iTunes Music Store DRM Summary

[MacRumors]

This is a brief summary of Apple's Digital Rights Management System based on available information. Please send in (http://www.macrumors.com/submit.php3) corrections or further observations/experiences.

For the purposes of this article: DRM = Digital Rights Management. Protected AAC = AAC purchased from Apple's Music Store.

Apple introduced their new iTunes Music Store which features AAC formated files available for download. The new files feature a form of "Digital Rights Management"... aka Copy Protection. First word of Apple's work on this technology with respect to MPEG4 (AAC) was in a PCPro.co.uk article (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/03/20030308190600.shtml) in February of this year. At that time, DRM incorporation into the MPEG4 standard was set to be accomplished by June of this year.

How it Works

Surprisingly few details about the implementation of the AAC DRM have been revealed. The following represents a list of restrictions and capabilities for consumers as gathered at this time:

- Protected AAC files have the extension: .m4p -- ripped AAC files are .m4a

- Unlimited Burning of Protected AACs into regular CD format.

- Only the iPod and Apple's iTunes and seemingly Quicktime-based apps currently allow playing of these Protected AAC's.

- Up to three computers can be authorized to play Puchased AAC's.

- Playlists containing any Protected AAC's can only be burned 10 times. You must change the list manually before you can burn again. Tech Note (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93016)

- Burning a Protected AAC to a CD strips all encoding and DRM. That CD can then be used as any CD song is used. The quality of the song on the CD is identical to the AAC version. However, then ripping the song into MP3 or AAC will result in loss of some quality. While ripping a song into any lossy compression format will result in loss of quality -- recompressing these previously compressed songs may exaggerate the quality loss. Your results will vary depending on the exact piece of audio.

- Transcoding from Protected AAC to MP3/AIFF from iTunes is prohibited by iTunes.

- If you're listening to a shared library or playlist, iTunes skips any purchased music in the list (if the computer is not authorized to play the music). To listen to a purchased song in a shared library or playlist, you need to double-click the song. If your computer is not authorized to play songs purchased by the person who is sharing the song, you'll need to enter that person's Apple Account ID and password to hear the song. Tech Note (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93025)

- According to Apple: iTunes will only play AAC files that are created by iTunes or downloaded from the Music Store. "Other AAC files that you find on the Internet or elsewhere will not play in iTunes." However, Anecdotal evidence does not support this. Users have reported being able to play AAC files encoded outside of iTunes. (Tech Note (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93025))

- AACs you rip from CD from iTunes have no restrictions.

- Authorization/Deauthorization appears to be based on a central server model... as Apple claims that \"Initializing the drive will not deauthorize the computer. If you will be initializing the drive, deauthorize the computer first, then initialize the drive [ Tech Note (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93014) ]

Other Tips

- If your music store download gets interrupted, iTunes should restart when you reconnect. Tech Note (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93015)
- Easily Adding Art to iTunes: MacOSXHints (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030429003250559)
- Sharing Music over IP: MacObserver (http://www.macobserver.com/article/2003/04/28.14.shtml)

[Freg3000]

This is a good run down of all the iTunes Music Store info. Much easier to get the story straight this way instead of reading 10 threads.

[dethl]

I'm gonna take a pretty good guess and say that someone is going to come out with a way around this DRM stuff. Though, once its gone, its not really that easy to get these files onto kazaa...since there is no mac client (and probably never will be)

[Computer_Phreak]

I think this is a good way to go...
Easy for the average consumer, yet protects songs from piracy (somewhat).

[porovaara]

Uh, wtf? Won't place AAC files from other sources?

So you can't rip your own music WITH quicktime into AAC and play it?

[scem0]

Originally posted by Computer_Phreak
I think this is a good way to go...
Easy for the average consumer, yet protects songs from piracy (somewhat).

I agree. But I bet there will be a way around it within the next
2 weeks or so. :( ;)

[grahams]

I take it these DRM "features" also apply to AAC files I rip from my own CDs?

