QTFairUse6 Updated Hours After iTunes7 Release 292
Nrbelex writes "Mere hours after iTunes 7's release, QTFairUse6 has received an update which enables it to continue stripping iTunes songs of their 'FairPlay' DRM. Some features are experimental but at least it's proof that the concept still works."
I'm almost ready to buy (Score:2)
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The iTunes Store is a fee-per-download service--if you want to buy something on iTunes, you drop down your money and you download the song.
Essentially, iTunes != iTunes St
Re:I'm almost ready to buy (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Apple - "whoops" (Score:5, Interesting)
Slightly off topic, but I wonder how you feel about downloding content that was on broadcast TV. Take the show "Lost" for example. Lets say you missed it when it was broadcast. Now, you could have recorded it for free and stripped out the commercials. But you didn't for whatever reason. You could wait a year for the DVD to come out, but you don't want to wait. You could pay some "legit" online service for the convenience of downloading, but why should pay for something that was broadcast for free just yesterday? Is there anything wrong with downloading it or getting it from a friend?
-matthew
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Well, not that I agree with them, but probably their rationale is that you are paying for the convenience of downloading and watching the show in your own time.
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I don't have a problem with downloading and viewing sans commercials (do it myself with DVR and fast-forward, which is legal), I'm just letting you know what I think they would retort with. I happen to think that corporate-owned media is in violation of the spirit of my nation (USA). I believe the airwaves should belong to the pub
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I mean, technically, it's infringement, but I've also got a DVR. Last week, my bro deleted something I wanted to watch, so I hopped on BT and grabbed a copy, grumbling the whole time about the disregard recieved from siblings.
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How it works (why it's easy) (Score:4, Insightful)
So an update to the iTunes software just means an update to the memory address offset to read the data from. Piece of cake.
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Part of it is easy (Score:2)
So basically... (Score:3, Informative)
They're capturing the unencrypted and unencoded audio stream? That means that they're transcoding if they store it as an AAC file, right?
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Re:So basically... (Score:4, Informative)
Ah... (Score:2)
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Of course, with the whole 'protected data path' thing, they're working on making it pretty hard to get a digital 'rip'. With watermarks and laws requiring all recording devices to respect them, they can close the analog hole, too.
At what point... (Score:2)
Re:At what point... (Score:5, Insightful)
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If they license FairPlay to other MP3 players, then the iTMS ceases to be an advantage for the iPod. The only reason they're running the iTMS is to sell iPods, Macs, and now iTVs.
On the other hand, I'm not sure what the motivation would be to license Fairplay to other media sources. Apple gains a lot of credit for ease-of-use and reliability by managing the user experience end-to-end. If Real, for example, was selling a lot of media to iPod owners, then Apple has to deal with support issues related to R
Re:At what point... (Score:4, Informative)
They do gain a benefit in that it makes it hard to use iTunes-purchased music on non-iPod MP3 players, true. However, it's also pretty well known (though I don't have a source, it's pretty well accepted as fact) that Jobs has fought with the record companies over the DRM. Jobs wanted cheap music, DRM free, at a flat fee, that could be transfered back-and-forth between the iPod and your computer. The labels wanted music with expensive variable pricing and extremely restrictive DRM. The current system, with mostly flat pricing (more expensive than what Apple wanted but cheaper than the label's intended), somewhat loose DRM, and one-way syncing from iTunes->iPod was the compromise.
Really, when you think of it in a certain way, why would Apple care terribly about the DRM? They don't make much off of these sales, and a lot of their cost probably comes from bandwidth, which isn't used except when someone actually buys something. On their end, it's largely promotional.
Never (Score:2)
How many people use iTunes? How many of them know about and use the circumvention tool? No matter how many it may be, the answer is invariably "not all of them". I.e. some cannot copy their songs for friends. And those friends will thus also buy the songs.
Copy protection does work. Not flawlessly, not against everyone, but at least SOME people will be kept from copying. Whether those people would have copied altogether and whether inconveniencing your paying customers is
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When programs like QTFairUse6 are around, people just "work around" the DRM. I tend to still avoid it because I don't want to purchase music and make these companies think that "consumers are okay with DRM".
