February 20, 2005

i-Tunes/Napster Trade Shots

The war over which Digital Rights Management (DRM) is better continues as Apple and Napster continue to trade shots.
It all started on Tuesday when Apple CEO Steve Jobs sent an e-mail to record company executives saying among other things that Napster's DRM for it's new "Napster-To-Go" streaming service had a security "gap" and that the gap could be exploited by visiting a webpage for instructions, of course Jobs linked to the website in the e-mail, and concluded by saying "Thought you should know if you haven't heard about this".
Napster CEO Chris Gorog was quick to respond to Jobs claim by issuing an e-mail that pointed web browsers to a site which offered a free program which could then be used to strip i-Tunes Fair Play streaming service of it's DRM.
Now I thought about weighing in on this until I ran across Leo Laporte's comments on his radio show today where he discussed the issue of DRM and said - "Gorog wins this round. All protected music is susceptible to the Napster-To-Go crack - it’s essentially recording the analog output as you listen to the song. iTunes FairPlay has been cracked fair and square by DVD Jon and software to strip out the copy protection is widely available."
Well said Leo.

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