Like many, I'm currently in the process of re-ripping all my CDs so I can take avantage of AAC rather than MP3. However, I notice that no menu option exists to export my new AAC's to MP3 format, so DRM must also apply in this scenario.

That's gonna be a real pain if you want to transfer your tracks to a Windows machine or indeed anything that ain't a Mac or iPod. So my advice is that when making the choice between ripping in AAC or MP3, users will have to balance up the small gains to be had from AAC versus the portability of MP3.

[j763]

If you buy stuff from Apple, just burn it, then rerip in AAC. You get virtually 0 quality loss.

[arn]

Originally posted by grahams
I take it these DRM "features" also apply to AAC files I rip from my own CDs?

Like many, I'm currently in the process of re-ripping all my CDs so I can take avantage of AAC rather than MP3. However, I notice that no menu option exists to export my new AAC's to MP3 format, so DRM must also apply in this scenario.

DRM does not apply to AAC files you rip from your own CDs.

arn

[Xero]

nice news thread, answered some of my questions, thanks arn.

i think its unfortunate that you cant play these songs on a PC, but i also think its unfortunate that people want to potentially hurt this great new service by "cracking" the DRM system.:eek:

[Sun Baked]

Originally posted by j763
If you buy stuff from Apple, just burn it, then rerip in AAC. You get virtually 0 quality loss. Sounds a lot like an old analog photo copy machines, the first couple generations may be OK -- but there is a point that the copy starts to suck.

Since it is a lossy format, there is a point the quality loss will become evident, with repeated recompressing.

[grahams]

Originally posted by arn
DRM does not apply to AAC files you rip from your own CDs.

arn

Are you absolutely sure about that? I note that when ripping from my own CDs .m4a files are created on my hard drive, which I think may be the DRM variant of .mp4 files.

Also interesting to note that these .m4a files cannot be previewed (ie. played) in the Finder, whereas MP3s can. This suggests DRM is being used as playback is restricted to the iTunes application.

Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

[arn]

Originally posted by Sun Baked
Sounds a lot like an old analog photo copy machines, the first couple generations may be OK -- but there is a point that the copy starts to suck.

Since it is a lossy format, there is a point the quality loss will become evident, with repeated recompressing.

Why would you need to recompress it? That ripped AAC is DRM-free.

arn

[coyote]

Originally posted by Sun Baked
Sounds a lot like an old analog photo copy machines, the first couple generations may be OK -- but there is a point that the copy starts to suck.

Since it is a lossy format, there is a point the quality loss will become evident, with repeated recompressing.

Of course, you don't need repeated compressions, since the compression from a burnt CD isn't DRMed.

[arn]

Originally posted by grahams
Are you absolutely sure about that? I note that when ripping from my own CDs .m4a files are created on my hard drive, which I think may be the DRM variant of .mp4 files.

Also interesting to note that these .m4a files cannot be previewed (ie. played) in the Finder, whereas MP3s can. This suggests DRM is being used as playback is restricted to the iTunes application.

Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

I'm sure. And my .m4a files can preview in Finder.

arn

[jethroted]

Thank you for this thread.

[bentmywookie]

Originally posted by porovaara
Uh, wtf? Won't place AAC files from other sources?




Seriously! I think that's a little too much control on Apple's part. Hopefully this will get changed soon.

[mjtomlin]

"Only the iPod and Apple's iTunes currently allow playing of these Protected AAC's."

Actually the QuickTime Player, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD can play them also. And i suspect any application that utilizes the QuickTime layer.

Another thing to add...

- You can only use iTunes 4 to authorize and deauthorize your system.

mikey T.

[ParaNox]

- iTunes will only play AAC files that are created by iTunes or downloaded from the Music Store. "Other AAC files that you find on the Internet or elsewhere will not play in iTunes."
I Ripped An Album before iTune4 and QT 6.2 then added It to iTune3 and edited Tags It was played perfectly because QT 6 provide the Decoder engine so I do not agree with this affirmation untill you provide an example of application wich can encode .m4a without being able to produce iTune3/4 playable and compliant AAC file...

