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'AirPlay Recorder' lets you rip iTunes Radio songs on OS X, and other news for Feb. 18, 2014
Back in 2002, a man by the name of Jon Lech Johansen put out a program called DeCSS, which allowed users to rip encrypted DVDs for the first time. It caused a stir in the technology and film industries for obvious reasons. Now Johansen is at it again, working with Monique Farantzos at a company the two co-founded called doubleTwist. They've released software called AirPlay Recorder which lets you rip tracks directly from iTunes Radio. AirPlay Recorder has actually been available on Android since January, but now is available on the Mac for the first time. The app is free for time-limited recordings or $9.99 for unlimited recordings. The app doesn't download the audio files associated with iTunes Radio songs, but actually records music in real time in high-quality. In other words, a three minute song takes three minutes to record. Earlier this year co-founder Monique Farantzos spoke with out sister site Engadget about AirPlay Recorder's legality: "Recording has been around for decades, from audio cassettes (remember mix tapes?) to TuneIn radio's recording feature. Given that Apple built their iPod empire on letting millions of people rip CDs based on fair use, we don't see how they could object to this app." As AirPlay Record for Mac exists outside of the Mac App Store, it seems there is nothing Apple nor the music providers can do to stop the distribution of the app without a court order. In other news: Tim Cook has tweeted a picture from the opening of the first Apple Store in Brazil. Apple has seeded the seventh build of OS X Mavericks 10.9.2 to developers.
Latest Kaleidescape tentative judgement could mean the end of untethered disc servers
The thing about the American civil court system is you can almost never stop looking over your shoulder, even when you thought you won. Things get appealed and what was a favorable ruling can become your worst nightmare five years later. That's what the folks at Kaleidescape are facing if the latest tentative judgement in its case vs the DVD Copy Control Association, which licenses DVD's defunct copy protection, CSS. Last time around Kaleidescape was on the other side of the ruling with the Judge agreeing that there was no violation of any terms of service. This time around? Not so much. It would mean a shift in legal DVD servers, but we'd imagine Blu-ray takes up most of the market by now anyway. Currently Kaleidescape's Blu-ray products authenticate the disc is in the vault before playing, and its CEO has testified modifications could be made to the DVD products within a few months. So with Managed Copy being DOA and UltraViolet being anything but disappointing to anyone, days without keeping track of discs to watch the movies you own seems like a fairy tale -- legally anyways.
Sony copy protection taking heat again: now DVDs won't play
Reports continue to filter in about DVDs that refuse to play on standard players from Toshiba, LG, Pioneer, Sony, and others. The culprit is titles that utilize Sony's ARccOS copy protection scheme, such as Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," The Weinstein Company's "Lucky Number Slevin," and Sony's "Casino Royale," "The Holiday," and "Stranger Than Fiction." ARccOS artificially scrambles sectors on the disc in an attempt to keep users from ripping the disc to a drive. Many older (or less sophisticated) players simply skip these corrupted areas as unreadable and continue on. Computers -- and unfortunately, some newer players -- try to perform error correction on these areas and fail playback. When contacted, Sony seems to deny the problem, much like Microsoft and the 360 disc scratching, and simply passes the buck onto the player manufacturers to upgrade their firmware. Meanwhile, many users have simply downloaded programs to bypass the protection and make copies without the "defect." So, is this a rootkit-like class action lawsuit in the making? Is it just overblown hype over a few players that don't follow standards? Another example of copy protection that bites legitimate users and ignores the real problem? And do average consumers even care?
