PlayFair revival project
p2pnet.net News:- Apple Computer’s efforts notwithstanding, the PlayFair project is far from dead and indeed, the people who originally got it out from under when Apple stomped the US host are still in there, working to keep it going.
“M.P Anand Babu, a well-known member of the Indian free software community who currently resides in the USA, has taken over as project maintainer of the PlayFair package,” says an update here.
“Anand Babu, the Indian free software community and a large number of concerned Indian citizens are working together to devise a strategy by which PlayFair can be made available to the world; they are also working on understanding how to counter the threat of corporates abusing the legal system to protect their own financial interests at the cost of freedom.”
Steve Jobs’ Apple invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) – originally conceived by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) – against PlayFair, compelling the original host, Sourceforge, to yank it.
“PlayFair’s author contacted Sarovar for hosting, and since India do not have a DMCA like law, Rajkumar S approved the project as it is legal in India,” says the update. “The project was available at Sarovar for about a week and had about 30,000 downloads.
“Last Friday (2004-04-16) Apple sent a Cease and Desist (C&D) letter to the sponsors, maintainers and ISP of Sarovar.org invoking the IT Act 2002 and Indian Copyright act, and instructed them to take down PlayFair within 24 hours. Since the letter was addressed to the ISP and sponsors, and as they had some limitations on fighting the case, Sarovar decided to take down PlayFair, even though they believed that it was legal.
“Some of the hackers who maintain Sarovar.org had pretty strong feelings about this case, but were helpless against the legal force from Apple.
“As we think about the implications of such a C&D letter from a corporation against a free software project, it becomes apparent that the issue at hand is not just related to PlayFair or Sarovar or River Valley. What is really happening is a corporation is using legal means to shut down a free software project in India for the first time and the small project is left defenseless even though they believe that they are right.
“This letter from Apple will have a profound impact on freedom for Indians and people all over the world. If we do not fight back, we will be on our way on a slippery slope. If we win it will be a momentous victory with impact all over the world.”
As the update emphasises, PlayFair doesn’t violate copyright laws anywhere. It merely allows iTunes customers who, let’s not forget, have already paid for their downloads, to convert their songs from Apple’s restrictive DRM format so the tunes can be enjoyed on other music playback devices.
It’s called fair use in any language. But Apple’s position seems to be that that PlayFair can be used to illegally copy and share music.
“However,” continues the update, “PlayFair is not a tool for illegal copying and sharing of music any more than CD writers, tape recorders and radios are. If PlayFair is in contravention of any law related to music, so are radios, CD writers and tape recorders and should be treated accordingly.
“Apple has stated that PlayFair contravenes the Indian Copyright Act. 1957 and the IT Act, 2002, but have not specified how these acts are violated. While these acts make the unauthorized copying of music illegal, they nowhere bar the creation of tools that could potentially be used to illegally copy music. Trying to stop dissemination of a tool that permits legal licensees of songs from iTunes to play them on non Apple-authorized hardware is purely a business loss prevention strategy from Apple and must be deplored.”
Steve Jobs is in the process of turning his computer company into a business based largely on using the Net to sell music in one context or another so buyers can play it back on Apple products.
His iPods are wildly successful. But who buys them and uses them?
That’s right.
Jobs should remember that crapping on your own doorstep is a very bad idea.
You can download playfair-0.4.tar.gz here and, no doubt, from plenty of other places. Or you can get playfair-0.5.0.tar.gz.torrent here and/or here.
UPDATE: Or you can check out Jon Lech Johansen’s latest creation.
April 25th, 2004 at 5:56 pm
http://nanocrew.net/blog/apple/huntingplayfair.html
“playfair is licensed under the GPL, but links to mp4v2 which is licensed under the MPL. The MPL is not GPL compatible. The developer of playfair could easily rectify this by changing the license of his code to MPL.”
April 26th, 2004 at 3:23 am
It reallty depends on what you think Apple is trying to do here. Jobs has revolutionized the music industry by getting the iTunes Music Store out there and allowing people to download music legally. Makes people who get it happy, makes the lawyers happy, makes the roced companies happy. How has he done this ? By implementing FairPlay. Sure, Jobs knows that it’ll be broken and music should be free. The guy is hardly on the side of the music companies who are trying to already jack up the prices to crush his store. But, nevertheless, he needs to at least pursue a FairPlay violator to keep the evil media suits at bay. While we all hate Digital Rights Management, c’mon don’t hate the player, hate the game… ya know ?
April 26th, 2004 at 1:07 pm
“Jobs has revolutionized the music industry by getting the iTunes Music Store out there and allowing people to download music legally”? Hardly. Jobs was (and record companies were) simply lucky that Aple had such a small market share that they dared let it play. At east a dozen years before Jobs’ grand idea, major music retailers (like Tower) were begging for permission to do just what Jobs did except better (with multi-format, multi-player support) but the record companies told them to take a hike. The record companies wanted to own the Internet, and knew they could not compete with experienced retailers who would aggregate music from the majors and independents alike and whose brands consumers already knew. By the time Jobs came along, the majors had already experienced failure so many times they were a little more willing to listen to reason, but Jobs got it only because they knew they could contain it to the Apple computer market if they did not like the results.
Aire Libre
April 26th, 2004 at 2:10 pm
Indian law specifically permits this kind of thing:
“(a)the doing of any act necessary to obtain information essential for operating inter-operability of an independently created computer programme with other programmes by a lawful possessor of a computer programme provided that such information is not otherwise readily available; ”
Moreover, it even deals with baseless threats such as Apple’s:
“Section 60. Remedy in the case of groundless threat of legal proceedings.- Where any person claiming to be the owner of copyright in any work, by circulars, advertisements or otherwise, threatens any other person with any legal proceedings or liability in respect of an alleged infringement of the copyright, any person aggrieved thereby may, notwithstanding anything contained in section 34 of the Specific Relief Act, 1963 (47 of 1963), institute a declaratory suit that the alleged infringement of any legal rights of the person making such threats and may in any such suit”
(a) obtain an injunction against the continuance of such threats; and
(b) recover such damages, if any, as he has sustained by reason of such threats.
So PlayFair may even be able to take action against Apple for this!
April 26th, 2004 at 6:33 pm
I recently saw the movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley”, about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. I find it intriguing that people who lie, steal, and cheat to get to top are the most indignant, when they perceive others to do the same.
April 26th, 2004 at 6:34 pm
I recently saw the movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley”, about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. I find it intriguing that people who lie, steal, and cheat to get to top are the most indignant, when they perceive others to do the same.
October 20th, 2004 at 11:07 am
whats i the best Business model for Music , given the realities of the market ?