[arn]

Originally posted by ParaNox
I Ripped An Album before iTune4 and QT 6.2 then added It to iTune3 and edited Tags It was played perfectly because QT 6 provide the Decoder engine so I do not agree with this affirmation untill you provide an example of application wich can encode .m4a without being able to produce iTune3/4 playable and compliant AAC file...

Questions:

1) What did you use to rip the AAC first.

2) Are you able to play it in iTunes 4?

arn

[SubGothius]

I note that when ripping from my own CDs .m4a files are created on my hard drive, which I think may be the DRM variant of .mp4 files.

.mp4 files are full (audio and/or video) MPEG-4 movies, just like .mpg files are full MPEG-1 movies. You can split .mpg movie tracks into separate .m1a (MPEG-1 audio) and .m1v (MPEG-1 video) files; and you can break .mp4 movie tracks down into .m4a (MPEG-4 audio) and .m4v (MPEG-4 video) components. AAC (MPEG-4 audio) files should typically have the .m4a extension, not .aac nor .mp4 -- the latter may work, but that's designating it as a "movie" file (which would just happen to lack a video track in this case).

[suneun]

Does the computer have to be connected to the internet to have iTunes 4 authorize the song? If not (and it seems more likely that it has to), then how does it confirm the password? Maybe each song has a degenerate form of your password against which it checks a crunched form of your password? But that really doesn't sound very Secure.

Can more than one Apple ID be authorized by that computer?

Why (technically) can't these aac files be played on non-iTunes/apple-branded-programs?

And lastly (derail), can the newest iPod update work with iTunes 3?

Thanks. I'm waiting to download the iTunes/iPod update until after I understand all the MusicStore stuff.

[kallisti]

Thanks for the summary. Very useful. Answered many of my questions.

[IJ Reilly]

" Unlimited CD Burning of Protected AACs"

Does this mean conventional audio CDs are the result, or AAC CDs? That is, can they be played in an ordinary CD player, like in a car?

[DakotaGuy]

Originally posted by suneun
Thanks. I'm waiting to download the iTunes/iPod update until after I understand all the MusicStore stuff.

Why? You can use iTunes 4 without even messing with the Music Store stuff. It works just like iTunes 3 did and even better.

[arn]

Originally posted by suneun
Does the computer have to be connected to the internet to have iTunes 4 authorize the song? If not (and it seems more likely that it has to), then how does it confirm the password? Maybe each song has a degenerate form of your password against which it checks a crunched form of your password? But that really doesn't sound very Secure.


My thoughts:

[probably wrong... after further consideration, my system wouldn't work :) ]

Here's a possible way. your username/password and "computer id" is encoded into an AAC file. It can hold 3 computer id's. When iTunes authorizes a song, it incorporates your computer it and the above into it in an encoded form. This is relatively secure. Unix passwords worked like this for years.

This can be confirmedif the AAC files change when you authorize or deauthorize a song. The advantage of keeping the computer id into the AAC file is that you don't need to be connected to the internet to authorize or deauthorize.

I don't know if that is the case

If you have to be connected to the internet, then Apple has to authorize you online... not sure if this is the case. The above is just one scenario.


Why (technically) can't these aac files be played on non-iTunes/apple-branded-programs?


DRM is only secure as the software that plays it. Remember, the iPod doesn't care that your music is "Purchased". So if it is encoded, only "trusted" devices can decode them - much like DVD's CSS.

In order to create software/hardware to play AAC files, you need to buy a license from the MPEG4 organization. I presume, part of the official spec is strictly abiding by the DRM.