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It's a truism I find myself having to repeat: you cannot encrypt something to keep it from its intended recipient. You can't embed it in hardware (CSS tried that, look how trivial that is), you can't do it with online activation. At some point, you the intended recipient of the "plaintext" are going to receive that content, and barring complete end-to-end encryption through the hardware wi
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If you really cared about DRM to the point that it would make you not use the service you'd probably be using a different service which doesn't have it.
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Let the law suits begin (Score:2)
Re:Let the law suits begin (Score:5, Informative)
Cracked DRM? where? What this program does is something similar to dump some part of the memory in your machine into a file. It does not cracks anything, it does not modify any program, it is not any key generator, it just dumps a section of your computer memory into the disk.
Guess what, Microsoft Office does exactly that when you click the "save document" function. =o)
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I know it sounds really wishy-washy, but when mymp3 was ordered to shut down, it seems that intent of
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Yes, it's true that we should treat people differently depending on whether or not something was intentional, but besides that, intent shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter if you killed your wife because she was sleeping with someone else or simply because you wanted the life insurance money, for example. It shouldn't matter if you beat someone up because they were gay, al
Re:Let the law suits begin (Score:5, Insightful)
The DMCA [loc.gov] is pretty clear on what it means by circumvention:
If you think you can convince a judge that this isn't textbook circumvention, hey, go for it. But saying it'd be an uphill battle is putting it lightly. Especially if you go in there claiming that it's somehow impossible for a "mere memory dump" to constitute circumvention, when it is clearly one of many types of transform wherein you put a protected work in one end, and get an unprotected work out the other.
(Do not confuse this post with DMCA advocacy. I strongly disagree with outlawing technologies and actions; I think the law in this area should merely concern itself with results. But I also think you can't fight against something you don't understand; you just make yourself sound like an idiot. You need to understand there is a distinction between what the laws says and what you wish it said. Understanding the DMCA better is a necessary step in fighting it.)
Re:Let the law suits begin (Score:4, Interesting)
When you play the law game, the argument of the form "Look, there's a definition of X in the dictionary, under which X didn't happen. Therefore, I didn't do X. Ha-ha! Got you!" works about as well as I've made it sound.
Oh yeah, as if lawyers never exploit technicalities. The technicality here, of course, is that you are gaining access to the copyrighted work with permission of the copyright owner and through the approved method. It's being decoded into memory in the correct and legal means, and you then have a legally decoded copy in memory. The user is then copying that copy in accordance with fair use. There's no circumvention of the controlled access to the work, because it's an issue of what the user who has controlled access does with that access.
I'm not saying it's an iron-clad argument or anything, but it certainly could be argued on very technical grounds, and that's a large part of what lawyers do-- argue about the wording and meaning of laws in a very technical way. The point is, the transformation from a protected copy to an unprotected copy is done explicitly how the copyright holder has given permission for it to be done. Every time you play a song in iTunes, the program is making an unprotected copy in memory, and this program is simply a means to KEEP that copy.
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1) Descramble? No. Decrypt? Nada. Avoid? Nyet. Bypass? Nien. Remove? Iie. Deactivate? Nay. Impair? FALSE. It's not doing anything to "circumvent a technological measure." It is, in fact, accepting the output of authorized decryption, then doing "unapproved" things with that output. Thus the DMCA does not apply.
2) This hack most certainly is handled "in the ordinary course of its operation", in that even if you don't have QTFairUse6 installed, iTunes still decrypts and stores to a memory addr
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I thought the people that develop this kind of thing live in Norway or other countries which recognize fair use and don't extradite to the US over such matters.
DRM is a cryptographical pipe dream (Score:5, Informative)
In a DRM system, the consumer's machine needs to get both the encrypted content, and the key to decrypt this content. Otherwise, the consumer cannot listen to the audio he just purchased. As long as we listen to music with our analog ears, and watch video with our analog eyes, this will be the case.
As any cryptographer will tell you: if you have the cyphertext and the correct key, you can decrypt the content. Therefore, DRM systems are, by their very definition, nothing more than security by obscurity. It is a cryptographical pipe dream.
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Heheh
Sincerely,
The RIAA and MPAA Joint Cartel
Re:DRM is a cryptographical pipe dream (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I think the real reason legal music downloads is working is because iTunes is a better experience. That's it. I think they're wasting their own time and money with DRM and lawsuits and whatever. All they've ever had to do was provide a better experience and people will pay. People with money will, anyways. They've seen this but they won't believe it. And if they wanted to take it further down the "better experience" path, they'd drop DRM and lawsuits. But whatever; they won't.
