RealNetworks Reverse-Engineers Apple's FairPlay DRM Scheme

RealNetworks announced this morning that it has essentially reverse-engineered Apple Computer's FairPlay Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme. RealNetworks' Harmony Technology will let customers load songs purchased from the RealNetworks RealPlayer Music Store onto Apple's successful but closed iPod portable audio player.

Apple refused to share the technical information RealNetworks needed to make this translation possible; Apple CEO Steve Jobs refused repeated requests from RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser. Apparently, RealNetworks got tired of waiting.

RealNetworks' Harmony Technology is a DRM-translation system that the company says will help customers securely transfer legally purchased music to all of today's popular secure music devices, including the iPod. "Compatibility is key to bringing digital music to the masses," Glaser said. "Before Harmony, consumers buying digital music got locked in to a specific kind of portable player. Harmony changes all that. Thanks to Harmony, consumers don't have to worry about technology when buying music. Now anyone can buy music, move it to their favorite portable device, and it will just work, just like DVD and CDs work."

Harmony Technology breaks the lock-in that has been a leading factor in the success of the Apple iTunes Music Store. The iPod outsells other players by a wide margin, and iPod customers have been forced to use Apple's online music store because the iPod supports only the company's Protected Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format. Now iPod owners will be able to purchase music from the RealPlayer Music Store, which uses a much higher-quality format--192Kbps RealAudio 10 AAC.

Tomorrow, RealNetworks will demonstrate the Harmony Technology for the first time, and the company will ship a beta version of the RealPlayer 10.5 software, which supports the technology, soon. Later this year, RealNetworks will also include the Harmony Technology in other products, including the RHAPSODY subscription service.

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And Apple sues them under DMCA in 5... 4... 3...

PezHacker July 26, 2004 (Article Rating:

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This should be fun to watch.

Cause Real didn't break just Apple's DRM, they broke their business model.
After all, the whole reason to keep Fairplay proprietary is so that only music purchased at iTunes plays on the Pod *and* the only place iTunes music plays is the pod. Which means: lock-in. Once the pod people have enough invested in iTunes music files, they will have no choice but to buy ipods to listen to it.
But Real's process involves downloading the music to the PC in Real-format AAC which is then converted to WMA or Apple AAC/Fairplay. The purchased file apparently stays in the neutral format.
Hence, no pod lock-in for music purchased from Real.

Nice try, Real, but it won't work:
1- Pod people would rather die than buy music from anybody but Apple, never mind the lock-in.
2- Apple will simply patch iTunes and deliver new firmware to the Pod that locks it up again.
3- Apple will sue under DMCA.

Of course, now that it is known that Fairplay can be cracked in less than three months, it is likely that other folks will try to match Real. The fun begins when an asian vendor puts it in hardware to create a player that plays WMA and Fairplay music.

One question though: Apple brags about having 70% market share. Is that high enough that Real could sue *them* for antitrust if they block Harmony?
Mind you, the reality is closer to 29%, but Apple's hype machine might be exposing them to legal liability...

The lawyers must be licking their chops at the billable hours that will come of this.

fjtorres July 26, 2004 (Article Rating:

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Real claims that they didn't reverse engineer FairPlay. That sounds logical to me. After all, FairPlay was reverse engineered already 6 months ago:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/05/itunes_drm_cracked_wide_open/

Why waste time reverse engineering when you can just look at publicly available information?

http://developers.videolan.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/vlc/modules/demux/mp4/

PezHacker:
Was the DMCA amended recently to outlaw putting DRM on files? No. Perhaps your point was that Apple will launch a frivolous lawsuit?

natwest July 26, 2004 (Article Rating:

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The article states "iPod customers have been forced to use Apple's online music store because the iPod supports only the company's Protected Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format." This is untrue.

The iPod supports MP3 (32 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible, AIFF, WAV and Apple Lossless audio formats in addition to AAC (with and without FairPlay DRM). I find it in poor taste that technolgy news writers (not just this one) mislead their readers with such mis-information.

Because of such reporting there are many people who believe that iTunes can only work with the iPod. iTunes can work with a wide array of portable digital audio players that support MP3s.

The limitations and lock-in have to do with FairPlay managed AAC files sold through the iTunes Music Store. There are ways around this however.

Of course you already knew all of this.

Idébu July 26, 2004 (Article Rating:

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natwest: No, but the DMCA does prohibit you from circumventing protections on copyrighted materials. Real breaking Apple's DRM is the same thing as DeCSS breaking DVD encryption. Whether or not you agree with DMCA, Apple does have a case. Of course, it's possible Real did it just to provide a test case to try to get DMCA thrown out, but they have to be aware that they're opening themselves up for an inevitable lawsuit.

PezHacker July 27, 2004 (Article Rating:

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natwest: You are only partly right. The iPod WILL allow you to put any unprotected music in the formats you mentioned. HOWEVER, songs bought from RealNetwork's would need to be converted to an unprotected format (and also lower quality since it would need to be transcoded) to be stored on the iPod. While these tech articles may be partly misleadin, the fact of the matter is that Apple IS still locking other companies from using the iPod to store their own protected music files.

Anonymous User November 14, 2004

DRM sucks anyways. It has so many flaws. Soon, Microsoft's DRM will blow up your hard disk when you install Longhorn, thanks to NGSCB

Anonymous User December 11, 2004

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