These are just my brainstorming on the topic... not any known info.

arn

[arn]

Originally posted by IJ Reilly
" Unlimited CD Burning of Protected AACs"

Does this mean conventional audio CDs are the result, or AAC CDs? That is, can they be played in an ordinary CD player, like in a car?

yes

[cbond]

One thing that has me a bit scared for Apple's future is whether or not Apple's "iMusic" service encodes on the music file you have paid for your name, street address, how you paid for it and so on.

I can just imagine that someone is paying for all the titles and then just serving them up on a peer-to-peer networking service. And then, the record execs would be against Apple once again... :(

But, if someone's name is all over said file, then it would be insane to get upset at Apple. If someone offers up that file they paid 99 cents for, the record execs should be pissed at that user, as they track him or her down.

After all, that is what this "iMusic" service is supposed to eliminate. The unauthorized practice of sharing such files. Maybe even finding a legal way to take those down that did stuff like ripping mp3 files from a cd and posting it online years ago...

Heck, I must admit, doing business like this, though, is brilliant. All I can say is "Go Apple!" And I also wonder what Apple's direct competitors (Dell, Microsoft) are thinking... :D

[Wonder Boy]

I have NO problems with any of this!

[suneun]

Why? You can use iTunes 4 without even messing with the Music Store stuff. It works just like iTunes 3 did and even better.

Well I had a variety of questions. Whether or not encoding from audio to mp3 was still available, whether or not encoding to aac would incorporate drm. Whether or not it would futz with current preferences, tags, or anything to do with mp3's i currently have. Most of my questions have been answered (except the ones I posted in the previous post).

But mainly, it might be buggy. It's quite an upgrade with a huge number of additions. The only new thing that I'd use in the immediate future is the preview-songs. But I know that the songs I want to preview are unlikely to be there (currently I want to preview songs by Distain and Wolfsheim). So, I'm willing to wait until the thorough reviews come in.

Aside: I think the BEST and most AWESOME thing about the MusicStore will (cross fingers) be the addition of independent artists. These musicians will be able to get their music to reach the masses without selling their soul (except to Apple, which isn't nearly as bad.).

[evoluzione]

in all honesty, i can't think of any negative points to this new service/file format/etc etc. it builds on the already awesome iTunes, and is by far the best solution for everyone. downloading music is obviously here to stay, but, it's nowhere near as good as it could/should be, apple's new service makes it a darn sight better. limewire sucks, the quality and effort of searching and downloading is way too much for me to want to even think about bothering with it. the music store is so easy and painless, and damn good value (for the most part) too. my only worry is that the record companies don't start making just the full albums available, but keep a top selection of individual songs too.

arn has pre-emptively answered a lot of questions here (thanks very much) and every question i have thought of, has had the answer i was hoping for. for the average user, the copy protection (or DRM) is going to be pretty much invisible. it's designed to deter the illegal sharing on a large scale. "they" realise that friends lend their cd's to each other etc, and this is still possible with this new service (in a slightly different way mind). it also has the potential for selling music on a much more grandiose scale than just cds. with all the server sharing that has gone on with just this site today, people are going to find music that they really like, that they may never have noticed before. that is going to increase sales big time.

it's quite possibly the revolution we've been wondering about, first it was vinyl, then cassettes, then cds (which were never able to work with oil and honey and stuff all over them like was originally advertised :rolleyes: ) and now, downloadable music, done right.

i'm dead happy, my credit card may not be, but i am :D

[tYNS]

Okay, I have done a lot of comparing of sound quality of CD's I actually own with the ones on Apple Music. Namely songs like Stone Temple Pilots - Big Bang Baby...

I don't know.. the Apple Music AAC file STILL HAS that crappy high end compression sound on the guitars.. I for one have doubts with the quality of the Songs being compressed on Apple Music. This is not acceptable.

Doubts = I am not going to buy online music. I still am going to purchase music at the stores. I prefer the CD and cover art. Being in Canada I don't have access to the service yet to buy. But judging from the prices of the songs and cd's I can get half of the CD's on Apple Music at my local CD store for considerably cheaper.

