Apple DMCA sends iTunes DRM decryptor offshore

India bound

The PlayFair project, which removes fair-use restrictions from music purchased through Apple's online store, has become the latest victim of offshoring. Actually, that's not quite true: only the hosting provider has moved to India. Not surprisingly, Apple has used the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to ask SourceForge to remove the project. SourceForge declined to use the Safe Harbor provisions of the Act.

PlayFair uses Jon Johansen's iTunes circumvention to remove fair-use restrictions from iTunes Music Store files. Apple allows buyers to play the files on three authorized Windows or Macintosh computers and an unlimited number of iPods, and to burn up to ten CDs with the same playlist, which many Apple users have no problem with. However the circumvention allows you to play the files on a Linux machine, for example, or a smartphone or any other MP3 player that supports AAC playback. The new location for PlayFair is at Sarovar, a hosting company for software libre projects based in Trivandrum, India.

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