Not iTunes? Get Lost!

By SRASC at 29 November, 2008, 10:44 am

Some people don’t like iTunes. Some other people decided to start discussing how to sync music to their libraries on the iPhone and iPod Touch without iTunes. Some more folks at Apple decided that iTunes must be the only option and shut down development discussion for syncing without iTunes.

Users over at Bluwiki were having discussions on a few pages about how to sync media onto the iPhone and iPod Touch from sources other than iTunes. According to the Apple lawyers these discussions violated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) which is in place to stop the writing of code and sharing of information that could potentially be used to bypass copyright protection (funny that Apple is getting rid of DRM at the same time).

Apple Inc. to Bluwiki wrote:

Mr. Odio:

We represent Apple Inc. (”Apple”). It has come to our attention that a
website you operate, www.bluwiki.com, is disseminating information
designed to circumvent Apple’s FairPlay digital rights management
system. This information is available at
http://bluwiki.com/go/Ipodhash.

FairPlay is considered anti-circumvention technology under the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA explicitly prohibits the
dissemination of information that can be used to circumvent such
technology.

Apple therefore requests that you immediately disable the thread at
http://bluwiki.com/go/Ipodhash. Please notify me by reply e-mail once
you have done so, and feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

/s/ Ian Ramage

Unfortunately for all of you interested in syncing media from places other than iTunes Bluwiki has complied to Apple’s demands and taken down the pages as requested by Apple. On the plus side it is possible that discussion may be able to resume in the future since the Electronic Frontier Foundation has agreed to represent Bluwiki on the matter.

This is also bad news for those of us that have been watching the progress of PwnPlayer eagerly. A possible future update to PwnPlayer would include the ability to sync music downloaded via dtunes or mewseek into your iTunes Music library on the iPhone. Undoubtedly if that feature was ever completed PwnPlayer would become a target in Apple’s legal sites for the same reasons mentioned above Sad