Cheers.
Why iTunes works (Score:5, Insightful)
1. price
2. easy to use
Fairly simple. 99 cents is a sum that convinces people it's more convenient to click and pay than to fire up a filesharing system or phone 'round with their friends. It downloads quickly and it's guaranteed to work with your iPod, no need to wonder what format or how to transfer it, the software is built to fit.
That's what makes it popular and that's why people pay for it. I bet a sizable sum that most of them didn't even notice yet that it contains DRM. Simply because nobody bothered to try to copy it instead of simply clicking and paying the buck.
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it has to be said, though, that 99 cents for a whole DRM-free album (all of mp3 dot com) is an even better deal.
yeah yeah, tell me about the russian mafia. we have our own mafia, its called the riaa. I see zero diff between them.
oh, wait, there is a diff. the russian mob has never tried to take me (or my fellow americans) to court.
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they are also always complete. never a partial/fragment song.
the mp3 id tags are accurate and pre-set for me.
at a dollar an album, its not even worth hacking around with poor quality pirate rips and encodes.
(any other questions?)
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otoh, the riaa IS hostile to its very customer base.
technically, even if I buy music from the riaa in the US - if I try to move that DRM-laden stuff to a non-DRM host or player, they CAN come after me. that's why I say they are STILL ho
Re:Why iTunes works (Score:5, Insightful)
"finally, the russians do claim that they are sending a percent of the fees to the artists. I can trust that as much as I trust the riaa sending its 'cut' to its artists."
The licensing fees that the Russian sites pay are estimated to be on the order of a few hundred bucks a month. Divide that by the tens of thousands of tracks they sell per month, and it's hundredths of a cent. However, the Russian sites refuse to divulge which tracks are being downloaded. Some indie artists have asked. They refuse to tell.
By comparison, an iTunes sale will net the artist around $0.15. And, yes, iTunes reports and pays. Sell a thousand tracks a month and that's $150 per month, vs. zero for sales on the Russian sites.
Now, you might think that $150 means nothing to your average recording artist, and that they can easily eat this loss. But the reality is that the typical recording artist has a standard of living that's much closer to your own (and quite likely worse) than the image you might have from watching MTV. If you would miss that $150 a month -- or, better put, if you would be angry if somebody cheated you out of $150 on the rationale that they thought you didn't need it -- then it's a safe assumption that your favorite artist would, too.
Make no mistake -- it's perfectly acceptable to say something like "I don't give fuck all if an artist makes $15 or $150 or $1500 a month. Just give me all the DRM-free music I can handle, baby!". As the Electric Company pointed out, the most important person in the world is YOU, and not some random artist. Pirate all you want if that works with your moral code. But it is intellectually dishonest to state that you use a Russian site for your music because it is no worse a deal for the artist than buying it legitimately.
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Re:Why iTunes works (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet a sizable sum that most of them didn't even notice yet that it contains DRM. Simply because nobody bothered to try to copy it instead of simply clicking and paying the buck.
I can give anecdotal support to that (for whatever that's worth). Everyone in my work group uses iTunes to manage their music. Some of us use the iTunes store heavily, some of us only use it for free stuff. A couple weeks ago we decided to make a master playlist so all of our musical preferences could be equally represented in the shuffle. Some people were quite shocked and a little angry to find out that some of their favorite tracks could not be put in the mix. A couple people swore of iTunes forever. (Though I have real doubts that they'll stick to that.)
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This may be a little off topic, but it strikes me that our eyes have a finite number of rods and cones to sample the incoming light. As such, they are a natural world digital system, albeit very high fidelity.
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My theory on this is that yes, it's pretty 'high-def' in there, but our mind takes it a step further and interpolates. Our eyes are always moving, even if by almost imperceptable amounts. And they've proven how your mind makes your 'blind spot' look just as real and
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Not only that, but most of the field of your vision look hi-res when really the only part of the eye that has good resolution covers about an area of your view equal to the size of a quarter held at arm's length. Go ahead, try it: open up Notepad or something and type a letter. Stare at it. Now don't move your eye off of it fo
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Just ano
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This is exactly correct. In the classic crypto scenario, A(lice) encrypts communication to B(ob) to protect it from attacker C(harles).
