PodShanking: direct iPod to iPod transfer
By Barb Dybwad 
posted Mar 17th 2005 11:50AM
posted Mar 17th 2005 11:50AM
So here we all are suffering through the heartbreaking reality in which the manufacturers of the devices we love deliver them to us willfully crippled from their native powers. Luckily we have folks like Brett to help us Harrison Bergeron our way into the 21st century and take advantage of the advantages of digital media: enter PodShanking into the lexicon. Documented in full is the simple yet effective method of direct iPod to iPod transfer. Please note that this is not an actual file transfer, and it does have to be performed in real time, but then again, it's sort of nice to occasionally be reminded that things actually still happen in real time.
[Thanks, Rlarue]
it'd be easier to just download one of the billion programs that can take songs off an ipod and use a computer as an intermediary than this. the amount of limitations and the complexity/time involved in getting a single album off another ipod pretty much destines 'poshanking' to NOT be entered into modern lexicon and instead be forgot about entirely. this 'hack' is mostly pointing out something really obvious that no one ever tried or mentioned before because it is stupid and wastes time to get a subpar result. ooo. what a "hacker".
the term podshanking turns out to sound more interesting than the practice. podzilla definitely makes it possible to use this "hack" with better results but those with 4th generation ipods don't have that option-- yet.
what if we got the ipods running linux and direct connected the ipod trough firwire port
with the ability to do networking over firewire then with a simple linux file transfer application. Is this even possible ? we might never know b/c if the ipod linux guys start poping out appz to do this kind of stuff they might get in trouble with apple. And what says it does'nt exist yet ? might just not be publically available
Also, if your friend doesn't have podzilla you're kinda stuck.
Or buy an iRiver or other player with line-in ;)
Circumventing DRM is illegal. You might as well load up e-donky.
hey, this is an mobile solution.
If you are @home u will get the Mac/PC...
But what if you are at an festival, trip, or whatever..
if i was at a festival or trip or whatever... i'd tell them where to find the album they want because :
A) the recording ipod has to have Podzilla installed to make it remotely work right with something vaguely approaching appropriate quality and even then you're doing a digital-> decompress-> analog-> recompress-> digital cycle. stellar.
B) if the recording ipod does NOT have podzilla... then they will need to have the stupid voice recorder accessory... which means 8KHz sampling. *8KHz* sampling!!! just to repeat myself... 8KHz is approaching walkie-talkie quality.
C) the final recording will have to be manually split into tracks in iTunes... more wasted time.
D) a giant long recording when played from an ipod means it can not buffer the entire song into RAM. thus it ever constantly spins the drive. songs over (i think) 32MB cause this to happen. meaning listening to large tracks while frolicking about at your festival increases potential hard drive damage vs. having the individual 3-4MB files per track. (yeah... i know... that one is a stretch...)
E) it's an analog connection. (with a de/com/re cycle too!) the only way i can imagine this hack being more low-tech is if it involved playing one ipod on the stock stereo in an '84 Escort and then recording the songs using the built-in mic on the voice recorder module on an ipod sitting outside the car on the sidewalk.
F) if you are at a festival / trip / whatever... don't you have better things to do than waste several hours copying an album to your friend in a really poor quality way?
G) wastes ipod battery life so that 2 ipods can play songs to each other and "save" some guy $9. okay.
H) doesn't "save" money or time or anything really. unless you work for sweatshop wages almost everyone would loose money doing this for a $9 album. time IS money.
so yeah. freaking awesome "hack". i got to blog up my "hack" for copying DVD content for friends. sure it's a "real time" solution and involves a tripod and video-capable digital camera... and one of the connection mediums is, in fact, air... but boy oh boy! it's worth it! it's great! especially when i don't want to 'explain' how money is exchanged for goods/services at a store and stuff like that. such a pain sometimes.
