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March 22, 2005
The PyMusique arms race continues
As I predicted, the PyMusique guys have developed a new version of PyMusique that works with Apple's modified ITMS. It's really hard for Apple to win with this tactic because it's generally easy for the attackers to reverse engineer iTunes to figure out whatever secret it uses to authenticate itself to ITMS, and there's an upper limit on how often Apple can force people to upgrade to whatever new version of ITMS they have.That said, as I understand it the issue is that ITMS doesn't add DRM itself but relies on iTunes to do it. Presumably if Apple is willing ot throw some more CPU at the problem on the ITMS side they can render this particular form of attack kind of irrelevant. Of course, one can always bypass the DRM, as is done by PlayFair, but that's a different attack.
Posted by ekr at March 22, 2005 4:11 PM | Filed under:
Comments
Generally, in any war, the side which spends more money faster, loses. The cost to Apple to iterate iTunes DRM schemes is hugely more than the cost to Jon Johansen of iterating his DRM breaking code.
Posted by: Craig Hughes at March 22, 2005 8:14 PM
Unlike the previous version which worked on Windows, DVD Jon's latest hack only works on Linux machines. Apple should consider ignoring it for a while and work on a stronger version in the future.
IF you believe that Apple can't reach a deal with its record label partners to sell online music without DRM then Apple is hardly losing money. As an Apple shareholder, I only care about this problem to the extent that the record labels get jumpy.
Posted by: Steve Purpura at March 22, 2005 10:30 PM