Apple Music service is a good start, but they REALLY need to pay attention to the quality of the compressed music..

When I hear that word compressed, I still get that bad vision in my mind of degeneration of quality (which it is).

I really do not want to pay top dollar for the risk of sub standard quality.

[tYNS]

In addition..

The song in question (Stone Temple Pilots) Big Bang Baby. I have done futher tests. I ran my purchased CD through the AAC compressor in iTunes. It sounds EXCELLENT when I compress my CD to my iTunes library with AAC at 128Kb/s. Literally CD quality. I must admit indistiguishable

Just the version on Apple Music is terrible! it sounds like a degenerated version. listen to it.. you can here the typical high frequency guitar compression wavers. TERRIBLE.. my ear picks this up instantly and it annoys me.

Apple (or the record company) needs to REALLY monitor this.

[cbond]

Originally posted by tYNS
When I hear that word compressed, I still get that bad vision in my mind of degeneration of quality (which it is).

On the other hand... the proliferation of artists and the addiction of hearing something new or different for "free" is worth the weight of 99 pennies in gold. Or maybe it's just me.

I mean, come on! I'm serious, in a way! Anyone who says that their music library cannot be improved with one more song or cd is lying! I seriously think there is at least one single or cd that someone has (or had) an eye on sometime.

This is something that can broaden horizons! And even if the preview audio sounds off (the guitar chords or whatever) from compression, jot down the album and artist.

And then, look around on Google with the information. Create an image in your mind from the reviews. Would you like this music, if you had the CD?

Someday, we will point to this point in history and say "This is the day the music didn't die. It grew." Okay, it's progressive and maybe it will be a few days (or weeks) before we see a change. But sometime the recording execs say "Thank you" to Apple and where Apple says "Thank you" to all of the fanatical users out there... It may be subtle, but it will be there. :)

As for me, I would say, "No sweat. All in a day's work." ;)

[mania]

Originally posted by tYNS
In addition..

Just the version on Apple Music is terrible! it sounds like a degenerated version. listen to it.. you can here the typical high frequency guitar compression wavers. TERRIBLE.. my ear picks this up instantly and it annoys me.


Did you actually buy and download it or just play the streaming over the net? Of course it will sound worse if the latter. ;)

[ozubahn]

The idea of authorizing a song on three machines is interesting. Assuming Arn is right, and all the information is stored in the song file itself, then you should just be able to copy an ACC file that is authorized on one machine. You now have two independent files that don't know about each other, and can each be authorized on two additional machines, for five total authorized computers. And of course, you can copy it n times instead of once. This obvious workaround leads me to suspect that Apple must be authorizing each machine with a central server, to keep the total at three for any given original file. I hope I'm wrong. Does anyone know for sure?

[arn]

Originally posted by ozubahn
This obvious workaround leads me to suspect that Apple must be authorizing each machine with a central server, to keep the total at three for any given original file. I hope I'm wrong. Does anyone know for sure?

true... I'm probably wrong... I was just thinking of it as I wrote.

Apple does keep track on central server... so you may have to be connected to the net.

arn

[ozubahn]

Originally posted by arn

Apple does keep track on central server... so you may have to be connected to the net.


Ahh, too bad. I was hoping that I could just create a clean archive copy of any songs I buy (authorized on at most one machine) to fall back on in an emergency. I am worried about what happens if my mac dies or is stolen (while the files are authorized). Bam, just like that all my music has one strike against it. And if the critical key that identifies the machine is nothing more than a file on disk that iTunes generates, then even a disk crash could be enough. Of course, if that were the case, then the key file itself could be copied freely. This suggests that it involves a hash of hardware serial numbers and so forth, and all of a sudden we arrive at the WinXP activation madness... Hmm. Best wait and see on this one.

[Kamu-San]

Suddenly a realisation dawned. If this works with music, then the next thing we can expect is on-line film buying! Not DVD-quality & encoding, but DivX.

