery, filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc., alleging the company broke antitrust
Antitrust
The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...
laws by using FairPlay with iTunes so that purchased music will work only with its own music player, the iPod, freezing out competitors. Though most of the complaints have been dropped, the case has since been combined with two other lawsuits and continues today under the temporary name "The Apple iPod iTunes Antitrust Litigation".
On June 28, 2004, VirginMega filed a complaint with the French Competition Council against Apple regarding its refusal to license Fairplay to VirginMega for use in their own online music commerce store. The Council (Conseil) rejected the complaint over accused anti-competitive behavior.
The Conseil ruled against the notion that FairPlay was an "essential facility
Essential facilities doctrine
The essential facilities doctrine is a legal doctrine which describes a particular type of claim of monopolization made under competition laws. In general, it refers to a type of anti-competitive behavior in which a firm with market power uses a "bottleneck" in a market to deny competitors entry...
" for three distinct reasons: 1) Playing purchased music on portable players was a small part of the market; 2) CD Burning provides an adequate work-around to get purchased music from other vendors onto an iPod; and 3) There is sufficient availability of portable players that support Microsoft's WMA DRM as a viable alternative and choice for consumers.
Circumvention
After the launch of the iTunes Store, multiple people attempted to circumvent the encryption of FairPlay-protected files.QTFairUse
Jon Johansen – also known for his DeCSSDeCSS
DeCSS is a computer program capable of decrypting content on a commercially produced DVD video disc. Before the release of DeCSS, there was no way for computers running a Linux-based operating system to play video DVDs....
program – was the first to devise a way to circumvent the DRM. The open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
application QTFairUse
QTFairUse
QTFairUse is a software application first released in November 2003 by Jon Lech Johansen. It dumps the raw output of a QuickTime AAC stream to a file, which could bypass the digital rights management algorithm called FairPlay used to encrypt music content of media files such as those distributed...
intercepted the decrypted output and wrote it to a raw AAC file. Many media players do not support such raw files and the files had to be processed with a tool like FAAD to create normal files. One of the few media players that is able to play raw AAC files is foobar2000
Foobar2000
foobar2000 is a freeware audio player for Windows developed by Peter Pawlowski, a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft. It is known for its highly modular design and extensive SDK which allows third-party developers to do such things as completely replace the interface...
.
The second time around, Johansen reverse engineered
Reverse engineering
Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation...
the encryption technique used in FairPlay and created an algorithm to completely remove the encryption without re-encoding the encrypted AAC stream. This method was also used by VLC media player
VLC media player
VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...
in order to play FairPlay-protected tracks until a newer version of iTunes and FairPlay broke it.
Only a few days after the release of iTunes 7.0 the experimental version 2.3 of QTFairUse6, a derivative of the python open source QTFairUse
QTFairUse
QTFairUse is a software application first released in November 2003 by Jon Lech Johansen. It dumps the raw output of a QuickTime AAC stream to a file, which could bypass the digital rights management algorithm called FairPlay used to encrypt music content of media files such as those distributed...
, was released which dumps each track to a raw AAC file which then can be converted to any format.
Jon Johansen himself also released a tool to remove the encryption, called DeDRMS. Later he released FairKeys, which uses Apple’s own servers to retrieve the keys needed by DeDRMS.
All these applications have two things in common. First, they employ the user keys from either the Apple servers, the iTunes key repository, or the iPod key repository, which ensures they can decrypt only files that are legally bought; a user cannot use these applications to decrypt files that another user bought. Second, they keep user specific metadata inside the MP4 container intact, so it is possible to identify the user who originally bought the file after it is decrypted.
In March 2005, it was revealed through a front end of the iTunes Store called PyMusique that the FairPlay DRM was added only as a song was being purchased from the store by the client software itself.
In October 2006, Jon Johansen announced that instead of breaking FairPlay, he had reverse-engineered it so that other companies could play their DRM-protected music and movies on iPods and Apple's new Apple TV. His company, doubleTwist
DoubleTwist
doubleTwist Corporation is a digital media company founded by Monique Farantzos and Jon Lech Johansen. It is backed by Index Ventures and Northzone Ventures....
, would license the technology to media companies who wished to have their media playable on the iPod or Apple TV, with the protection of FairPlay DRM, but without having to go through Apple.
Playfair, Hymn, and JHymn
A software package named PlayFairHymn (software)
Hymn , which stands for Hear Your Music aNywhere is a piece of computer software, and the successor to the PlayFair program...
– created by an anonymous author – also appeared. It can remove the encryption from files using the FairPlay DRM mechanism. The author of Playfair used the source code written by Jon Johansen for VLC. Apple's legal department forced PlayFair to be first removed from SourceForge.net
SourceForge.net
SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available...
