PlayFair has battled its way back online with a complete rewrite as version 0.6.0. It is hosted in the US once again despite running into issues with Apple and the DMCA beforehand. Their new hosting provider is well aware of the DMCA and its issues, but is willing to defend the PlayPair providers should Apple threaten to bring down the site again. They are also getting legal support from FSF India.
The new version removes non-GPL dependencies by rewriting the MPEG-4 parsing library and is compatible with the new iTunes 4.5. The new library also allows the utility to copy the entire meta-data including the customer apple ID. They have decided to do this as a way of showing that they are not developing software to assist piracy.
The author expects to release its user manual for the software soon which will be available in HTML, text and PDF formats. The utility is available for the MAC OS X with a graphical user interface and for Windows as a DOS command-line only utility.
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PlatFair as-was is now hosted on a US site here and/or here and Anand Babu has taken official ownership of the project with FSF India providing legal support. "This (hosting service) provider is well aware of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and DRM issues and is very much willing to defend us in case Apple threatens to bring down the site," Babu says. And this time, "I finally wrote a user's manual," says the author. "It's available in HTML, text and PDF form. It is right now only available in CVS but I hope to ship 0.5.1 with the documentation soon, along with a bug fix or two. Stay tuned ..." Read the full article here at P2Pnet. |
PlayFair is back. Only this time it's hymn. And it's in a new release - 0.6.0..
It looks like PlayFair are taking a similar approach to the LWDRM of MP3 where the consumers can do what every they like with the resulting files, but should they become publically shared they can be traced. However by taking out the digital locks out of the iTunes music, it means that consumers are no longer locked to playing their music on iPod MP3 players. However a s Apple rely on its iPod sales for profit and use iTunes as a means of advertising its players, they are are likely to continue their efforts in trying to shutdown any loopholes.
Feel free to discuss and read more about Apple's iTunes on our Music Downloads, P2P & Legal Issues Forum. For copy protection discussions, see our Copy Protection Discussion Forum. Visit PlayFair's new website at http://hymn-project.org/.
Source: P2Pnet.net
