FairPlay is a digital rights management (DRM) technology created by Apple Inc., based on technology created by the company Veridisc. FairPlay is built into the QuickTime multimedia software and used by the iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, iTunes, and iTunes Store and the App Store. Any protected song or other form of media purchased from the iTunes Store with iTunes is encoded with FairPlay. FairPlay digitally encrypts AAC audio files and prevents users from playing these files on unauthorized computers.
The majority of FairPlay-encrypted content is purchased through the iTunes Store, using the iTunes software. The iTunes software relies on Apple's Quicktime multimedia software for decoding and playback of the encrypted files. Every media player capable of using QuickTime is capable of playing back FairPlay-encrypted files, including RealPlayer, Media Center, Media Player Classic and Songbird.
How it works
FairPlay-protected files are regular MP4 container files with an encrypted AAC audio stream. The audio stream is encrypted using the AES algorithm in combination with MD5 hashes. The master key required to decrypt the encrypted audio stream is also stored in encrypted form in the MP4 container file. The key required to decrypt the master key is called the "user key."
Each time a customer uses iTunes to buy a track a new random user key is generated and used to encrypt the master key. The random user key is stored, together with the account information, on Apple’s servers, and also sent to iTunes. iTunes stores these keys in its own encrypted key repository. Using this key repository, iTunes is able to retrieve the user key required to decrypt the master key. Using the master key, iTunes is able to decrypt the AAC audio stream and play it.
When a user authorizes a new computer, iTunes sends a unique machine identifier to Apple’s servers. In return it receives all the user keys that are stored with the account information. This ensures that Apple is able to limit the number of computers that are authorized and makes sure that each authorized computer has all the user keys that are needed to play the tracks that it bought.
When a user deauthorizes a computer, iTunes will instruct Apple’s servers to remove the unique machine identifier from their database, and at the same time it will remove all the user keys from its encrypted key repository.
The iPod also has its own encrypted key repository. Every time a FairPlay-protected track is copied onto the iPod, iTunes will copy the user key from its own key repository to the key repository on the iPod. This makes sure that the iPod has everything it needs to play the encrypted AAC audio stream.
FairPlay does not affect the ability of the file itself to be copied. It only manages the decryption of the audio content.
Restrictions
FairPlay-encrypted audio tracks allow the following:
- The track may be copied to any number of iPod portable music players (including the iPhone). (However, each iPod/iPhone can only have tracks from a maximum of five different iTunes accounts)
- The track may be played on up to five (originally three) authorized computers simultaneously.
- A particular playlist within iTunes containing a FairPlay-encrypted track can be copied to a CD only up to seven times (originally ten times) before the playlist must be changed.
- The track may be copied to a standard Audio CD any number of times.
- The resulting CD has no DRM and may be ripped, encoded and played back like any other CD. However, CDs created by users do not attain first sale rights and cannot be legally leased, lent, sold or distributed to others by the creator.
- The CD audio still bears the artifacts of compression, so converting it back into a lossy format such as MP3 may aggravate the sound artifacts of encoding (see transcoding). When re-ripping such a CD one could use a lossless audio codec such as AIFF, Apple Lossless, FLAC or WAV however such files take up significantly more space than the original .m4p files
At this time, it appears that the restrictions mentioned above are hard-coded into QuickTime and the iTunes application, and not configurable in the protected files themselves.
Fairplay prevents iTunes customers from using the purchased music directly on any portable digital music player other than the Apple iPod, Motorola ROKR E1, Motorola SLVR, Motorola RAZR V3i, and the iPhone.
Legal issues
On January 3, 2005, an iTunes online music store customer, Thomas Slattery, filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc., alleging the company broke antitrust laws by utilizing FairPlay with iTunes so that purchased music will work only with its own music player, the iPod, freezing out competitors. Though most of the complaints have been dropped, the case has since been combined with two other lawsuits and continues today under the temporary name "The Apple iPod iTunes Antitrust Litigation."
On June 28, 2004, VirginMega filed a complaint with the French Competition Council against Apple regarding its refusal to license Fairplay to VirginMega for use in their own online music commerce store. The French Conseil de la Concurrence rejected the complaint over accused anti-competitive behavior. The Conseil ruled against the notion that FairPlay was an "essential facility" for three distinct reasons: 1) Playing purchased music on portable players was a small part of the market; 2) CD Burning provides an adequate work-around to get purchased music from other vendors onto an iPod; and 3) There is sufficient availability of portable players that support Microsoft's WMA DRM as a viable alternative and choice for consumers.
Circumventing FairPlay
After the launch of the iTunes Store multiple people attempted to circumvent the encryption of FairPlay-protected files.
