Hackers > Everyone Else

Posted in General 4 years, 6 months ago.

I’ve always been a firm believer that despite what challenges corporate America throws at so called “hackers” in the form of copyright protection software, with time these “hackers” will find holes, making the protection software nothing but an annoyance to the average, everyday user.

With the recent release of iTunes 4.5, Apple apparently recoded the authentication scheme that copy protects songs downloaded within iTunes known as “FairPlay”. To briefly explain, “FairPlay” allows users that download songs through Apple iTunes music store to listen to their purchased music on up to 5 other computers and only the iPod. In the previous version 4.2, the scheme was broken which allowed users to exploit the “FairPlay” authentication and allow the sharing of their purchased songs with other users over P2P networks. The exploit also allowed users to listen to songs downloaded within iTunes in MP3 players other than the iPod. Despite Apple engineer’s attempt, within 24 hours of the new version 4.5 release the “FairPlay” authentication was again crack. More on this story…

Just proves my point: As much as copy protection is needed in today’s society, enabling protection that restricts user’s rights (such as “FairPlay”) only hurts those that would normally obey the law because users looking to break the law will always find ways to do it.