FairUse4WM - a WM/DRM removal program

[Insanenerd]

Today I received this email regarding the hosting of FairUse4WM at BG4G.net (http://www.BG4G.net). Comical to say the least...:

Demand for Immediate Take-Down: Notice of Infringing Activity

URL: http://www.bg4g.net/modules.php?name=File_Repository&op=getit&file_id=1
CASE #: 54768

15 September 2006

Dear Sir or Madam,

Microsoft has received information that the domain listed above, which appears to be on servers under your control, is offering unlicensed copies of, or is engaged in other unauthorized activities relating to copyrighted works published by Microsoft.

1. Identification of copyrighted works:

Copyrighted work(s):
Windows Media Player 10
Windows Media Player 11

Copyright owner:
Microsoft Corporation

2. Copyright infringing material or activity found at the following location(s): http://www.bg4g.net/modules.php?name=File_Repository&op=getit&file_id=1

The above location is offering 'Cracks' or 'Product Keys', intended to circumvent technical measures that control access to Microsoft's copyrighted works and that protect Microsoft's copyrights in those works.

3. Statement of authority:

The information in this notice is accurate, and I hereby certify under penalty of perjury that I am authorized to act on behalf of Microsoft, the owner of the copyright(s) in the work(s) identified above. I have a good faith belief that none of the materials or activities listed above have been authorized by Microsoft, its agents, or the law.

We hereby give notice of these activities to you and request that you take expeditious action to remove or disable access to the material described above, and thereby prevent the unauthorized distribution of these cracks or product keys via your company's network.

We appreciate your cooperation in this matter. Please advise us regarding what actions you take.

Yours sincerely,

James Young
Internet Investigator

on behalf of Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
United States of America

E-mail: Internet1@microsoft-antipiracy.com

[Doom9]

The above location is offering 'Cracks' or 'Product Keys', intended to circumvent technical measures that control access to Microsoft's copyrighted works and that protect Microsoft's copyrights in those works.is quite incorrect.. since when does Microsoft have copyrights on the music / movies protected by their DRM?

[Insanenerd]

:thanks: I love your angle ;)

[garyhasbigfeet]

is quite incorrect.. since when does Microsoft have copyrights on the music / movies protected by their DRM?

Please don't think I'm being snotty, because I'm not...
but don't they own the copyright on the DRM? I believe that's
their grounds and not the song/movie itself.

That's just my opinion though.

[Insanenerd]

Please don't think I'm being snotty, because I'm not...
but don't they own the copyright on the DRM? I believe that's
their grounds and not the song/movie itself.

That's just my opinion though.

They do own the copyright to the DRM, but this program does not contain the DRM, it removes the DRM from a file a person legally has a right to.

[Egh]

They do own the copyright to the DRM, but this program does not contain the DRM, it removes the DRM from a file a person legally has a right to.

Legally speaking they own copyright for *source code* for a particular DRM implementation, not to DRM as a method per se. Copyright does NOT cover idea, method etc. That's covered by a rather different legal tool called "patent".

Whenever DRM removal programs actually violate any drm-related patents, I cannot say since I dont' even know if any exist :)

[johner23]

it removes the DRM from a file a person legally has a right to

I agree: if I LEGALLY bought one file, music, dvd or whatever, I have the rights to listen/view and do whatever I want with my purchased copy! It's mine thing! Belongs to me!

And I wonder that some DRM laws are becoming very restrictives and non sense too, in many places around the world. :mad:

It seems they want to control/decide WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and HOW we should access our files/discs. In that restrictive behavior, FairUse4WM help us to have more freedom, above all. ;)

Thanks for that program again !!

devil (johner)

[Egh]

I agree: if I LEGALLY bought one file, music, dvd or whatever, I have the rights to listen/view and do whatever I want with my purchased copy! It's mine thing! Belongs to me!


legally speaking, you only have rights granted by copyright laws. Even if you own the dvd legally, you cannot e.g. rent it out or show people for money. You do have a right to make a backup copy for yourself, and thus FairUse4WM might help :)

P.S. if you are from Brazil, I don't think you should care about those "restrictive" copyright laws much anyway.