But as Bruce himself would tell you, in the DRM scenario, B and C are the same person! Attempts to enable "Trustworthy" computing is simply a move to make the computer itself B, with C being the computer's owner... You own it, you pay for it,
Re:DRM is a cryptographical pipe dream (Score:4, Informative)
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They tried that. It was called 'CSS', on DVDs.
And you know what happened? Someone broke it.
The inherent problem with 'doing everything in hardware' is that people won't buy the hardware. If you get a message from iTunes that 'You need to buy XXX hardware device to play this file', are you likely to buy that product, or are you likely to look elsewhere?
"But they'll be including it in PCs!"
Bullshit. That locks out owners of older PCs from content - something neither Apple nor the recording studios
The Future Looks Dim with DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm an "Apple Fanboy" but have limited my iTunes purchases to a few albums. CDs are still considerably more flexible regarding how and where I can use the music. Sure I own an iPod, but I also own a phone and PSP that can both play music. I also have a device that will play MP3s through my TV. None of those last three will play my FairPlay music. While I accept the limitations of the player, it's simply frustrating at times.
Regarding the new Apple Movie Store, let me get this right... we pay $9.99 (to $14.99) for a movie... that's of a lower quality than DVD and can't really be moved outside of your local network (it's not like you can take it over to a friends house without unauthorizing their computer and authorizing their computer under your username). Just trying to explain this to my fiance made her eyes glaze over. Her exact words: "sounds compleicated... why not just go to the movie store."
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That's right no more flexible!
That's because you can create a CD from music purchased from the iTMS. What's different is cost and quality. I can buy a used CD that will rip just fine, often for less than the $10 for the album on iTunes. And the CD I can create from iTMS music is already lossfully compressed, so the quality is lower. However, it's still a 'redbook' CD and can be ripped and compressed.
Alternatively, you can look at
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Limitations of the player? I think it would be more accurate to describe it as a limitation of the music files. Those music files are designed to be as limited as possible so that they only work on ipods. If apple sold mp3s then people could buy other players. Apple doesn't let other companies decode their protected format in order to keep their monopoly.
Why you are all wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The arguments lack one perspective, that the purchase of music from iTunes, et. al., comes with certain conditions. There is no fundamental right to purchase anything free of conditions, so when music companies and online retailers decide that they will offer music that is ensconced in DRM, that is a business and marketing decision that they make, assuming that people will forgo some freedoms in order to have the convienience.
The sort of "active" protest over DRM that is represented by tools to strip the DRM merely confirms that the market for the music exists and offers no reason for the music companies to move away from DRM. A better protest would be to boycott the entire DRM scheme altogether and only seek music from outlets that provide it free of DRM.
Will you still be able to get all of the CCR and Radiohead from other, non-DRM outlets? No, but if you want to make a point with a corporation, you need to do it by removing yourself from the market. The problem that I see is that many people want to have it both ways; they want all of the convience of an iTunes or Rhapsody, or similar, none of the DRM and want all of this without any real sacrifice.
A major problem today is the erroneous sense of entitlement that pervades so much. Too many people think that they are entitled to market for products that suits their needs and are willing to resort to unethical, if not blatantly criminal, activity to create that market. The truth is that the online music market will only change when providers are losing money because their markets have shrunk and they must retool the offering. AS long as people buy the DRM'ed music, that won't happen.
Re:Why you are all wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM for Apple is about hardware (Score:2, Insightful)
QTFairUse6/myFairTunes does NOT break DRM! (Score:5, Informative)
If you examine the source code, you'll see why it hasn't been ported to Mac - it isn't portable. It relies on the fact that for a brief period of time, there will be a frame of decrypted AAC data. It first attaches to the iTunes process, then it attaches a breakpoint inside of iTunes. You play your audio, and when iTunes finishes decrypting a frame of m4p, it hits the breakpoint. Then QTFairUse, acting as a debugger, grabs a copy of the AAC memory buffer, and writes it to a file, which is (surprise) unencrypted. (This was how the first iTunes hack was done, too).
What QTFairUse6/MyFairTunes does is make it entirely automated by faking out a debugger. If you knew where to set the breakpoint, and where in memory to find the unencrypted data, you could basically do the same thing with your bog-standard VisualStudio debugger (albeit more slowly).
The iTMS 6 format wasn't broken, just an alternate attack vector was found. And it might be more difficult in OS X, since a process can prevent itself from being debugged by setting permissions to do so.
