sarahintampa

 I found the Hymn Project’s website back in June of 2005 and was really excited to find a site devoted to the decryption of iTunes songs. I am not a big fan of DRM, and I am glad that there are people out there working to provide people with tools to exercise their Fair Use rights to music they have legally purchased. However, you should be aware that Fair Use is still a gray area of the law right now and you may be violating copyright if you choose to use the software the Hymn Project provides. This article is posted for informational purposes only.

Here is some information (below) about the Hymn Project, as stated by their website.

The purpose of the Hymn Project is to “allow you to exercise your fair-use rights under copyright law. The various software provided on this web site allows you to free your iTunes Music Store purchases (protected AAC / .m4p) from their DRM restrictions with no loss of sound quality. These songs can then be played outside of the iTunes environment, even on operating systems not supported by iTunes and on hardware not supported by Apple.”

Why use Hymn Project software?

• To decrypt your iTunes protected AAC files so that they can be played on operating systems for which no official version of iTunes exists, such as Linux.
• To use non-Apple AAC-capable hardware to play your music.
• To eliminate the five computer limit imposed by iTunes.
• To make archival backups of your music.
• As the first step in converting your music from protected AAC to MP3, Ogg, or your other favorite audio file format, for use with your non-iPod portable audio player.
• To demonstrate your belief in the principles of fair-use under copyright law.

To Use the JHymn Software to remove DRM from Protected AAC (.m4p) files:
(this info is available on their forums, here)

1. iTunes and going into Edit->Preferences, and click the Playback tab. Uncheck all three boxes.
2. Quit iTunes.
3. Download the software from the download page.
4. Unzip the main QTFairUse6 package, which works with iTunes versions through 7.3.
5. Launch QTFairUse6.exe.
6. Select “Process all protected files in iTunes library” and check all the checkboxes.
7. Click Start Conversion & wait.
8. When it’s all done, close the QTFairUse6 window.
9. Check to see that your iTunes files have been decrypted: Go to the View menu in iTunes and choose View Options and then select the “Kind” checkbox. Then, click on the top of the Kind column to sort by it. You should no longer have any songs which say “Protected AAC”.

How to scrub unprotected AAC files (.m4a, either iTunes Plus or QTFairUse6-processed):

1. Get JHymn 0.9.2 from the download archive.
2. Close iTunes if it’s open.
3. Launch JHymn, and set the following options:

- Files and folders window: leave default (”~\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music Library.xml”)
- CHECK Process folders recursively
- File types to process: UNCHECK .m4p UNCHECK .m4b CHECK .m4a
- *Convert locked .m4p to: .m4a
- *UNCHECK Save to a different folder (Replace old files will be greyed out)
- *Convert locked .m4b to: .m4b
- UNCHECK Skip already converted or scrubbed files
- Convert all file types to “—”
- Back up: All Modified Files
- CHECK Delete original locked files
- Back up to: leave default (”~\My Documents\My Music\Backup”)
- UNCHECK Update iTunes Music Library with unlocked and converted files
- UNCHECK If encoder isn’t specified…
- UNCHECK Add custom signature atom if it isn’t greyed out

4. Now, choose Preferences from the Edit menu, and change the following:

- iTunes Library: leave default (”~\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music Library.xml”)
- iTunes Library database: leave default (”~\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl”)
- Custom signature atom: blank (empty)
- Custom signature text: blank (empty)
- Unwanted atoms: enter the following, with the curly braces, and returns after each one:
{apID}
{cprt}
{cnID}
{atID}
{plID}
{geID}
{sfID}
{akID}
{purd}
(note: some people also include {iods}, but I am not clear if it’s necessarily contains ID info, or if removing it has any consequences. Apparently, it’s different in home-ripped versus store-bought, but that’s all I know.)
*MP3 quality: standard
*MP3 audiobook quality: 40 kbps mono @ 24 kHz
*Optional HTTP proxy: blank (empty)
UNCHECK Use Naive Trust Manager
UNCHECK Reset “Don’t ask/warn me again” prompts
SELECT Don’t bug me - I’ll check for updates myself if i want to

5. Click OK.
6. Back at the main JHymn screen, click Convert and let JHymn begin converting.
7. When it’s done, quit JHymn.

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