iPod DRM faces another reverse-engineering challenge

Playlistmag ^ | 11/22/2005

[Panerai]

A company that specializes in rights-management technology for online stores has declared its plans to reverse-engineer the FairPlay encoding system Apple uses on iTunes Music Store purchases.

The move by Cupertino-based Navio Systems would essentially break Apple’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) system in order to allow other online music retailers to sell downloads that are both DRM-encoded and iPod-compatible by early 2006.

“Typically, we embrace and want to work with the providers of the DRM,” said Ray Schaaf, Navio’s chief operating officer. “With respect to FairPlay, right now Apple doesn’t license that, so we take the view that as RealNetworks allows users to buy FairPlay songs on Rhapsody, we would take the same approach.”

In 2004, after unsuccessfully courting Apple to license FairPlay, RealNetworks introduced its Harmony technology, which allowed users to buy music from online sources other than the iTunes Music Store and transfer it to their iPod. RealNetworks’ move was then denounced by Apple as adopting “the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod.” In December of 2004, Apple shot back by releasing an iPod software update that disabled support for RealNetworks-purchased songs.

RealNetworks corrected this with an updated release of Rhapsody and FairPlay encoded songs have been working ever since. RealNetworks spokesman, Matt Graves, confirmed that this has been the only time that the company has seen any problems with its Harmony technology.

Content downloaded from iTunes is encoded with the FairPlay DRM system, effectively putting limits on how customers can use the content. Content providers want to use FairPlay because of the popularity of the iPod, which is incompatible with all DRM formats other than FairPlay. Apple has declined to license the technology to outside vendors.

[plain talk]

Bump for later read

[martin_fierro]

	iPod
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[frankenMonkey]

iSue?

[Tree of Liberty]

I thought the same guy that made DeCSS reversed engineered fairplay last year.