, and then when the Indian open source web site Sarovar.org hosted the project they too were sent a cease and desist
Cease and desist
A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity and not to take it up again later or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....
by Apple's lawyers. However, Playfair's successor Hymn
Hymn (software)
Hymn , which stands for Hear Your Music aNywhere is a piece of computer software, and the successor to the PlayFair program...
(a backronym
Backronym
A backronym or bacronym is a phrase constructed purposely, such that an acronym can be formed to a specific desired word. Backronyms may be invented with serious or humorous intent, or may be a type of false or folk etymology....
for "Hear Your Music aNywhere") has become JHymn
JHymn
JHymn is computer software which provides a graphical user interfacefor the hymn program. JHymn is written in Java. It extends hymn with additional functionality including the ability to add, delete, and update MPEG-4 atoms in file types of M4A, M4B, M4P, and MP4. The program and its source code...
, a Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
variant of the program, and iOpener, a Windows variant.
Apple Computer introduced iTunes 6.0 in October 2005, which included changes intended to stop programs like JHymn from decrypting FairPlay encrypted files. Furthermore, once iTunes 6 has been used to purchase songs or authorize a computer with a particular iTMS account, that account will be blocked from making purchases or activations on earlier iTunes versions, thus JHymn can no longer be used.
Apple Computer introduced iTunes 7.0 in September 2006, which once again included changes intended to stop programs similar to JHymn.
Harmony: RealPlayer Music on the iPod
In July 2004, RealNetworksRealNetworks
RealNetworks, Inc. is a provider of Internet media delivery software and services based in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. The company is the creator of RealAudio, a compressed audio format; RealVideo, a compressed video format; RealPlayer, a media player; RealDownloader, a download...
introduced their Harmony technology. The Harmony technology is built into RealPlayer
RealPlayer
RealPlayer is a cross-platform media player by RealNetworks that plays a number of multimedia formats including MP3, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media, and multiple versions of proprietary RealAudio and RealVideo formats.-History:...
and allows users of the RealPlayer Music Store to play their songs on the iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
. Before the introduction of Harmony this was not possible, because the RealPlayer Music Store uses a different DRM scheme, called Helix DRM, that was incompatible with that used by Apple. While using RealPlayer to transfer a Helix DRM-restricted song onto the iPod, Harmony transparently converts it to a FairPlay-compatible protected file. Real argued that Harmony was a boon to consumers that "frees" them "from the limitation of being locked into a specific portable device when they buy digital music." Apple responded:
- We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hackerSoftware crackingSoftware cracking is the modification of software to remove or disable features which are considered undesirable by the person cracking the software, usually related to protection methods: copy protection, trial/demo version, serial number, hardware key, date checks, CD check or software annoyances...
to break into the iPod, and we are investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCADigital Millennium Copyright ActThe Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...
and other laws. We strongly caution Real and their customers that when we update our iPod software from time to time it is highly likely that Real's Harmony technology will cease to work with current and future iPods.
RealNetworks launched an internet petition
Internet petition
An Internet petition is a form of petition posted on a website. Visitors to the website in question can add their email addresses or names, and after enough "signatures" have been collected, the resulting letter may be delivered to the subject of the petition, usually via e-mail.-Pros and cons:The...
titled "Hey Apple! Don't break my iPod", encouraging iPod users to sign up to support Real's action. The petition backfired badly. The overwhelming majority of posters reacted negatively. The main points of criticism against Harmony were:
- Many posters accused RealNetworks of astroturfingAstroturfingAstroturfing is a form of advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a "grassroots" movement. The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political and/or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some...
with the petition they had created. - RealNetworks was criticised for hypocrisy in keeping its own intellectual property and products closed, while asking Apple to open up the iPod.
- The move was also denounced as an attempt to force Apple into a partnership that would only benefit RealNetworks.
Apple did disable Harmony around the time of the iPod photo
IPod photo
The iPod Photo was a portable media player designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It was the top-of-the-line model in Apple's iPod family. It was positioned as a premium higher-end spin-off of the fourth-generation iPod on October 26, 2004...
launch, and to older versions shortly after in firmware updates. The change makes it so that all music (past and present) purchased through the RealPlayer Music Store will not work on Apple's iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
. In response, Real said they would get it working again.
In August 2005, an SEC filing by RealNetworks disclosed that continued use of the Harmony technology put themselves at considerable risk because of the possibility of a lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
from Apple, which would be expensive to defend against, even if the court agreed that the technology is legal. Additionally, the possibility that "Apple will continue to modify its technology to 'break' the interoperability that Harmony provides to consumers" would mean that "Harmony may no longer work with Apple's products, which could harm our business and reputation, or we may be forced to incur additional development costs to refine Harmony to make it interoperate again."