That's why QTFairUse is version specific - it needs to know where to find the memory buffer, and where to set the breakpoint.
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"Neener neener naw naw," coupled with happy-dancing around the computer desk.
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I signed up for Vongo a couple of weeks ago. Downloaded a movie or two. Being a geek with toys, I figured, "ok, I'll download a movie and play it on my PSP".
No dice. WMV with DRM (PlaysForSure? Riiight...), and my PSP isn't a suported player.
So, hunting around, I came across 'FairUse4WM' - which failed to work.
I called up Vongo and canecelled my account. The very nice girl asked me the reason, and I responded, "Your service uses DRM, and I'm just not cool with that." When sh
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There are teo and only two choices when you want content from the major providers. Protected content (aka DRM) or advertising. There is no third choice when the production budget for a movie like Cars is $90 million dollars.
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Strangely enough, however, those $90-250 million movies only cost $10-20 on a DVD. Yet music CDs, which cost three orders of magnitude less to make, cost just as much money to buy. Something's fishy
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The people who stick to legitimate uses are more likely to give up and say "forget it, I guess I won't use it for my legitimiate use because I can't", and not bother looking for a crack.
The only people that DRM hurts is the honest people who are not technically inclined.
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Itunes music didn't work particularly well on my Sandisk MP3 player till I burned it to CD-R and then extracted it as MP3. It quickly got to be too much hassle, so I stopped using Itunes.
Re:This is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Somehow I doubt it, yet those are all legitimate uses.
Yes, you can. (Score:2)
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You cannot be obliged to sacrifice your firstborn at midnight, even if there is a clause requiring you to do exactly that in a contract you sign. Some people think that quite a few rights, fair use among them, are important enough that they should fall under the same category (i.e. you cannot be deprived of them, wilfully or not). I'm not sure what the U.S. law says in that regard, bu
What the authors don't get (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the same reason MS don't come down too hard on piracy of their OS and office suites. It actually supports their business.
No (Score:2)
Record companies don't notice, they got their money and I'm not sharing the unprotected files.
Only person that should care is Apple, as I can now shift from ipod when the whim takes me. Currently I'm not in a huge rush, I'm perfectly happy with it by and large, but I hated the feeling of being trapped.
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Record companies did notice. The noticed that you bought a DRM-crippled format, which only serves to encourage them to add more DRM in the future. After all, it sells. Add more.
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Apparently, you haven't heard of the WGA.
A few years ago you were correct. MS didn't give a damn since it increased market share. Due to Vista being a clusterfuck and years late, ms needs to crack down on piracy in order to get their revenues back up.
Re:What the authors don't get (Score:4, Insightful)
And that'd be what, exactly? Emusic just has indie stuff, allofmp3.com is still in a legal grey area as far as most people are concerned, and has some other issues (audible pops in the music, incorrect id3 tags (Everything I get is tagged 'Blues' for genre, for instance), strangely limited selection for many artists; the list goes on). I'd like to know where there's a legal service of the same quality as iTunes, but without the DRM.
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1. I have been unable to listen to my music on my XP x64 installation. I've been using this as my primary PC for a while now, and I've been unable to play any of my M4Ps since iTunes won't even install (until today). I spent a long time looking for an older iTunes 6 installation, but to no avail. I'll see if I can get things working again tonight. If I could strip the DRM, I'd just open up any number of other pl
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Re:This is wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah sure. Wanting to listen to purchased music on Linux systems is wrong.
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What about playing it on my non-Apple MP3 player? What about having a shared music source for my Windows & Linux dual boot?
What about something as simple as wanting to play it in the audio software of my choice? Personally I like MixMeister Pro, it's DJ software, and gives me the kind of control I want in a music player (which iTunes is lacking).
iTunes DRM is purposeful incompatibility designed into the codec. Frankly, unless
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I doubt Apple is going to force iPod owners to upgrade their firmware just for DRM.
MS, yes, they would do that kind of thing. [slashdot.org] But not Apple.
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Find the AAC stream decoding function using a subset of the old one as the 'signature bytes'. Do this many times with different sig sets until you find something that more or less consistently matches up.
Look for references to it in other functions that also appear to be stream-decoding. There shouldn't be too many, and one of them must be the FairPlay decryptor.
Hoo