Apple Hunts PlayfairIndian website latest to get attorney-gram ( old news - 04:46PM Friday Apr 16 2004) More on the battle between Apple and the iTunes digital rights management removal software subbed Playfair ( mentioned yesterday): apparently the Indian website that had been hosting the DRM killing application has been "gotten to" by the attorneys at Apple. The website has posted the full letter received from Apple warning them to take the program down. "PlayFair" had previously been hosted by SourceForge here in the states before Apple began threatening them. "Since you have styled yourself after "SourceForge", our clients expect that you will do likewise and remove the PlayFair program from your servers as well," the letter warns. If PlayFair is following the offshoring trend, is China the next country to host the controversial code?
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Sweet Witch
Be the flame, not the moth.
Premium,MVM
join:2003-07-15
Gallifrey | ?? What exactly did their program do that Apple hate (or fear) so much?
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I'm a woman by the way  . | |
|  | Alphy
join:2001-12-31
Troy, MI | Re: ?? Nothing that couldn't already be done with a spare 5 minutes; taking AAC to Mp3 or just in most peoples case, burning an audio CD with the AAC files and then ripping the CD. | |
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Jason Levine
Premium
join:2001-07-13
USA | It took the DRM-enabled AAC music files that you can purchase from iTunes and ripped out the DRM restrictions. You would then be able to use the file any way you wanted to without worrying about any "3 computers only" limit. | |
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kathan
join:2002-12-27
Lake Zurich, IL
| Re: ?? said by Jason Levine  :
It took the DRM-enabled AAC music files that you can purchase from iTunes and ripped out the DRM restrictions. You would then be able to use the file any way you wanted to without worrying about any "3 computers only" limit.
That was easy to do before PlayFair came along.
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If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...oh, wait a minute - he already does. | |
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Jeremy341
Bye
Premium
join:2000-01-06
localhost
| Re: ?? said by Jason Levine :
how can Apple cry foul over removing it's DRM from the file when their own program does the same thing by burning songs to a normal audio CD?
Because their program isn't removing the DRM from the files. It's just burning an audio CD. But the fact of the matter is, it's their program, and their TOS says that you can't do it with anything besides their program. | |
| russotto
join:2000-10-05
Collegeville, PA
| Apple's in left field A quick perusal of the Indian law in question (yes, it's in English) reveals nothing to support Apple's position.
Hopefully the attorneys of the Indian website will see it that way too. Unfortunately attorneys are notoriously conservative and quick to say "don't"; if you want to do something opposed by another, you've got to have the balls to go ahead and do it and bring in your attorneys fight the battle. If you ask them for approval beforehand you'll always end up caving in. | |
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KeepOnRockin
Music Lover Forever
Premium
join:2002-11-08
Beaverton, OR | It looks like... Apple's the one that isn't 'Playing fair'.
It seems that "fair use" is always the underdog to every company. | |
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Thinkdiff
Premium,MVM
join:2001-08-07
Bronx, NY
| Re: It looks like... said by KeepOnRockin :
Apple's the one that isn't 'Playing fair'.
It seems that "fair use" is always the underdog to every company.
Removing the DRM using a third-party program is against the TOS of the iTMS. What's so unfair? | |
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Vvian Kalyss
join:2003-10-14
Stage 5.0
clubs:
| Re: It looks like... Yeah... what I said earlier 
»Apple DRM Vs. Pirates
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" Her eyes were just the end of Hell-- / All pain, / Articulate " | |
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Combat Chuck
Too Many Cannibals
Premium
join:2001-11-29
Erie, PA
| said by KeepOnRockin :
The unfair part is the "DRM" restrictions placed on songs that I have purchased.
first off; You DO NOT own the music. You own a license that permits you to have a copy of the music and to use it for various purposes
said by KeepOnRockin :
These restrictions may keep other people from listening to my song, but it also keeps me from: transferring the song to multiple machines on my own network, it prevents me from playing songs whereever I want (iTunes on Linux or BSD anyone?), it limits the choices of portable digital music players I can buy (not all support DRMed iTunes files), and other lost "fair use" rights.
