Napster Has Been Cracked

[ethics]

Not going to list how it's done but /. is reporting that it has been <a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/17/0346229">cracked</a>:

<i>Users have found a way to skirt copy protection on Napster Inc's portable music subscription service just days after its high-profile launch, potentially letting them make CDs with hundreds of thousands of songs for free...""</i>

[tke711]

From what I read about this yesterday, it's not much of a "hack" in the normal sense of the word. You still have to pay your membership dues, but can then save the songs in a format that gets around the digital rights management issue.

If I remember correctly, you basically play the file and then rip the file back off your sound card and save it again. This way, the DRM issue is no longer an issue. Of course, that really isn't a "hack" and certainly would not only apply to Napster, but would apply to all online mp3 companies that put DMR restraints on the songs you download.

[ethics]

Color me anti-establishment but I think that when you BUY a song, that song is yours to do with what you want, including ripping it, copying it, playing it on a CD.

[tke711]

Color me anti-establishment but I think that when you BUY a song, that song is yours to do with what you want, including ripping it, copying it, playing it on a CD.
I agree 100%! Unfortunately, very few of the online music stores agree as almost all of them put some limitations on the use of the song.

[Violet1966]

What will they think of next? LOL crafty fellows, those hackers are. :)

[Plunge]

If I remember right, you have a 2 week free period before you have to pay. These guy did all of this during that period.

[Techie2000]

"The DRM (digital rights management) is intact. Basically, people are just recording off a sound card. This is nothing new and people could do this with any legitimate service if they want to use a sound card," she said.I have to agree with this. It's fine for burning them to CD, but if you plan on using it to save the files to your computer think about this.

1. You download a "compressed" song in a protected format.
2. You record the raw stream of compressed music to a loseless format (wav)
3. Then you compress the compressed audio and you end up with a twice compressed sound file, that's probably going to be quite a bit of loss in quality.

[Steve]

Someone explain why this isn't common:

1. Send the audio from a digital file to an analog output (RCA jacks, for instance).

2. Patch the analog output, using high-quality cables, to the analog inputs of another sound card.

3. Record the analog input back into a non-DRM-protected digital format.

The "loss" in sound quality will be negligible and certainly undetectable by human ears. The cost is minimal, good quality sound cards are dime-a-dozen. Anyone with more than passing interest in creating a large digital music collection could make this a seamless process. I'm surprised there aren't already black boxes that do this.

[Techie2000]

Not much different from copying your NetFlix with that shiny new DVD burner, eh? I'd say there are several reasons it hasn't caught on. First the idea of subscription services still hasn't exactly caught on yet, second people are still using WinMX or whatever to pirate the music, and third for the average consumer it is too much effort to link soundcards and things. The only way this would be "worth it" financially and timewise would be if you plan on downloading a ton of songs in a short period (say a month), and cancel your subscription. Then if you needed a "new" song you'd still have to resubscribe to download. People don't like dealing with unsubscribing and resubscribing to things so they'll just keep the subscription so they can download the new stuff without much hassle, in which case unprotecting the content isn't worth it.

[ShinyTop]

Are NetFlix movies compressed?