Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
Jon Lech Johansen (aka DVD Jon), the wiz kid who broke the DVD content-scrambling system at age 15, is now working on licensing FairPlay [via] to companies who want their content to play on Apple’s devices. FairPlay is Apple’s version of DRM—which Johansen has reverse-engineered.
RealNetworks first did this with Harmony back in 2004, applying FairPlay [...]
First, a short introduction and a necessary reference to Hymn—Hymn is an app that strips the DRM (Apple calls it FairPlay) of the tracks you bought from the iTMS—only drawback? You need iTunes 5 for it work.
iTunes 6 users can now have a look at Igor Skochinsky’s QTFairUse6 [via]—a tool that’s supposed to do the [...]
As expected, the author’s rights law was approved 296-193 by the National Assembly, France’s lower house. It now remains to be debated and voted by the Senate in May. BusinessWeek ran an interesting article regarding the France vs. Apple saga two days ago.
Apple wasn’t excited with the news, as evidenced by their statements:
Apple Computer Inc. [...]
While in the US people who download music illegally are prosecuted in droves, in France they’re taking a more sensible and serious look at things. The author’s rights law, which is to be voted by the National Assembly today, basically says two things:
if you’re caught downloading copyrighted music illegaly you’re paying a harmless 38€ fine—if [...]
What is Navio? Playlist Mag has a story on’em, and I remember reading about them elsewhere. In short, and assuming I’m reading things correctly here, they plan to act as the “DRM-middleman”, between music publishers/stores and the customers.
By reverse-engineering Apple’s DRM (FairPlay) and having already access to WindowsMedia DRM (since MS licences it to [...]
Newsweek’s added to the list of those who (rightfully) criticize Apple for not making tracks purchased from the iTMS compatible with MP3 players whose name doesn’t start with “i” and end with “Pod”.
Steven Levy, Newsweek’s editor and a friend of Jobs, says: “Jobs’s explanation is that it’s not something users are asking for, and if [...]