“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. American Technology Research analyst PJ McNealy said that no matter how protected a music file is, you can capture the output and save it on the hard drive,” Sue Zeidler reports for Reuters.
“American Technology Research analyst PJ McNealy said that no matter how protected a music file is, you can capture the output and save it on the hard drive. ‘Now, portable subscriptions are a bigger bullseye or goal for people,’ he said. Napster unveiled the portable subscription earlier this month, backed by a $30 million ad campaign attacking rival Apple’s iTunes service and its ubiquitous iPod digital music player,” Zeidler reports.
“Until recently, music subscription services have been somewhat restricted in their ability to transfer songs they provide to portable players, while Apple has sold millions of portable iPods by allowing users to buy songs from iTunes and store them on iPods,” Zeidler reports. “But Napster uses a new digital rights management software from Microsoft called Janus to enable the portable transfers.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s iTunes model works because you at least have to buy the song for 99-cents before you can play it and/or strip off the DRM. Napster To Go’s model does not work for the artists and music labels because a user can simply pay one low monthly subscription fee and strip the DRM off every song in the library. Do the artists and music labels understand the problem here? This new Napster To Go is potentially worse for them than even the original Napster.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Napster-To-Go’s ‘rental music’ DRM circumvented – February 14, 2005
Finally! I‘ve resisted submitting this personal opinion since Thursday.
“Napster To Go’s model does not work for the artists and music labels because a user can simply pay one low monthly subscription fee and strip the DRM off every song in the library.”
Actually, you can get a free trial w/ Napster, so you can steal all the music for free.
NMFY,
That one stays in honor of your creativity and persistence.
Theoretical fun:
Three computers, one fast networked drive, and a few dedicated people: Turning Napster’s 14 day free trial into 252 full 80 minute CDs of free music.
Each song can only be burned after the duration of the track length has elapsed in realtime:
14 day trial = 336 hours = 20,160 minutes of potential music = 252 80 minute CDs
Computer 1: Dedicated to downloading new music off of Napster
Computer 2: Dedicated to building WAV files for each CD
Computer 3: Dedicated to burning CDs
All computers share one fast networked drive where new files are downloaded to, converted WAVs are saved to, and CDs are burned from.
http://blog.kordix.com/marv/archives/000400.html
NoMacForYou:
you are really stretching for it now. what is next? anagrams? You should get some kind of an award for that.
Speaking of thwarting, I see MDN has found a way to thwart the pop-up blocker in Safari. Too many more pop-ups and this site will be relegated to a RSS feed for me.
BG, “Hey, what’s that circling the bowl when I flushed it?”
SJ, “Napster, Janus, and your whole strategy to dominate the media world. You should have listened to me when I told you that subscriptions were a bad idea.”
The music lables will pull their contracts with Napster now. This will only continue to fuel the iTunes fire as well as push the future of online media distribution to video as well…
Safari still blocks popups for me on this site…
I don’t get any pop-ups with Safari’s pop-up blocker and MDN. Strange.
DRM sucks no matter what version it is.
Hey JadisOne,
Popups aren’t showing up with Firefox. Add this line to your /etc/hosts file:
127.0.0.1 z1.adserve.com
That redirects the z1.adserve.com to your localhost which prevents it from finding anything.
The recording of subscription music is nothing new. People have been able to do this ever since the new Napster & Real Networks began their subscription services. The added ability to move the subscription to a portable hasn’t changed this fact.
Nelson sez: HA HA!
Gorog was right!!! Users can pay $15 bucks for the first month, download 10,000 songs, crack them and use them forever, and then cancel the subscription. If you want 10,000 songs form Apple, you would have to chunk out $10,000 dollar!!! The math was right after all!! What a moron!!! Well, at least you can’t spell moron backward like you could with gorog!!!
Where’s Ben?
Right here, you Mac zealot slob. Go suck on Dark Lord Gates’ tailpipe!
i’m here, licking my chops from all the insults from earlier stories.
they hurt my feelings. some of you guys go over the line.
I like calico kittens, warm summer breezes, and pink cotton candy.
To get the popup blocker to work again you need to reset the cache in Safari, but you will lose all your cookies.
Once I did it, Safari started to block the popup ads on MDN.
i have been getting popup ads all over the web
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Napster use Micro$oftopoly’s Janus DRM for it’s subscription service? If after almost 20 years they cannot make a secure OS, what would make you think they could make a secure DRM system.
“Speaking of thwarting, I see MDN has found a way to thwart the pop-up blocker in Safari. Too many more pop-ups and this site will be relegated to a RSS feed for me.”
DITTO.
It’s almost as annoying as the seizure-inducing flash ads below the masthead a while back.
This is news to Napster? After all these years of cracking and hacking and stripping and burning Napster thought their method of keeping thousands of songs on your hard drive was impossible to breach?
Doesn’t Napster have …. TECHNICAL people on staff to tell them better?
Years ago when ‘subscription’ meant ‘streaming’ to your PC I thought that the quality of the music was reduced to a level that made it not worthwhile to steal. Sort of like the ‘Radio’ in iTunes. Which is worth listening to, but burning CDs made it iffy if you were picky.
So Napster gives you (roughly) iTunes level quality, then places a flimsy figleaf of protection to keep it from being copied. And it sits on your drive for YEARS waiting for someone to poke around and crack it.
Wow.
david vesey
Janus’s DRM hasn’t been cracked.
The record labels are now drunk on the success of iTunes and have gone overboard. I wonder how long it will take them to realize their mistake. If the speed with which they have moved so far is any indication it could take years.
Gorog was right, the math favors Napster. It costs 100 dollars to steal 100 songs from iTunes. It only costs 15 dollars to steal thousands upon thousands from Napster.
Janus – the two faced god of gates. Really. Look it up.
No pop-ups on safari here.