As far as I can tell there are no such "fair use" rights. From my Googling the only thing "fair use" consists of are a series of court decisions that set precedent that are then summed up in a list of uses that consumer and industry groups agreed upon should not be limited by copyright law. There are no such provisions that say that the industry cannot insert copy protections that prevent you from doing any of the things in the list.
You can't lose rights you never had.
said by KeepOnRockin :
In my view, plunking down 99 cents for a song entitles me to do everything to it within the scope of my personal fair use that I want to, as many times as I want to.
That may be your view; but your view is not the terms of service that you have to agree to, to use the service. And again there are no fair use rights that make this illegal as far as I can find. Therefore currently, your only remedy is to not use the service; purchasing songs and then cracking them is not a legal nor acceptable way to bring the service into compliance with your opinion.
And if you can find a site that outlines "fair use rights", by all means post it on one condition: Do not post a link to something like eff.org or digitalconsumer.org unless they site from something like a government website; I noticed a lot of sites refer to "Fair use rights" and then proceed to give their opinion of what they think the rights are without any proof to back up that such rights exist short of links to other sites that agree with them. I went into this looking for a list of what constitutes fair use as it pertains to consumer use of music and wound up only finding things that pointed to the lack of any such rights.
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Japan-- Now with 30% more climbable telephone poles!! | |
| | | | | russotto
join:2000-10-05
Collegeville, PA
| Re: It looks like... said by Combat Chuck :
first off; You DO NOT own the music. You own a license that permits you to have a copy of the music and to use it for various purposes
You most certainly own a copy of the music. Apple even behaves as if you own a copy, allowing you only one download.
quote:
As far as I can tell there are no such "fair use" rights. From my Googling the only thing "fair use" consists of are a series of court decisions that set precedent that are then summed up in a list of uses that consumer and industry groups agreed upon should not be limited by copyright law.
Fair Use is in fact defined in a series of court decisions, but it is also contained in black-letter law. If you couldn't find 17 USC 107, you weren't googling very well. | |
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Combat Chuck
Too Many Cannibals
Premium
join:2001-11-29
Erie, PA
| Re: It looks like... said by russotto :
You most certainly own a copy of the music.
No.... you don't own the music; it doesn't matter how apple presents it. Just like when you buy a CD; you own the physical media and a license to do various thing with what is recorded on it; you in no way obtain any ownership of what is recorded on the CD. The record company or the musician retains ownership of the music.
said by russotto :
Fair Use is in fact defined in a series of court decisions, but it is also contained in black-letter law. If you couldn't find 17 USC 107, you weren't googling very well.
I did in fact, here it is:
»www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
but again that doesn't say anything about a right to take a piece of music you own a license to and do whatever you want with it as long as it's not public.
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Japan-- Now with 30% more climbable telephone poles!! | |
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WaxPhoto
I AM SAM
Premium
join:2004-04-08
Roanoke, IN
| Re: It looks like... You're Ignorant Source: »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Use
Factors For Fair Use
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
1) Private home use (No commercial use)
2) Published, probably overplayed on the radio
3) AAC is pretty compressed - very small files
4) None whatsoever
Ok, #3 is probably not a valid point, but the other three are. Of course the record industry always has a way of lubing congress up to set up ridiculous exceptions... but hey, that is what the gov is for! | |
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Combat Chuck
Too Many Cannibals
Premium
join:2001-11-29
Erie, PA
1 edit | Re: It looks like... You're Ignorant said by WaxPhoto :
Source: »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Use
snip.
No actually that seems to refer to fair use with regard to using a copyrighted material in something you intend to distribute to others. Assuming that I am just misreading it and it actually does apply to private use of music you have purchased a license to the fact remains that:
1. nowhere does it say it is considered a right to be able to whatever you want with intellectual property.
2. nowhere does fair use prevent nor imply that it is wrong for a company to prevent you from copying intellectual property by using copy protections.
You still haven't pointed me to anything that says that "fair use" can be interpreted as the right to copy music you have purchased a license to whatever medium you want as many times as you want. You in fact pointed me to something I've already read that seems to have very little to do with the situation at hand unless we're talking about playing short chunks of music in a public place.
