simple-mtpfs Re: Orphaning: mtpfs (FUSE filesystem for MTP devices like Android tablets)

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 09:04:25AM -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
> 
> On Oct 26, 2012, at 6:54 PM, Sérgio Basto <sergio at serjux.com> wrote:
> > 
> > I found today, that package simple-mtpfs, has enter has fedora package
> > on 2012-10-08. A good mtp support could be awesome, for androids, you
> > could transfer data, while use it with applications that need use the
> > (micro) SD card.
> 
> 
> MTP allows for use with USB, TCP/IP, Bluetooth, etc. And doesn't take complete control over the storage as a block level device, the granularity is a file, rather than blocks.
> 
> What are the DRM implications of MTP?

The spec for MTP is not too hard to follow:

http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/MTP_1.0.zip

MTP includes very minimal DRM, essentially just a way to flag files as
having "DRM protection" or not -- see "DRM status" in the above
document.  This doesn't mean that MTP "has" DRM.  All it means is that
the file is encrypted in some way that makes it hard to play on
another device (like Apple's .m4p files).  In other words, it's just
an extra bit of metadata about the file.

This however:

> Apparently this is a key part of MTP.
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff632508(prot.20).aspx

is an MS extension to MTP.  No idea if anyone apart from Microsoft
implement this nonsense.  It doesn't appear to have been inflicted on
any Android devices I have, and since MS have about 0.001% of the
worldwide phone/MP3 player market you probably won't see this in the
wild very much.

Rich.

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