[zooper_ca]

Has anyone tried to use this on Yahoo Music subscription songs by chance?

[optimusprime]

FU4WM 1.2-fix works fine with Amazon Unbox - scroll back to find that version.

You need to delete or rename the blackbox-keys.txt file in your "My Documents" folder, and extract new keys.

Fantastic - never knew there was a blackbox-keys.txt file! I nuked t and now I am back to gleeful unDRMing. Thanks much!!;)

[Insanenerd]

Legally speaking they own copyright for *source code* for a particular DRM implementation, not to DRM as a method per se. Copyright does NOT cover idea, method etc. That's covered by a rather different legal tool called "patent".

Whenever DRM removal programs actually violate any drm-related patents, I cannot say since I dont' even know if any exist :)

Interesting... obviously the DRM would be patented by Microsoft... But is it a patent violation to un-DRM a file...Are there any cases on this before in the US?

[blutach]

Who wants to be the first :)

I know of other hosts to FU4WM who have received the same letter (hardly surprising).

Regards

[drmgeek06]

Fantastic - never knew there was a blackbox-keys.txt file! I nuked t and now I am back to gleeful unDRMing. Thanks much!!;)
That doesn't always help with my files :(

With v1.2fixed I was able to unDRM all files played before the installation.
Then I downloaded some new files, played them, deleted blackbox-keys.txt, recovered keys with FairUse but now I get the message "... has an unexpected content key value.".
OK - now I downloaded some more files and some of them work fine, but some others don't (same error message).
The old files still working, too...

All files are from one and the same service :/

Any ideas how to solve this problem?

"DrmClien.DLL" has version 10.0.0.3802
"Indivbox.key" has version 10.0.0.3930

Regards
DG06

[Doom9]

But is it a patent violation to un-DRM a fileI have yet to see any case in this particular area where a judge that understood technology would grant an injunction. The reason they can be successful with that angle is that courts don't have a clue about technology, yet still get to rule about what they don't understand. As an engineer, I find this quite insulting to everybody with technological knowledge.

Take Macrovision for example.. you don't need to know anything about the patents, and there are many professional level devices that have manual gain control, and thus can be used to strip Macrovision.. but manual gain control can hardly be construed as to violate Macrovision's patent (that you can get a patent on corrupting something is quite perverse in the first place).

[mayang]

All files are from one and the same service :/

Any ideas how to solve this problem?

"DrmClien.DLL" has version 10.0.0.3802
"Indivbox.key" has version 10.0.0.3930

Regards
DG06

FairUse4WM v1.1 will work fine for indivbox.key v10.0.0.3930
Yes, there are some files that you can't undrm.

Example:
1. Some files that need to acquire license for everytime you play. License information maybe temporarily saved then will be deleted when you close or stop playing the file.

2. Some files that have bad compression or damaged.

3. File partially downloaded and not finished like stream video.

[Egh]

Interesting... obviously the DRM would be patented by Microsoft... But is it a patent violation to un-DRM a file...Are there any cases on this before in the US?


First of all, as I said, I don't know what patents M$ claimed for DRM. Next, if you find them in US patent office database, you need to read them and understand what exactly parts of DRM technology are patent-protected. Only then it's possible to answer the question.

It might be, and quite likely, that unDRM method doesn't violate the patent(s). In any case, that should be decided by a legal institution, not by M$ itself. So until they got some court decision regarding this possible violation, it's all ok.

I just hope, though, that FairUse doesn't use any code from M$ :) That would be illegal, of course (think DivX3).

Another matter is the DMCA. Can FairUse be considered a "crack" program? If so, then hosting of it is illegal under DMCA, to my knowledge. Luckily many countries in the world can't care less about DMCA :) (think Russia :P).

[buggs1a]

zooper, works fine on yahoo music.