I'm so happy that I have broadband ;-) But even then it will take days to dl a DVD...

[Dave Marsh]

After thinking about this some more and trashing a few rewrites, couldn't it work something like this:

When you first purchase a song, the Apple Music server creates an encrypted authorization key and downloads it to your computer. This is the first part of the DRM process. This key includes both your Apple ID and something unique about the Mac, such as a serial number embedded in firmware somewhere in your Mac. Next, the song itself has some special AAC-DRM code that assures the song will ONLY play in iTunes or on the iPod.

Then, when you want to play the song, iTunes first checks the song for DRM encoding. If it finds it, it then searches for the Apple Music authorization key. If it finds one, it then decrypts the key and assures the unique Mac identifier (e.g., the Mac's serial number) found matches that of the Mac containing it. If it does, it plays the song. If not, it pops up a dialog box to ask the user to get an authorization code before proceeding.

This approach would work for streaming the AAC-DRM encoded song as well. Since the Apple central Music server keeps track of the number of authorized Macs for that user ID, and since you must deauthorize a Mac from within iTunes on the Mac you no longer want to use to play these songs, you're prevented from simply copying keys to additional Macs...they're deleted when the Mac is deauthorized. If something happens to your Mac, Apple's going to have to give its Customer Support people some authority to correct your account, or you'll lose one authorization...

The only other loose end I see here appears to involve multiple users. MacOS X is a multiple user system. So, if the user logged in starts up iTunes and purchases a song, the Apple Music server downloads the encrypted key for that user and buries it somewhere in that user's Library directory. When another logged in user does the same, another encrypted key gets buried in that user's Library directory. If the songs purchased include the local user's ID, you could potentially purchase a song twice and be able to stream the song twice concurrently to four other Macs (since the source Mac counts as one of three authorized). This might actually be possible if MacOS 10.3 Panther permits multiple concurrent remote logins to the source Mac.

My eyes are beginning to glaze over. It may just be that Apple's approach just creates ONE key per Mac to avoid this complication, so that any user logged in can play the songs. If that's the case, we need to assure family members don't purchase multiple copies of songs for that Mac. Perhaps the Apple Music server will have some controls to prevent this from happening...

I guess we'll have to wait to see how this works from users posting their experiences on these forums.

[dekator]

Does anybody know whether Toast can burn AAC files to a standard audio disk, as of now ?

Once AAC gains greater currency, it would be a shame if iTunes couldn't play it.

[quasan]

iTunes will only play AAC files that are created by iTunes or downloaded from the Music Store. "Other AAC files that you find on the Internet or elsewhere will not play in iTunes.

that's not right :D

I encoded several aac's on my pc, copied them to my ibook and itunes playes them with no probs.

[foniks2020]

Originally posted by mania
Did you actually buy and download it or just play the streaming over the net? Of course it will sound worse if the latter. ;)

Sounds to me like the guy CAN'T buy from the store and so must have listened to the PREVIEW.

Not to be rude but you can't judge a book by it's cover, netiher can you judge the song or it's compression quality by a 15 second-howeverlong preview. Those are probably encoded at an extremely low, relative, quality for streaming... apparently so you can verify that what you are buying is the song you heard on the radio earlier that day...

I think 128 AAC is hi-fi enough for 99% of use. If you need to eek out that extra 1%, ie: people are paying you for it... then you need a different solution.

128 AAC should be equivalent to 192 or higher MP3 which is the standard hi-fi for that format.

I've downloaded one album and a single and am quite happy with the service. Several songs timed out during download and I just went in a checked for 'purchased music' and they all resumed perfectly, no probs. I use wireless at home so some timeouts occur when I move around the house while downloading large amounts of data.

Haven't tried any burns yet but it sounds like I'll be able to play them in the car just fine.

I'm just looking forward to an expanded catalog... Jobs did us good. Thank you Steve.

