[LAU] Sony's .fl Codec

[Rob]

On Thursday 08 October 2009 05:10 am, David Baron wrote:
> She bought rather than stole these songs. This is the reward. Friends
> have pirated mp3's galore.

The music industry hasn't figured out yet that punishing your legitimate 
customers makes piracy okay in most reasonable people's minds (if it wasn't 
already).  Or rather, Sony hasn't figured it out yet, since Apple and 
Amazon have gotten over themselves and they're a lot more successful at 
selling music online than Sony has ever been.

> These files ARE mp3's. Such files would normally have a "magic number'
> identifying them. Since vi can edit anything as long as one does not
> change its length (I have used it to modify magic stuff in compile .ko's
> for example), maybe it be possible to use it to place appropriate magic
> into these files?

When they say "the file might be DRM-protected", they mean the file is 
encrypted and the keys to the encryption are in the phone.  Sony's phones 
and format are nowhere near popular enough for attacks on the encryption to 
be successful, so your best bet is to get a patch cable and record the 
phone's output into Audacity or something, and then export that as an mp3.

Rob