QTFairUse: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

QTFairUse is an open source program first released in November 2003 by Jon Johansen. The program dumps the raw output of a QuickTime AAC stream to a file, which could bypass the digital rights management software used to encrypt content of music from media such as those distributed by the iTunes Music Store, Apple Computer's on-line music store. Once installed on a computer running Windows, QTFairUse saves the intermediate decrypted result produced by QuickTime whenever QuickTime plays a protected AAC file. Although these resulting raw AAC files were unplayable in their final form by most media players at the time of release, they represent the first attempt at circumventing Apple's encryption. One of the few media players that is able to play raw AAC files is Foobar2000.