DavidLeblond said:
It's a great convenience until the RIAA gets pissed and either changes their mind about downloadable music or tells Apple to hike their prices.
We shouldn't worry though, Apple will defeat this in no time.
Really?. how?. Regardless of what apple does, it might be even easier for DVD Jon to break their new programming than for them to come up with new programming. Think about it. A company with a lot of paid developers getting outwitted by a guy with time on his hands. I think he wins everytime. Their cost to defeat him is astromnomical compared to his cost to defeat them.
Although it's an eye opener to know that itunes itself is what wraps the music with DRM. I'd have thought the music was already DRM'd on the server. But I can see why apple chose that route, so that to get DRM'd songs onto an ipod, you would have to use itunes. I bet they never thought someone would bypass the itunes interface (kind of shortsighted if you ask me, this should have been anticipated).
One way around this problem would be to store the music in an encoded format and have itunes decode the music and wrap in DRM.
Unfortunately, that can be bypassed too. A competent enough person (example DVD jon) could intercept the process between decode and before DRM wrapping and deliver the music. Another way would be for itunes server to request itunes to send a key and then use that key to add DRM to the music on server before delivering to user, although then you could build a player that intercepted the key and uses it to remove the DRM.
I'm sure for every solution apple can think of, DVD jon can think of a way to defeat it. There might be no technical solution to the problem at all.