FairPlay FairPlay is the digital rights management ( DRM) system that Apple uses to encrypt copyright ed media files sold on iTunes. Apple encyrpts music, television shows and movies to address the concerns of record companies and movie studios that fear their intellectual property (IP) will be copied and traded illegally. Media encrypted under FairPlay can be transferred to an unlimited number of devices or played on up to five authorized computers simultaneously. FairPlay tracks may also be burned to an audio CD up to seven times. Fairplay is based on technology originally created by Veridisc where multiple keys are used to authenticate and decrypt individual audio tracks. Every time a user authorizes a new computer to play audio or video media encyrpted with FairPlay, iTunes queries Apple's servers. Apple sends back all the user keys that are associated with the customer's account information. This ensures that Apple is able to limit the number of computers that are authorized to play purchased media and that each authorized PC has all the keys it needs to play the media. As has been the case with every DRM scheme, hacker s have found ways to break the algorithm used to encrypt the media files. While open source applications exist that can be used to remove the encryption, FairPlay is most easily bypassed simply by burning a media file to an audio CD and then re-saving it as an MP3 file. Media players capable of using Quicktime can also play files that have been encrypted with FairPlay. FairPlay has been criticized by the European Union and fair-use advocates, including Creative Commons . In April 2007, Apple announced a partnership with EMI, a major record company, to offer EMI content without FairPlay encryption. This move followed an open letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs urging major production studios to drop DRM requirements from digital media distribution.
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| Last updated on:
Aug 15, 2008 |
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