QTFairUse
Jon Johansen – also known for his DeCSS program – was the first to devise a way to circumvent the DRM. The open source application QTFairUse intercepted the decrypted output and wrote it to a raw AAC file. Many media players do not support such raw files and the files had to be processed with a tool like FAAD to create normal files. One of the few media players that is able to play raw AAC files is foobar2000.
The second time around, Johansen reverse engineered the encryption technique used in FairPlay and created an algorithm to completely remove the encryption without re-encoding the encrypted AAC stream. This method was also used by VLC media player in order to play FairPlay-protected tracks until newer version of iTunes and FairPlay broke it.
Only a few days after the release of iTunes 7.0 the experimental version 2.3 of QTFairUse6, a derivative of the python open source QTFairUse, was released which dumps each track to a raw AAC file which then can be converted to any format.
Jon Johansen himself also released a tool to remove the encryption, called DeDRMS. Later he released FairKeys, which uses Apple’s own servers to retrieve the keys needed by DeDRMS.
All these applications have two things in common. First of all, they use the user keys from either the Apple servers, the iTunes key repository, or the iPod key repository, which ensures they can decrypt only files that are legally bought; a user cannot use these applications to decrypt files that another user bought. Second, they keep user specific metadata inside the MP4 container intact, so it is possible to identify the user who originally bought the file after it is decrypted.
In March 2005, it was revealed through a front end of the iTunes Store called PyMusique that the FairPlay DRM was added only as a song was being purchased from the store by the client software itself.
In October 2006, Jon Johansen announced that instead of breaking FairPlay, he had reverse-engineered it so that other companies could play their DRM-protected music and movies on iPods and Apple's new Apple TV. His company, doubleTwist, would license the technology to media companies who wished to have their media playable on the iPod or Apple TV, with the protection of FairPlay DRM, but without having to go through Apple.
Playfair, Hymn, and JHymn
A software package named PlayFair – created by an anonymous author – also appeared. It can remove the encryption from files using the FairPlay DRM mechanism. The author of Playfair used the source code written by Jon Johansen for VLC. Apple's legal department forced PlayFair to be first removed from SourceForge.net, and then when the Indian open source web site Sarovar.org hosted the project they too were sent a cease and desist by Apple's lawyers. However, Playfair's successor Hymn (a backronym for " H ear Y our M usic a N ywhere") is alive and well and has become JHymn, a Java variant of the program, and iOpener, a Windows variant.
Apple Computer introduced iTunes 6.0 in October 2005, which included changes intended to stop programs like JHymn from decrypting FairPlay encrypted files. Furthermore, once iTunes 6 has been used to purchase songs or authorize a computer with a particular iTMS account, that account will be blocked from making purchases or activations on earlier iTunes versions, thus JHymn can no longer be used.
Apple Computer introduced iTunes 7.0 in September 2006, which once again included changes intended to stop programs similar to JHymn.
Harmony: RealPlayer Music on the iPod
In July 2004, RealNetworks introduced their Harmony technology. The Harmony technology is bu
Macrovision
The KS_COPY_MACROVISION property indicates the level of Macrovision encoding on the media (levels 0 to 3). The decoder may use this information to enable or disable Macrovision ...
Composite and S-Video Active Decoder-Converter
MACROVISION DECODER MACROVISION-DECODER US$199.00. Application Diagram of the S-Video Decoder
Macrovision Decoder - Hungry Hacker Industries
Some brief discussion on Macrovision, as well as plans translated from a German website for a homebrew decoder.
Macrovision Remover
Disable Macrovision Remove Macrovision. ... Customer Testimonials. Hi, Guys, I just want to thank you for the awesome products!
MACROVISION DECODER
Burn DVDs and internet videos with The Macrovision Decoder - our "Featured Product from the Future." This product is best considered while listening to "The Roof is on Fire" by ...
ProVision+ DVD Video Decoder V2
ProVision+ DVD Video Decoder V2 allows you to to record your DVD movies to VHS tapes or just like to improve the picture quality of your DVD playback .
MACROVISION - Media Decoder Blog - NYTimes.com
The TV Guide Network — you know, the one with the omnipresent TV listings — launched its first daily prime time show this week. “Hollywood 411″ is the cornerstone of the ...
CD Media World - Philips and Macrovision announce Copy Protection ...
"Macrovision is pleased to have its Copy Protection Detection feature included within Philips Semiconductors' new video decoder products," said Bill Krepick, President and COO of ...
Malata DVD-n960r DVD player Macrovison hack remover decoder
Malata DVD-n960r macrovision disable Multi-region DVD Player no macrovision decoder or remover required, codefree DVD Player VCR friendly NTSC Pal cracked remover hack dvd Player
Macrovision Remover
The Macrovison Remover allows you to disable macrovision and backup your expensive DVD Movies to VHS Tapes