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EFF Blasts Apple For Fraudulent DMCA Takedown Of Wiki Page
Techdirt — ... folks who work out ways to reverse engineer Apple's system to make this work. Specifically, they need to understand a file called iTunesDB, which Apple tries to prevent others from writing to with a checksum hash. When Apple first introduced the hash it was reverse engineered within a couple days. Apple just recently changed the hash, meaning that it needs to be reverse engineered again. There's a public wiki where a bunch of folks were collaborating to do just that... but Apple sent a DMCA takedown notice to the site. ...

Apple Confuses Speech with a DMCA Violation
The Apple Core — ... music or other content to an iPod. The iTunesDB file has never been encrypted and is relatively well understood . In iPods released after September 2007 , however, Apple introduced a checksum hash to make it difficult for applications other than iTunes to write new data to the iTunesDB file, thereby hindering an iPod owner’s ability to use alternative software (like gtkpod , Winamp , or Songbird ) to manage the files on her iPod. Slashdot notes that since the project uses a wiki the old page versions from before ...

Apple is being accused of stifling free speech; again
The Apple Core — ... courtesy of MacBlogz: Slashdot explains: “Apple has sent a DMCA takedown notice to the IpodHash project, claiming it circumvents their FairPlay DRM scheme. Some background: Apple first added a hash to the iTunesDB file in 6th-gen iPods, but it was quickly reverse-engineered. They changed it with the release of iPhone 2.0 and a project was started to reverse the new hash, but wasn’t successful yet. My guess is Apple used the same algorithm as FairPlay for the new hash, so Apple could use the DMCA to prevent competing apps like Songbird and Banshee from talking to ...