I’ve been checking regularly for the past few hours, and Google Chrome is now available for download for Windows XP/Vista. As I said, it sounds interesting, looking forward to checking it out. (It is installing now.)

Let me say right upfront that I don’t support piracy. I believe that content creators do deserve to be paid for their work. So this post is not about freeing content for file trading. In fact, these methods will not remove the personally identifiable information from the files, so if you do put them on a file trading network they can be traced directly back to you. But I do believe in being able to use the content I’ve paid for freely without being trapped by DRM.

While there are DRM-free digital music purchase options, such as Amazon or Napster 2.0, even iTunes Plus when available, iTunes remains the dominant digital music outlet and most of the music, and nearly all of the video, available via iTunes is still ‘protected’ by Apple’s FairPlay DRM. iTunes is well designed, easy to use, and has a massive selection, which keeps it in the lead. And, of course, the tight integration with the iPod which utterly dominates the portable market. It has a lot going for it. But FairPlay locks the content into iTunes, the iPod/iPhone, and Apple TV - oh yeah, and a handful of Motorola phones which are the only 3rd party devices supported. If you want to load the music on most phones, stream it to your TiVo or any other network media client, access it on a Linux system, etc, you’re out of luck.

Well, unless you strip the DRM to free the content and get a generic AAC music file or or H.264 video file.

There are a few ways to strip the DRM. Perhaps the most obvious is the analog hole. Play the content and re-record it. Burn a CD and re-rip it. But these are lossy methods that take the digital file, decode it to analog, then re-sample the analog and re-encode it to digital. You will lose quality, there is no way around it. Plus it takes time and you often lose all the metadata from the track and have to manually re-enter it. This is not an optimal solution. Even with software applications such as Tunebite to automate the process it is still lossy and time consuming. And Tunebite isn’t cheap.

The developer community has developed various software applications to make stripping iTunes DRM easier. One of the best known was Hymn and then JHymn from the Hymn Project (Here Your Music aNywhere) which was able to decrypt iTunes music files directly. But Apple changed the system with iTunes 6 and JHymn stopped working. For a while you could just avoid upgrading iTunes, but eventually Apple starting forcing updates by blocking access to content from older versions.

So the community developed a new technique, intercepting the AAC data from Quicktime. During playback the files are decrypted and then passed to the decoder, and in the process the unencrypted data was exposed. This allowed QTFairUse6 and myFairTunes to free the content. This technique still required playing the music, but it was lossless. The AAC data was captured as-is, there was no digital-analog-digital loop. They could also ‘play’ the tracks at 6x speed, to process the files faster than ‘real time’. And the tools would transfer all of the metadata so the new DRM free files would have all the data the original files had. This worked well, but with iTunes 7.6 Apple patched this loophole. You can still use these if you haven’t yet updated iTunes, but it is inevitable that Apple will start pushing the need to upgrade as they always have in the past.

And so the arms race continues. And the community has delivered again, and this time with perhaps the best solution yet, Requiem. Requiem works on Windows or Mac and decrypts any purchased iTunes content - music or video. (It doesn’t work on video rentals.) It works in the current 7.7.1 iTunes release.

There is no need to ‘play’ the tracks, it quickly decrypts them in place. For every .m4p file you get a matching .m4a file, for every .m4v you get an .mp4. Quick and easy. So much so that it is the first such solution to attract the attention of Apple. They pretty much ignored the previous solutions, but when Requiem surfaced they started sending out Cease and Desist notices to sites that linked to it. So I won’t be linking to it, but it sure is easy to find if you Google on ‘Requiem 1.7.3′, the current version. It is generally available via BitTorrent despite Apple’s efforts.

The easiest way to use it is to run the Java JAR file and just point it at your iTunes directory. It’ll de-DRM any DRM’d iTunes content it finds. Then you’re left with two tasks:
1. Update iTunes to use the unprotected files
2. Move or delete the old protected files (.m4p and .m4v)

To do step one you’ll need to find your iTunes library files - mine are in C:\Documents and Settings\Mr MegaZone\My Documents\My Music\iTunes. (I’m obviously on Windows, Mac users feel free to chime in in the comments with instructions.) First make backup copies of iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Music Library.xml. Now replace iTunes Library.itl with an empty (0 byte) file. You can do that by deleting the existing file, then right click and say New -> Text Document, and rename the document. Then open iTunes Music Library.xml in your favorite text editor. Search and replace .m4p with .m4a and .m4v with .mp4. (If you didn’t unprotect all of the files in your library you’ll have to look for the specific entries to replace instead of doing all of them.) Now open iTunes. It will see the ‘corrupted’ iTunes Library.itl file and import the data from the XML file to repair it. There you go, iTunes will now use the de-DRM’d files.