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Japan-- Now with 30% more climbable telephone poles!! | |
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jap
Premium
join:2003-08-10
038xx
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| WARNING!- heartfelt diatribe said by Combat Chuck :
...purchasing songs and then cracking them is not a legal nor acceptable way to bring the service into compliance with your opinion ...
You are forgetting that law follows the social needs of the masses; "law" is nothing more than an attempt to codify best-practice conduct to balance the divergent needs and desires of individuals & groups throughout society. Of course this cannot be perfectly done, only rather crudely done, and one of the biggest challenges is keeping law updated with the ever-fluid, difficult to predict needs, desires and changing behaviors of people. So what's "legal" and what's "acceptable" often depart - as they must and as they should.
What's "acceptable", of course, is highly subjective, situational, and easily moralized. To argue that "acceptable" should just be whatever is in the law books is myopic in the extreme. Remember the failed US law of universal 55 maximum speed limits? You can say all day long that law = "what's correct" but if a large, persistent segment of society doesn't and won't comply then what's broken?, the law or the behavior, needs & desires of the masses?
The middleman's territory between artist & consumer was once large. It started with headhunters prowling the country's gathering places (by surface transit) and ended with a physical sale of a bulky medium in some bulky, neighborhood store. In between there was an involved recording process, an expensive manufacturing process, and inventory & physical distribution challenges. It was the industrial era and artists had, themselves, no way to record & distribute and were utterly dependent on the middleman who could establish & control this large operation. The middle-operator, in turn, required society's legal protection from one end of this lengthy & wildly speculative process to the other. If the safeguards weren't granted by society -in the form of copyrights- then neither artist nor consumer could bridge the gap between them EXCEPT by good ole live performance. But that expansive middle-ground is hardly the reality we live in now and current copyright laws are simply being used to extend hugely profitable, entrenched business interests that fail to serve either the artist or the listener.
But human relationships & practices don't change overnight and during transitional periods I whole-heartily disagree with your statement that the breaking of existing, outdated laws is an inappropriate way to behave just because the laws remain in the books. Effective law makers respond to all kinds of inputs, and dissent plays a vital role in the creation of legislation: it's never a one-sided, morally "clean and clear" process that creates effective law.
In the case of music copyrights, the incredibly fast shrinking and shifting ground that separates creator from listener is really hard to assess: nobody knows what it'll look like in 10 years. In such an environment of unknowns the tendance is to fall back on what is known, the familiar status-quo .... no matter how disjointed established practice is from current reality. Or said another way, when it's not clear where everyone is headed then policy tends to just sit down where it is and wait for people to get there - then establish guidelines for "what's appropriate & right behavior" in that new place. What other choice does policy have? Policy loathes to guess wrongly as that muddies the progression, shames the maker, and must be quickly re-writ. When change comes very fast policy can only sit & wait for the herd to settle somewhere.
Copyrights, of course, will not and should not go away, but in the case of recorded music practices what future rights will look like, who holds them, and for how long is very obviously not going to be what is now the practice. The broker in the middle has a strong, self-serving incentive to "stay the course" - but nobody but the broker (much) needs the broker anymore. Consequently it's that middle-group doing it's utmost to artificially inflate their value by manipulating the legal process, loudly condemning modern creation, archival, and distribution capabilities (as it makes them obsolete), and otherwise just attempting to extend the bell-curve of their own demise.
There will always be pirates, but the vast majority of listeners will happily pay artists, say, $3.50 per album download when they know that 2$ (or so) covers the recording, promo, and sever-bandwidth wuth the remaining left to the artist(s). It's already happening, but this iTunes-like silliness is transitional - as is widely practiced pirating.
I did not spin these opinions out of nowhere - everything writ here has been espoused elsewhere by people far better connect to the issues than I. And the dynamic is similar in other forms of media (books, movies, TV, etc.). But it's music that has the most practitioners, is most widely consumed, and is most readily digitized so the manner in which that art-product gets from artist to listener will remain varied & chaotic for some time. Which is not "bad", in my opinion, it just works to define & illustrate the greatly diminished roll of those who full-filled the middleman roll: their function has been largely automated and they are no longer valuable players.