For music that comes from iTunes there is an audio watermark that identifies the store user ID of the person that purchased the track. most copying methods includining stripping the DRM or recording the song as it plays out of a speaker don't damage the watermark enough to make it irrecoverable. As of yet it does not appear that apple does anything with this information. but it is in there.
For more detail do a search in google for "audio watermark" or "psychoacoustic encoding."
in theory, apple could use iTunes to automatically delete iTunes purchased music that one *borrowed* from another iTunes user. Some one that has some association with hymn-project.org had mentioned the presence of watermarks in an interview.
It is believed apples watermarks come from http://www.verance.com/
General info on Audio watermarking:
http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~aupward/w/watermarking.htm
http://www.disctronics.co.uk/technology/dvdaudio/dvdaud_copyprot.htm
Circumventing DRM is illegal in *some* countries, but it's not at all like using eDonkey - it's a different kind of illegal. Plus *gasp* some people keep non-DRMed music on their ipod and some people keep non-copyrighted works (or works licensed under Creative Commons etc.) on their ipod.
Anyway, this is a crappy hack in practical terms (but it's still kinda cool IMO).
I didn't know about the audio watermarks in tracks from iTunes - one more reason for me not to use iTMS.
That's so dumb.
Ahoy me hearties,
Tis a grreat day on the sea for our lot!
ArrrrrrrRRR!
Analog (and all that goes with it) to the rescue
again...
DRM -> D(oesn't) R(eally) M(atter)
I wonder if u would ever be able to hook up ur ipod to psp as a hard drive???
#9 (Joel),
The current digital restriction on downloads to multiple iPods is … nonexistent. Sure, the nature of the agreement may change at some point, but for now, you can legally put an iTMS-purchased song on every iPod in the world, audio watermark or no.
Of course, this does mean a trail persists even if you strip the DRM by burning/re-ripping. Something to consider, I suppose.
#15 (Big Ben)
Assuming that we are talking about iTunes tracks...
>The current digital restriction
> on downloads to multiple iPods
> is … nonexistent.
It may not be enforced, but in section 9 of the EULA for iTunes says that the products of iTunes (the tracks) can only be used on up to 5 apple authorized devices at a time.
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/legal/terms.html
Though I would not be surprised if apple enables enforcing of such products in the future. The technologies to assist in doing so are becoming more common place. HP, Dell, and IBM are already being produced with enforcing hardware. it just isn't being used [yet]. A lot of this falls under the "Trusted Computer Initiative" (and for any microsoft people out there, I am not talking specifically about Palladium ).
Awesome post 010111.
I especially dig your real-time video streaming solution.
#8 (010111)
>C) the final recording will
>have to be manually split into
>tracks in iTunes... more wasted time.
One of my friends asked me to transfer a record (as in vinyl analog audio media) to mp3's for her. I didn't feel like breaking the audio into tracks. But it was easy to write a routine that would look for the silence between tracks (while ignoring the constant noise that is common place in records) and breaking the file into tracks. Of course if there happens to be a period os silence in the song that will become a track break too. But overall it saves me time...
I'll believe the iTunes watermarking B.S. when someone shows me proof. Apple does NOT custom-encode every song it sells for the individual who buys it... that would require so much computing power it would kill *any* slim profit they make, and end up costing them a fortune.
The file gets some bits flipped at the header level to allow the DRM to work with a given account (that's what hymn strips out to clear the DRM), but that's different from watermarking the full length of a song in such a way that it could survive an analog capture and re-compression process.
Hey Joel (re: post #18 above)
Would you mind sharing a little more detail about how you write/run that track-finding routine you described? Thanks, man.
Hey Joel (re: post #18 above)
Would you mind sharing a little more detail about how you write/run that track-finding routine you described? Thanks, man.
What a flipping waste of time! Yes, go buy an iriver if you want to record like that, in fact using USB OTG you could directly transfer from one player to another, with no loss in quality at a speed somewhat faster than real time. Or you could just connect them both to a computer at the same time and send them via USB2.