DVD Jon’s PyMusique Bypasses Apple iTunes Again
That was fast. Almost too fast. But conspiracy theories aside, this fist fight back and forth between DVD hacker Jon Johansen and Apple is getting to be pretty exciting. Exactly 1 day after Jon posted app and source code for a way to get past the iTunes encryption – Apple released an update to the iTunes system. This “update” forced all users to upgrade to iTunes 4.7, or else. Thus, leaving PyMusique without a means of stripping DRM. The DRM wasn’t stripped as much as it was just bypassed.
The encryption actually happens while you’re downloading the song. Makes sense when you think about it, considering the song has to be encrypted with your username. PyMusique found a way past this. While still requiring you to actually pay money for the songs, it let you share them with whomever you wished. At least for one day anyway. Until Apple firmly showed them what-for (my words, not Apple’s).
The ‘what-for’ has since been promptly been shown back to Apple – in the form of a PyMusique update. Only going as far to say that he “reverse-engineered” the new iTunes encryption – Jon released the update. The site was still down (from mass bandwidth usage I presume – not Apple’s force). This not only puts Apple at a disadvantage for the obvious reasons but also they’ve now shut out a fairly large portion of their users for no reason with the “iTunes 4.7 or-else update”. Let the games begin.
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Guest Columnist Jesse Perry blogs on AppleWatch, the definative Apple News Blog.