Harmony never resurfaced as an option by RealNetworks.
Requiem
Requiem was originally released by "Brahms" as version 1.0 in February 2008, and version 1.8.17 was released in early 2010. Requiem allows a person to decrypt both music and movies that they are authorized to play in iTunes by reverse-engineering Apple's FairPlay algorithm. Requiem does not remove identification tags from songs. However, there are other methods to remove them.Requiem works by decrypting the iTunes configuration files that are in "/Users/Shared/SC Info". In Mac OS X, the key to decrypt these config files is an obfuscated version of the MAC address
MAC address
A Media Access Control address is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment. MAC addresses are used for numerous network technologies and most IEEE 802 network technologies, including Ethernet...
of one's computer. In Windows, an amalgamation of hard drive volume information and registry keys are used instead of the MAC address. The initialization variable for this decryption is a hard coded constant. The program then decrypts the keys in the config files as well as the private atoms in the audio/video files and creates unencrypted versions. An updated iTunes 7.6.2
ITunes version history
The version history of iTunes spans from 2001 to the present and covers the application's evolution and refinement from a simple music player to a control center for many types of media. Support for the iPod and iTunes Store were added in the subsequent versions...
disabled Requiem, however, versions 1.4 and 1.5 again circumvented the protection. Apple again disabled Requiem with iTunes 8
ITunes version history
The version history of iTunes spans from 2001 to the present and covers the application's evolution and refinement from a simple music player to a control center for many types of media. Support for the iPod and iTunes Store were added in the subsequent versions...
, but the author released version 1.8.2 which circumvents iTunes 8 DRM on Mac OS and Microsoft Windows systems. Apple responded by releasing iTunes 8.0.2, which again disabled Requiem.
Apple has taken steps to remove references to Requiem from the JHymn forums. A post on the JHymn forums explains Apple's cease and desist
Cease and desist
A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity and not to take it up again later or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....
order against the forum regarding posting information on circumvention technologies like Requiem. Since the C&D order, the author of Requiem initially made it available with source code on the anonymous Freenet
Freenet
Freenet is a decentralized, censorship-resistant distributed data store originally designed by Ian Clarke. According to Clarke, Freenet aims to provide freedom of speech through a peer-to-peer network with strong protection of anonymity; as part of supporting its users' freedom, Freenet is free and...
network, but then moved it to a Tor
Tor (anonymity network)
Tor is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis...
hidden service. From there it has been copied onto popular BitTorrent public trackers, such as The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...
.
On March 16, 2009, the day that iTunes 8.1 was released , Requiem was updated several times, ending up with version 1.8.8. Requiem 1.8.8 decrypts files with iTunes 8.1.0.51, but, as before, Apple responded by releasing iTunes 8.1.0.52, which appears to again disable Requiem. As of May 5, 2009, Requiem 1.8.10 decrypts files with iTunes 8.1.1. On January 5, 2010, Requiem 1.8.16 was released for iTunes 9.0.2. On January 21, 2010, Requiem 1.8.17 was released for iTunes 9.0.2 as a bug-fix to process files with a size greater than 4GB. The most recent version is 2.0.1, for iTunes 10. Version 2.0 and beyond require use of an iPod, iPhone, or iPad to decrypt music. Apple plans to have iTunes update the DRM coding on videos bought from the iTunes Store automatically by checking the files to see if the coding is up to date.
Conversion to analog
There are mainly two other methods to bypass the DRM control. The first method is to burn a copy to an audio CD—either real or virtual—and then ripRipping
Ripping is the process of copying audio or video content to a hard disk, typically from removable media. The word is used to refer to all forms of media. Despite the name, neither the media nor the data is damaged after extraction....
it.
The second method is to use a recording software and sound card, using the so-called "analog hole
Analog hole
The analog hole is a fundamental and inevitable vulnerability in copy protection schemes for noninteractive works in digital formats which can be exploited to duplicate copy-protected works that are ultimately reproduced using analog means...
", for example, Replay Music which records and also identifies and tags the songs using an audio fingerprinting algorithm.
Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Music open letter
On February 6, 2007, Steve JobsSteve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
, CEO of Apple Inc., published an open letter entitled Thoughts on Music on the Apple website calling on the "big four" music companies to sell their music without DRM. According to Jobs, Apple does not want to use DRM but is forced by the four major musical labels with whom Apple negotiates contracts for iTunes. Jobs's main points were:
- DRM has never and will never be perfect. Hackers will always find a method to break DRM.
- DRM restrictions only hurt people using music legally. Illegal users aren't affected by DRM.
- The restrictions of DRM encourage users to obtain unrestricted music which is usually only possible via illegal methods.