Only the uninformed, the not too bright, or compulsive traditionalists could come to a different conclusion of the basics trends in how music will be recorded, distributed, and listened to. I also believe/hope that recorded music, for reasons of ubiquity, will loose value as a listening experience and people will seek more and varied live performances.
And the whole issue of the role of artwork in society and how much does music become partly a commodity once recorded ... ack! ... that will have to be tackled elsewhere. Thanks to anyone foolish and or bored enough to hang-in through my entire spiel. | |
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Combat Chuck
Too Many Cannibals
Premium
join:2001-11-29
Erie, PA
| Re: WARNING!- heartfelt diatribe I think it's pretty safe to say that if you agree to a contract with the intent of breaking said contract (ie: you agree to the TOS of Itunes; which prohibits cracking; and then proceed to crack the files) you are in the wrong; or should contracts now be flexible (I agreed to the contract 2 minutes ago, but times have changed now that I have the files...).
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Japan-- Now with 30% more climbable telephone poles!! | |
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jap
Premium
join:2003-08-10
038xx
·RoadRunner Cable
| Re: WARNING!- heartfelt diatribe On the face of it I agree, but the agreement(s) between two party's don't exist in a vacuum - they are both the product of & subservient to a larger social construct. So it depends on your assessment of the other party's relationship to the contract: was the service/product created to exploit a (temporary) social environment and the ToC writ to satisfy the company's due-diligence and operational liabilities within that reality? OR is that service/product at the core of why that company exists & is their best assessment of what society needs - which casts a different light altogether on a ToC. In the case of iTunes it's exceedingly clear: Apple didn't create the product, is not in the publishing business, and did not & does not expect that iTunes will be a longterm venture. Apple created & uses iTunes as a response to shifting realities in music distribution and saw an opportunity to create & lock-in market-share (via proprietary file format) of an emerging hardware device that they do have a vested interest in. They say this themselves.
iTunes simply extends the outdated royalties-to-copyright holder model by taking a half-step into the inevitable commodity-status future of digitized music. It's an obvious and excellent business maneuver, but nothing that serves the art or consumer communities. So if the methods of distributing music is manipulated from the middle and both the producers (artists) and consumers are not happy with their options do you revere the middleman's contracts as highly as if you felt they were playing fair? Of course not. It's silly to pretend that respected practices should be held in the same regard as less respectable ones: and courts don't attempt to do so even if legislators do. | |
| 
netwire
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Mooresboro, NC | Thumbs up Apple! I think Apple is very fair with iTunes, heck I moved from Napster to iTunes because of the freedom they give to their clients.
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Fact: AOL Cd's function best as drink coasters. | |
| | kaila
join:2000-10-11
Lincolnshire, IL
clubs:
| Re: Thumbs up Apple! I agree with you, iTunes is the best out there so far. I believe however their creation of the DRM, and TOS were pretty much what the labels mandated for them to offer iTunes.
I would imagine they are acting as a proxy for the labels as far as raising a stink about PlayFair and trying to get it offline. It's either that or they [labels] revoke Apples distribution rights, killing off iTunes. | |
| 
Doctor Four
My other vehicle is a TARDIS
Premium
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX
 ·AT&T U-Verse
1 edit | File can be found...if you know where to look Playfair appears to have been spread on P2P networks. I
just found a download of the source code on Shareaza, in
two different versions. There are also BitTorrent files for
it being shared as well. Evidently some view this as a
David vs. Goliath situation, and will stick it to the man
(Apple in this case) no matter what.
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"Kayura or Badamon, whichever you are, you should know that I will never give up this battle. By the will of the Ancient, I shall succeed!" - Shuten (Anubis) from the Ronin Warriors. | |
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KeepOnRockin
Music Lover Forever
Premium
join:2002-11-08
Beaverton, OR | Re: File can be found...if you know where to look I downloaded all the Playfair source files before the project was removed from India.
The files are small in size and can be traded easily | |
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dddane
join:2002-01-10
Chicago, IL | Re: File can be found...if you know where to look one thing i'm curious of... was playfair for linux or windows? | |
| Skippy25
join:2000-09-13
Hazelwood, MO
| You agreed to it. I personally dont care about all this as I don't listen to music unless it is waking me up or I am traveling in a car but.......