For step two open Windows explorer and navigate to your iTunes music folder. Open Search, select All files and folders, more advanced options, then under Type of File and select MPEG-4 Audio File (Protected) and search. This will find all the .m4p files. You can then move the files to back them up, or delete them. (I suggest backing them up.) Do the same for MPEG-4 Video File, this should find the .m4v files. (The .mp4 files show as MPEG-4 Movie.)

And now your iTunes content is DRM free!

There is one other issue, while iTunes Plus music is DRM-free, the files don’t work in all AAC-capable players. This is because Apple has inserted an ‘atom’ within the file in such a way that it breaks some decoder’s parsers. The ‘pinf’ atom is set as a sibling instead of a child node. Fortunately there is another community tool, PutPinfInItsPlace, which will fix the files. All it does is correct the one byte ‘error’ Apple has deliberately placed in the file. Once fixed the files will switch from ‘Purchased AAC audio file’ to ‘AAC audio file’ in iTunes. It is Java-based and works on Windows or Mac. It isn’t as easy to use as Requiem in that you have to select the files to fix. You can select multiple files at once, but only in one directory at a time. So you can’t just point it at your iTunes library and fix it all at once. Still, it isn’t hard and you only need to do it once. Since it is simply fixing he atom tree structure in the file there isn’t any change to the content.

Between these two tools you can have an iTunes library that consists entirely of DRM-free .m4a and .mp4 files that work on any device that handles the formats. At least until the next time Apple finds a way t prevent the tools from working until the next round of stripping tools. That is nearly inevitable.

DRM is just an inconvenience for legitimate users and doesn’t really stop piracy. And I think it discourages purchases. I have over 15,000 tracks in iTunes, and they’re all legal - ripped from CDs or purchased from iTunes. Over the past three years I’ve spent over $2,700 in iTunes - but only when I’ve been able to strip the DRM losslessly. During any period when DRM stripping has lagged I won’t purchase anything from iTunes (well, except iTunes Plus now). Make the content DRM free so people can use it on any device and they’re much more likely to purchase. In the meantime you can do the above to free your iTunes content. Have fun.

I just updated a few of the plug-ins I use on this site, so let me know if you experience any issues.

I also finally got around to switching to Firefox 3 yesterday. I’d kept using Firefox 2 because of some of the browser add-ons I prefer not yet being supported on FF3. But they flipped the switch to start prompting FF2 users to upgrade, and I decided enough of the add-ons were now available to make the jump.

• Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5
• BugMeNot 2.0
• ColorZilla 1.9
• FirefoxView 1.0
• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer 2.1.0.12
• FoxyTunes 3.0.4
• Google Gears 0.4.15.0
• Google Toolbar for Firefox 3.1.20080730W
• Html Validator 0.8.5.2
• IE View Lite 1.3.3
• Image Zoom 0.3.1
• InfoLister 0.10
• JavaScript Debugger 0.9.87.4
• Linkification 1.3.5
• Linky 2.7.1
• Live HTTP Headers 0.14
• MR Tech Link Wrapper 2.2.1
• Plain Text to Link 1.5.20080618
• Tab Mix Plus 0.3.7pre.080816
• Tweak Network 1.3
• View Cookies 1.7
• Web Developer 1.1.6

Unfortunately it looks like two of my favorite Firefox extensions are gone for good - Tabbrowser Preferences and Google Browser Sync. Tabbrowser Preferences was last updated in 2006 and it looks like development is dead and it won’t be updated for FF3. I’m trying out Tab Mix Plus as a replacement, and it seems to do a decent job, but if anyone has a suggestion for a better add-on to replace Tabbrowser Preferences I’d love to hear it.

And I was upset to find that Google has discontinued Google Browser Sync. If you currently have it installed you can continue using it through 2008, but you can no longer download the add-on and it wasn’t updated for FF3. This is the biggest loss for me, I made constant use of this. I loved being able to close FF and re-open it later with my existing session even moving from one machine to another. And keeping everything in sync - passwords, bookmarks, etc. I was thrilled back when it came out because it finally gave me something to match the old Roaming support in Netscape 4.7.