- The vast majority of music is sold without DRM via CDs which has proven successful.
Jobs' letter was met with some praise but many others criticized Apple's hypocritical approach to DRM. While openly criticizing DRM, Apple has been actively threatening or suing anybody trying to open their own DRM or make it interoperable. Critics claim that this is not because Apple is afraid of illegal copies but because it gives them an advantage in their market position as a leader in both electronic music sales (iTunes) and in music players (iPod), reinforcing each other due to the FairPlay DRM.
Selected responses to Thoughts on Music
The essay caused ripples across the music industry, prompting replies from other major players. Responses include those from Jon Lech JohansenJon Lech Johansen
Jon Lech Johansen , also known as DVD Jon, is a Norwegian programmer famous for his work on reverse engineering data formats....
on February 6, MP3.com
MP3.com
MP3.com is a web site operated by CNET Networks providing information about digital music and artists, songs, services, community, and technologies. It is probably better known for its original incarnation, as a legal, free music-sharing service, popular with independent musicians for promoting...
founder Michael Robertson on February 8, Warner Music boss Edgar Bronfman
Edgar Bronfman, Jr.
Edgar Miles Bronfman, Jr. , is the Chairman of Warner Music Group. He previously served as CEO of the company from 2004 to 2011. In May, 2011, the sale of WMG was announced; Bronfman would continued as CEO in the transaction. In August 2011, he became Chairman of the company as Stephen Cooper...
and the open DRM Coral Consortium
Coral Consortium
The Coral Consortium was founded in Fall 2004 by Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Intertrust Technologies Corporation, Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...
on February 9, head of Yahoo Music
LAUNCHcast
Yahoo! Music Radio is an Internet radio service offered by CBS Radio through Yahoo! Music. The service, formerly offered by LAUNCH Media, and originally developed by Todd Beaupré and Jeff Boulter, debuted on November 11, 1999, and was purchased by Yahoo! in October, 2001...
Dave Goldberg on February 11, Fred Amoroso of Macrovision
Macrovision
Rovi Corporation is a globally operating, US-based company that provides guidance technology, entertainment data, copy protection, industry standard networking and media management technology for digital entertainment devices and services...
on February 16 and the Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
on March 7.
DVD Jon
The famous decoder of the Content Scramble SystemContent Scramble System
Content Scramble System is a Digital Rights Management and encryption system employed on almost all commercially produced DVD-Video discs. CSS utilizes a proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm...
, Jon Lech Johansen
Jon Lech Johansen
Jon Lech Johansen , also known as DVD Jon, is a Norwegian programmer famous for his work on reverse engineering data formats....
, criticized Jobs' statistical evidence that users are not locked into using the iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
by using the iTunes Store
ITunes Store
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...
to download music with Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
's FairPlay (DRM).
Warner Music Group Corp.'s Edgar Bronfman
In a conference call on the earnings of Warner Music Group Corp., CEO Edgar Bronfman argued in favour of DRM, claiming that DRM and interoperability are not mutually exclusive.Coral Consortium
A multi-industry group working on creating interoperability between DRM formats, the Coral ConsortiumCoral Consortium
The Coral Consortium was founded in Fall 2004 by Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Intertrust Technologies Corporation, Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...
responded with an invitation to incorporate their technical specifications for interoperability into the iTunes framework.
Yahoo's Dave Goldberg
In the Silicon Valley Watcher, Tom Foremski interviewed Yahoo Music head Dave Goldberg, who advocated removing DRM from music altogether.Macrovision's Fred Amoroso
CEO and President of Macrovision Corporation Fred Amoroso posted his own open letter in response to Steve Jobs's. In his reply, Amoroso argued that DRM increases both consumer value and electronic distribution by giving users choices (e.g. rent vs. buy). He also argues in favor of interoperable and "open" DRM.EMI music made available DRM-free
On April 2, 2007, Steve Jobs and EMIEMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
announced DRM-free music for EMI's complete music library for a 30¢ premium above the standard price. This began in May 2007. Soon after, Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
began selling unrestricted music files for 99¢ and Apple dropped the price of its DRM free music back to 99¢.
Announcement of FairPlay restrictions removal
On 6 January 2009 Apple announced at the 2009 Macworld Conference & ExpoMacworld Conference & Expo
Produced by Boston-based IDG World Expo, Macworld | iWorld is a trade-show with conference tracks dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform. It is held annually in the United States, usually during the second week of January...
that they had reached an agreement with major record labels to sell all music on the iTunes Store free of DRM restrictions. Eight million tracks were available with FairPlay restrictions removed from that day with the remainder of the music store to be DRM-free by the end of March 2009. However, movies and television shows purchased from the iTunes Store still contain FairPlay restrictions.