iTunes Music Store DRM bypassed

Apple's iTunes terms of service do seem to disallow any unauthorised access, however.

"You will not access the service by any means other than through software that is provided by Apple for accessing the service," the iTunes terms of service says.

Annette Hurst, a San Francisco copyright attorney, said the software appeared to cross legal lines. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, bars software that "avoids" or "bypasses" anti-piracy mechanisms, she said.

"Those are pretty broad words," she said. "I would be very concerned about this if I were their lawyer.

A test of the PyMusique software showed that it did allow the purchase of songs from iTunes, and that the songs were saved in the unprotected AAC digital music format rather than in Apple's protected Fairplay format. Songs could not be downloaded without establishing an iTunes account and paying the ordinary price for the music.

Apple's DRM software already allows iTunes customers to burn the songs they buy to CDs, which can themselves be ripped into unprotected MP3 files.

Johansen said the work is specific to Apple's store, and would not be easily applied to other download stores such as those operated by Napster and Microsoft.

"I can't say whether it's possible without looking into it first," Johansen said in an email. "The iTunes Music Store sells files in a open format — AAC — which is what makes it attractive."

Johansen said that two other programmers, Travis Watkins and Brocious, had done much of the work on the Linux software, while he had developed the Windows version.

The Norwegian programmer has been a constant thorn in the side of the entertainment industry for more than half a decade, as the most public face among programmers testing the power of rights-management protections.

As a teenager in 1999, he worked with other still-anonymous programmers to create and release software called DeCSS, which allowed Linux-based computers to play DVDs, but that could also be used to copy the movies. That action led to years of legal battles in which Hollywood studios and their allies sued Web sites and software makers trying to keep the DeCSS code offline and off store shelves.

That legal strategy was successful; judges in the United States ruled that the code was illegal to distribute or sell. Nevertheless, DVD-ripping programs remain widely available online.

Johansen himself was prosecuted in Norway as a result of his work on DeCSS, but was ultimately acquitted.

The programmer has since turned his attention to Apple's iTunes store, studying the interior workings of the software and coming up with tools that can help strip the copy protection off purchased songs. The PyMusique release is related, but not directly dependent on his earlier work, Johansen said.