So far I haven’t found a replacement for it. I’m using Foxmarks for bookmark sync and backup, but it only does bookmarks. Tab Mix Plus has some session persistence, but only on the same machine. I checked out Mozilla Weave but it is in the very early stages, and right now they aren’t accepting any more users anyway. Google has turned over the code via Google Code so someone may resurrect it in a new form. But in the meantime I’d love to hear there is a good replacement out there.

This was an especially bad thing to find out because during the upgrade I lost my current bookmarks and they reverted to a set many months old. Back when FF3 was in beta I’d installed it alongside FF2 and it imported my bookmarks. I’d since removed the FF3 beta from my system. But apparently the imported bookmarks lingered, and when I upgraded from FF2 to FF3 yesterday instead of importing my FF2 bookmarks it just used the old FF3 set, yet it seems to have completely removed any trace of my FF2 bookmarks from my system. So I’ve lost any new bookmarks I’ve added since then, and, of course, just last week I’d finally gotten around to cleaning up my bookmarks to delete a bunch and file them, and now all the junk is back and messy. Sure there is a nice copy stored in Google Browser Sync, but now I can’t get to them. Even if I reinstalled FF2 the add-on download is gone. (If anyone knows where I can get the XPI to install it, that’d be great.)

In general FF3 is a nice upgrade, despite the troubles, though I’m really not seeing what is so awesome about the ‘awesome bar’ (as some call the URL/Location bar in FF3). Even in FF2 I disliked the way it’d suggest pages from the history and I always lock that down to just pages I’ve actually typed - as below. If there are any other add-ons or configuration tweaks you think I just have to check out, let me know. Share your Firefox tips for everyone to see.

Some of the settings I tweak in about:config in FF3 (definitely not a comprehensive list):
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Roxio Easy Media Creator 10 is being updated and it is now known simply as Roxio Creator 2009. This is Roxio’s premier media creation and authoring package for Windows. Creator 2009 has a new UI and supports HD content from AVCHD camcorders and transfers from HD TiVos for Blu-ray discs with a free HD/Blu-ray plug-in, a $29.99 value (a limited time offer). You can also easily share your content online via a free, secure Roxio web page or via YouTube. Roxio Creator is the only officially endorsed authoring tool for TiVoToGo on Windows.

Through September 30, 2008 you can buy Creator 2009 for $79.99 (after $20 Mail-in Rebate) and receive the High-Def/Blu-Ray Disc plug-in (a $29.99 value) free. So that’s a $129.98 for $79.99.

Roxio issued a press release to detail all of the changes and improvements in Creator 2009:

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We first heard about an OCAP SDK from Motorola last June, but haven’t heard much since then. In the meantime there have been a number of changes, not the least of which has been the rebranding of OCAP as tru2way, as well as a number of CE vendors signing the tru2way MOU with CableLabs. Tru2way really has a lot of traction now and we should see a number of tru2way products on the market by mid-2009.

Well, according to Media Experiences 2 Go Motorola has finally released the SDK to tru2way developers. ME2G has a Q&A with Motorola’s Frank Goddard, and there is a product fact sheet PDF available as well. Tools like this will be a major factor in building a successful tru2way ecosystem.

I received a tip from Harmonium’s creator, Charles Perry, including a press release (below). Harmonium looks like a fairly nice music player, and it is nice to see some new HME working being done these days, despite the dearth of support from TiVo. It supports HD display on the TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD with an HD UI on those systems, as well as displaying album art from ID3 tags in HD, and the screenshots look quite nice. It uses the information in the ID3 tags to automatically sort your collection. It also supports M3U playlists and, nicely, it supports the creation of playlists from within the player itself. It is free and open source, released under the GNU AGPL license, and it is cross platform, running on pretty much any platform with a Java VM. There are also builds designed to run as a service under Windows or Linux.

Unfortunately, I can’t use it. I have over 14,500 tracks in my digital music collection, and all but a handful are AAC (unprotected). Harmonium currently only plays MP3 files via TiVo, so it won’t handle my music. If Charles ever adds AAC support to Harmonium, I’d definitely give it a try. I’m hopeful, since it is only up to release 0.3.1 at this point, still early days. If you have an MP3 collection and a TiVo, you might want to check out Harmonium for your TiVo music streaming. If you do, leave a comment letting me, and other readers, know what you think.

The press release:
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