[buggs1a]

Hey guys, for files that load a license when you open it you can drag the file over fairuse while the file is in the play or cancel window. So you open the file and it pops up the licence aquired screen and has the play button or cancel button to click on. Just drag the file over fairuse at that time. Or you can play the file and while it's playing drag it over the fairuse icon. For some files this is great because for some files you buy they still do that.

[drmgeek06]

FairUse4WM v1.1 will work fine for indivbox.key v10.0.0.3930
Yes, there are some files that you can't undrm.

Example:
1. Some files that need to acquire license for everytime you play. License information maybe temporarily saved then will be deleted when you close or stop playing the file.

2. Some files that have bad compression or damaged.

3. File partially downloaded and not finished like stream video.

Hmm...
1. All files are licensed for 30 day use, so this shouldn't be the problem

2. I don't think that the files are damaged, because one complete CD works and another one completly doesn't work. And I never got any error messages...

3. Files should also be complete - if unDRMing works, it works for the whole CD. If it dosn't, it desn't for the whole CD...

I also don't think they'll change the kind of protection from file to file...

Regards
DG

[blutach]

Files which you have a temporary licence for (eg 30 days) come under the restrictions of rule 6. Please follow this carefully.

Regards

[Bend But Don't Break]

2. Panda's problem involves extra data appended at the end of some WMA files. Truncating these files to the length in the File Properties Object should fix the problem. If anyone can find what this data is used for, if anything, it'd help. Thanks for the find, Panda.

Is there a fix for this? How do I go about truncating the files to the length listed? 98 of the files I've rightfully paid for, and would like to play on my non-DRM portable mp3 player, give me this error...

[josh2]

I'm having trouble for some reason..

I went to de-drm a file, and it worked fine, but instead of giving me the full song like it should, it just gives a few short blips and then stops. The file is the same size, and shows up as the right length with all the tags.. the audio just isn't there.

Any idea what's causing this?

Happens with 1.2 and 1.2 fix. The source WMA files play fine.

edit: Never mind.. I got it to work. Deleted blackbox-keys.txt and tried again with 1.2 fix and everything works great. :)

[buggs1a]

Email does not work because people don't check their email daily or even weekly. Problems can happen that prevent people from getting email as well. So email is NOT a legit way of contacting anyone. Email should be completely dismissed. If someone receives a written letter that is offical then that is more legit. A phone call is also not legit enough.

[aquina]

I don't quite understand all the details on digital rights managment.

Once the DRM is stripped off a file will any future update of DRM software in windows media player be able to reject this file from playing or are the files safe forever?

Thanks for any input.

[josh2]

I don't quite understand all the details on digital rights managment.

Once the DRM is stripped off a file will any future update of DRM software in windows media player be able to reject this file from playing or are the files safe forever?

Thanks for any input.

I don't think there is any way that WMP could detect files that have been DRM-stripped, and even if they could, I doubt MS would be so low as to prevent them from being played.

Josh

[sillKotscha]

I don't think there is any way that WMP could detect files that have been DRM-stripped

even if undrm'ed... the file still have a specific header :-)

napster for example... load your (un-) drm'ed file into winamp and view file info - scroll to the end and oups what will you see :-P

that doesn't mean that a player could detect that drm was stripped but...

[WalterK]

And who cares. its all about fair use and being able to have a personal copy.
A copy to play on any mp3 player or PC.
Without drm to complicate thngs.

[driftr]

Okay I've gone through all the posts and still can't fix the "Unhandled situation -9000 while Creating Windows Media instance" error.

I've tried on two machines with FUWM 1.2 and 1.2 fix. Indivbox.key is 11.0.5497.6285

The starting issue I suppose is I can't get either to even work with a demo file off ezdrm.com. With 1.2 fix I can get the wmv to play but then I get the error, and with 1.2 it won't even play unless I have the wmv playing prior to opening with FU.

I've tried renaming the drm folder and I've deleted the blackbox-keys.txt before running FU. Any thoughts?

