Thread: Apple and its specific vision of DRM

If we were talking about Apple and DRM. The company is often criticized on one point: the lack of support for Blu-ray. Our colleagues Macbidouille also specify that the arrival of blue disks is not straight, managing DRM Blu-ray (AACS) posing problems. Specially, the addition of DRM requires varying the kernel, but above all to close the offending party sources, something that Apple wouldn’t accept .

Yet society is not the last to use DRM even if the execution is sometimes unusual. Take the online store, the iTunes Store. Purchased songs are not protected by DRM, but the old songs, buy before the change, still are, and vary is proposed at 0, 3 €. More fun, videos buy on the online store are - they - always protected. For the classic versions (in 480p), Apple has incorporated protection directly into their system: make a screenshot or try to play the video with a program other than iTunes or QuickTime brings an error message.

Case of HDCP
More exciting, and we see many "small" problems of Apple videos in high definition (from 720p) are protected by 2 types of DRM, FairPlay (Apple's DRM) protection, but also famous, HDCP. And Apple has this "protection" in its own way. Normally, an HDCP-protected file can be read as if the whole chain is HDCP: the reading program, the issuer and receiver. Oops, if the equipment is HDCP widespread in recent years in the PC, it is rare on the Mac: Apple monitors are not HDCP and computers are not the majority that since about October 2008. And then, Apple has "adapted" to the HDCP sauce. Quite simply trying to read a protected video on a VGA screen connected results in an error (normal). By cons, trying to read a protected video on a screen that is not HDCP or from a Mac that is not HDCP works perfectly ... Specifically, Apple safeguards, but only if it suits ...