p2pnet.net News:- Apple was recently responsible for having PlayFair, a perfectly reasonable, perfectly harmless application dumped from Sourceforge.

But it soon reappeared, this time on Sarovar.org, billed as “India’s first portal to host projects under Free/Open source licenses”.

Now Apple has done it again - that’s to say, it’s borrowed from the music industry How to Alienate your Customers book by intimidating Sarovar.org into dropping PlayFair as well

Why all the fuss?

Bottom line, PlayFair decodes iTunes protected-AAC files to unencrypted AAC files with no quality loss.

Why would anyone want to use it?

“I buy all of my music,” says the author. “In fact, most of the music I buy I buy from the iTunes Music Store.

“However, I want to be able to play the music I buy wherever I want to play it without quality loss, since I PAID FOR that quality. I want musicians to make money. I want Apple to make money. I don’t condone sharing music through P2P networks with the masses, though I believe making a mix CD or playlist for a friend is okay. I also think the RIAA are a bunch of crooks, but that’s another story.”

Fair enough.

But not according to Apple which rushed to issue a Cease & Desist order to Sourceforge to shut the PlayFair web site down.

In the meanwhile, the Sarovar C&D letter reads in part:

It was recently brought to our clients’ attention that a program called “PlayFair” had been developed, which decoded our clients’ protected AAC files, converting them to unencrypted files allowing them to be played and distributed in an unrestricted manner. This is contrary to our clients’ terms and conditions governing availability of the service and is causing them enormous potential loss of revenue and reputation. Not only that, the PlayFair program is against the express provisions of our Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Copyright Act, 1957 and you are equally liable as accessories, being the means through which the offending program is available for download at the Sarovar site at the following URL:

http://sarovar.org/projects/playfair/.

This program was previously hosted on a website called “SourceForge”. When our clients addressed a cease and desist letter to SourceForge, the website removed the program immediately from its server, in recognition of the fact that PlayFair compromised the intellectual property rights of our clients. Following the removal of PlayFair from the SourceForge’s server, it has moved to Sarovar.org, which is run, owned and managed by you.

You will agree that no site hosting open source / free projects can support programs of this sort, which are in contravention of the law and undermine the intellectual property rights of the owners. It may be mentioned that you are completely aware of the background of the matter inasmuch as the fact that PlayFair has moved from SourceForge to your website has been clearly mentioned in the “latest news” column of your Sarovar.org homepage. It is, therefore, not understandable as to how you have knowingly allowed the illegal PlayFair program to be hosted on your website.

In the aforesaid circumstances, you are hereby called upon to:

1. immediately remove the program called “PlayFair”, all links and/or references thereto from all websites and servers under your control; and

2. undertake that you will not host the program “PlayFair” on your website or link to the location of the program “PlayFair” on your website, as well as you will not use or cause or allow others to use “PlayFair” through your website in future.

Since you have styled yourself after “SourceForge”, our clients expect that you will do likewise and remove the PlayFair program from your servers as well.

Sarovar says, “We are awaiting to hear from our attorneys.”

For now, you can download playfair-0.4.tar.gz here and, no doubt, from plenty of other places: have a look around.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 16th, 2004 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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