Regardless of how you feel about it, if their TOS says you can't do it, then you can't do it PERIOD. If you don't like those terms, then you move on to the next media. If their TOS says you have to give up your first born and you agree to it, then guess what? you are legally obligated to give up your first born. (extreme, but you get the point).
And as someone pointed out, you are purchasing the right to listen to the music through their media. You are NOT purchasing the song to do what you want with. Just like software you buy, you are purchasing a right to install and use it according to their user agreement. You are given the media as a matter of convenience for both parties, you do not own what is on it to do what you will.
This isn't even a gray area people, it is simply black and white. | |
| | dda
Premium
join:2003-12-29
Bolton, MA
| Re: You agreed to it. said by Skippy25 :
Regardless of how you feel about it, if their TOS says you can't do it, then you can't do it PERIOD.
Hardly. Contracts do not exist in a vacuum and other law affects them. I'm not a lawyer, of course, but I do know that contracts can be invalidated, in whole or in part, for violating other established law (in your extreme example, for example).
You are indeed purchasing the license to use the music in accordance with said license. However, Fair Use may well give you other rights to use that music beyond the license. Since I'm not a lawyer, I can't say for sure, but you are allowed to use copyrighted music (and other art) in certain ways regardless of licensing from the copyright holder.
It is not black and white; that is why it is interesting (and I suspect why it is scaring Apple). | |
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viperpa33s
Why Me?
Premium
join:2002-12-20
Bradenton, FL
·Bright House
| just falls on deaf ears If the TOS says you can't do it then you can't do it. That's one of the reasons the RIAA is in such hot water. Cause when you buy a cd or buy music online, you don't own the music period. Your just buying a license to use it but you don't own it. When your done listening, get tired of the music, then you must throw the cd away or delete the music file.
The best thing to do is not buy any RIAA music. When the RIAA starts losing big money and the musicians complain they are not making money then maybe the RIAA will change the rules. Other than that, this conversation will keep coming up and fall on deaf ears.
Just think for a minute, apply the same RIAA rules to everyday life and see how far your life will go. | |
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Kylemaul
Lovin' My Firefox 1.5.x
Premium
join:2001-03-30
North Port, FL
clubs:
·Verizon FIOS
| Native American Nations, take heed!! Seems like a golden opportunity for the tribes on Native American soil to me...
I think it would all boil down to a cost comparison between moneys received from grants/federal funding and revenue from a Native American owned music company.
What I'm saying here is that Native American Nations could choose to 'thumb their noses' at United States copyright regulations, and bypass the 'piece of the pie' cuts taken by copyright holders AKA the music labels. I don't know that they would loose a whole lot of respect from the non-Native American (US citizen) populace...
Food for thought, or, thought for food?
(I realize that this article probably refers to India, not Native Americans, but it still pushed my thought process towards this idea.)
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'The tighter the RIAA squeezes their grip, the more stars and systems will slip through their fingers.' | |
| | LrdVader
Premium
join:2003-12-18
San Diego, CA
| Re: Native American Nations, take heed!! said by Kylemaul :
Seems like a golden opportunity for the tribes on Native American soil to me...
I think it would all boil down to a cost comparison between moneys received from grants/federal funding and revenue from a Native American owned music company.
What I'm saying here is that Native American Nations could choose to 'thumb their noses' at United States copyright regulations, and bypass the 'piece of the pie' cuts taken by copyright holders AKA the music labels. I don't know that they would loose a whole lot of respect from the non-Native American (US citizen) populace...
One problem: Federal law still applies on Indian reservations. It's only state law they're exempt from.
And Native Americans *are* US citizens. | |
| George Kidd
join:2001-08-09
Vancouver, BC
| The Good Old Days A long time ago, in the days of the Apple ][ (early 80's) computer games for the Apple included copy protection. The games were not very good, most folks bought the disks for other reasons. Mainly the "Game" was to see how long it would take to "Break" copy protection schemes that companies paid millions of dollars to make and use. The "Lucky" schemes managed to last a couple of days or so. It seems things have not changed much in almost 25 years, Companies still have not changed their thinking much either....:D | |
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