*edit* Make that FUWM 1.1 and 1.2 fix that i'm using

[drunknmunkie]

i just reinstalled windows xp...i'm using fairuse 1.2 fixed
my indiv01.key is 11.0.497.6285..
my issue is hen i try to recover my keys it starts up media player 11 and media player hangs it's say opening meida , but neverplayes anything...any clues?

[caldis]

Hi
Lets say I downloaded a DRM'ed file. I use fu4wm and clean up the mess.
As is am legally entitled to by the company who sold/borrowed me the media file I am allowed to play this file on 3 different computers. Borrowed because most companies reserve the right to revoke the possession of the file in case of whatever.
So I give this file to a friend who wants to see/listen to it, too.
This friend (against my will) then posts this file to some p2p-network or usenet or alike.
Are all means of identification of the legal file-owner removed from the file so that I as the original buyer can not be identified and sued for copyright infringement that i actually did not commit?
Thanks

[driftr]

Caldis, all header/traceable info aside, you gave the file to a friend so doesn't the copyright infringement technically start there?

[blutach]

Let's not get into what does and doesn't infringe copyright, as this area is about the laws of various lands, which we are probably not all that qualified to debate.

It's up to the individual to ensure they do not breach the copyright rules in their country.

Regards

[caldis]

Well this actually has got nothing to do with the copyright laws of a certain country (or at least this is not of concern in my question) since here only the license regulations of the company selling the file matter.

3. Can I copy this downloaded game to another machine and play it?

Yes, the license given to you for a digital download allows for the viewing and transfer of the download to three machines. [...]

Thus i deem my indicated actions to be legal.

EDIT:
Sorry for continueing this side thread. I just wanted to justify the legality of my proposed actions.

[Bend But Don't Break]

Can't wait for FairUse4WM 1.3 :)

More than 100 of my DRMed files were done so under WMP 9 software, apparently, so 1.2 and previous renditions don't work.

[smsmasters]

I'm trying to undrm some avi video files that require you to enter a login/password before you play it and then it acquires the license, I can't get it to undrm.

I have:

DrmClien.DLL 10.0.0.3802
Invidbox.key 11.0.5497.6285
Windows Media Player 10.00.00.4036

I get the error "No license available for specified file". However, it plays fine, I just can't undrm it. :(

Any help please?

[aquina]

Are all means of identification of the legal file-owner removed from the file so that I as the original buyer can not be identified and sued for copyright infringement that i actually did not commit?
Thanks

I am not positive but from what I read on a different thread there still seems to be residual personal information left.
So be careful if you loan someone your cleaned files.

[Yusaku]

I am not positive but from what I read on a different thread there still seems to be residual personal information left.
So be careful if you loan someone your cleaned files.

Not sure about that. From what I gather about the structure of WMA DRM, after all your custom licences etc. it comes down to 56-bit key which is used to decrypt actual packets. This is also the SID you enter to drm2wmv keyfiles. (not exactly technically correct, but enough for explanation). This key is only one for all copies of (single) media file the provider publishes. The reason is so that the downloads of actual media files do not need to be done using a safe (=computationally expensive) channel.

So if you strip DRM out of a file, it is easy to tell it comes from provider ABC (e.g. Napster or Real), but it is not possible to link it to leak source directly. But if you were e.g. the only one to ever download a song XYZ from ABC and it is found on p2p, it is quite easy to identify you ;) .

[usual_suspect]

I'm having the same problem as driftr. If I try and recover the key with 1.1, then the file will play all the way through in wmp however it does not recover the key, and if I then close wmp I get the -9000 error. If I try the same with the 1.2 fix, the file will not even open.


wmp: 11.0.5705.5043
indivbox: 11.0.5497.6285

Any ideas?
Cheers

[AudioFreeq]

There's a missing link here. How do I convert the cleaned wma files to mp3, to have real portability?
(WITHOUT quality degradation any worse than having encoded in Mp3 192kb in the first place)

Thanks for links to any (cheap) tools.

And does 1.2 still work? Where can I get 2.0?

[Digga]

How do I convert the cleaned wma files to mp3, to have real portability?
(WITHOUT quality degradation any worse than having encoded in Mp3 192kb in the first place)there will be quality degradation if you gonna convert (= transcode) to another lossy format like MP3 no matter what you do. if you will notice this quality drop is another thing and depends on the encoder used (try LAME 3.97 beta), your ears and of course the quality of the WMA input.

Thanks for links to any (cheap) tools.there are hundreds of apps that are capable to transcode audio files.
foobar2000 (http://www.foobar2000.org/) is one of them (free).

And does 1.2 still work? Where can I get 2.0?1.2 (fix) is the latest version posted here.

[josh2]

even if undrm'ed... the file still have a specific header :-)

napster for example... load your (un-) drm'ed file into winamp and view file info - scroll to the end and oups what will you see :-P

that doesn't mean that a player could detect that drm was stripped but...

Thats true, but should be all easily taken care of using a tag editor.. as that's all it is.

[garyhasbigfeet]

There's a missing link here. How do I convert the cleaned wma files to mp3, to have real portability?
(WITHOUT quality degradation any worse than having encoded in Mp3 192kb in the first place)

Thanks for links to any (cheap) tools.

And does 1.2 still work? Where can I get 2.0?

Soundforge is great at this too and it's free-ish. Plus it's hard to be more noob friendly than this app.

[aquina]

Does anyone know how to remove the [noDRM] at the beginning of the file name? I have downloaded and converted CD's that I have in my CD collection as it is easier than burning them one by one but I would like to clean the file names now.

In windows media player there is an option: Rename music files using rip music settings

Would that work?

[protectyoursources]

Does anyone know how to remove the [noDRM] at the beginning of the file name? I have downloaded and converted CD's that I have in my CD collection as it is easier than burning them one by one but I would like to clean the file names now.

In windows media player there is an option: Rename music files using rip music settings

Would that work?

Google :search:

[garyhasbigfeet]

Google :search:

http://www.usethesearchbutton.com/remove/drm/from/wmv

:eek:

[philippas]

My view is that unDRM is perfectly legal.
If you get files that have copyrights then getting the files is illegal not unDRM them.
There are many valid cases where you would want to unDRM files.

[markloveshawaii]

Does anyone know how to remove the [noDRM] at the beginning of the file name? I have downloaded and converted CD's that I have in my CD collection as it is easier than burning them one by one but I would like to clean the file names now.



You shouldnt have any [noDRM] on your converted cd files but for the others there are programs that will do batch renaming of your files the one I've used is called File renamer found at

http://www.sherrodcomputers.com/products_filerenamer.cfm


Just pull up the folder there in and click the delete tab and tell it to delete 15 characters in (from the begining) and click preview to see what it will look like then apply to finish it.

[aquina]

http://www.sherrodcomputers.com/products_filerenamer.cfm


Just pull up the folder there in and click the delete tab and tell it to delete 15 characters in (from the begining) and click preview to see what it will look like then apply to finish it.

Thanks, that is the solution I was looking for.

[jewbaca]

im using 1.2 fix
and when i go to to recover the key for a music file
wmp 11 (beta 2) just freezes at the opening media screen
it doesnt exit automatically and if i close it manually then fu4wm stops responding
if anyone can tell me how to fix this then thank you
o ya heres all the information that pops up when i go to recover keys

at the extract DRM v1 keys window it says
DrmClien.DLL v10.0.0.3802

at recovering unique identifiers screen it say
Indiv01.key v11.0.5497.6285

[Mauroo]

I hope I can post this here as its related. I recently changed my motherboard and CPU and discovered that the files that are still drm protected now refuse to play. I get the message

"Secure storage protection error. Restore your licenses from a previous backup and try again".

I have redownloaded the files in question all to no avail- I still get the above message.

Any help would be very helpful.