This is in spite of a long standing, since 1999, personal opinion that genre catalog subscription services were the way to go.. I wrote a letter to RIAA long ago describing such a service, where you pay $10 per month for unlimited listening of a genre but no burning, etc. just listen where ever you are.

Apple has iPod so that would not work to sell hardware, understandable. Also it would have been hard to get a large catalog made available over multiple labels....

anyways it may not be the right timing but still it is a good model, gauranteed payments whether people listen or not while they get instant access to the latest music, streaming, from where ever they happen to be, as well as all the oldies they listen to randomly. It's like a cell phone subscription or cable modem... instant on gauranteed monthly payment.

rant finished... good times, Apple, good times.

[Perceptes]

This new service is a good attempt, but to be totally honest, I'm still going to continue using MP3 as I have. The fact that there are any limitations on music that you download makes this service not worth it to me. And even if AAC is better quality, I won't rip my own CD's to it until it becomes the common format between Macs and PC's. It's not going to take off if only iTunes and iPod can play them, even if both products exist for Windows.

[Kamu-San]

Perceptes, limitations do apply on MP3s. You're only allowed to rip your own CDs and use the resulting MP3s for yourself. You're *not* allowed to trade them with others.

Even if noone is watching you in a shop doesn't mean you're allowed to steal.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by tYNS
Just the version on Apple Music is terrible!

You must be comparing your AAC to the streaming preview that the Music Store provides. Some of the previews sound better than others. I'm not sure why. I don't know if some previews were encoded at a lower bit rate than others, or if the server adaptively throttles the previews in response to overall system load. You should try going back and listening to that same preview at different times of the day and seeing if it ever sounds different.

I've bought a handful of songs so far-- 7 or 8-- and they all sound uniformly excellent. I'm also a third of the way through re-ripping my 4000+ song library to AAC. I'm sold on the new format, big time.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by ozubahn
Assuming Arn is right, and all the information is stored in the song file itself, then you should just be able to copy an ACC file that is authorized on one machine.

No, it doesn't work like that. When you buy a song, that song is associated with your Apple ID. (If you're UNIX-savvy, go to the terminal and do a "strings" on an .m4p file. you'll find a lot of garbage, but in there you'll find your full name and your Apple ID.)

A computer is either authorized to play songs associated with a given Apple ID, or it's not. A computer can be authorized to play songs associated with more than one Apple ID. For example, my girlfriend has an iBook and I have a G4. We each have our own music libraries, but we often trade computers. Her laptop is authorized to play both her songs and mine, and my G4 is authorized to play both my songs and hers.

The long and short of it is this: the first time you try to play somebody else's music on your computer, you'll be asked for the password that goes along with that person's Apple ID. Once that password has been entered, you can play any song that that person has bought.

It's actually an incredibly slick system. Today I was at a friend's office and I wanted to show him how it worked. I used the "Connect to Shared Music" command to connect to my G4 at home over the Internet, at which point he could see and stream any song in my music library. I double-clicked on one of the songs in my "Purchased Music" playlist and up popped a dialog asking for my Apple ID password. I entered it, and the song played. When I was done, I just de-registered his computer.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by ozubahn
I was hoping that I could just create a clean archive copy of any songs I buy (authorized on at most one machine) to fall back on in an emergency.

A reasonable concern. The solution: burn your .m4p files to CD. Audio CD, I mean, not data CD. Then they can be re-ripped in the future.

I have a CD with a scratch on it. I can read all the tracks off of it just fine except for one. So I ripped 1-8 and 10-12, then went to the Music Store and bought #9. I had 1-8, 10-12 as .m4a files, and 9 as an .m4p file. I made a playlist and burned them to a blank CD. The result was an audio CD that was essentially a "fixed" copy of my scratched disc.

Just to see if I could, I then ripped the new "fixed" CD to AAC. It worked, and sounded fine. I couldn't tell the original .m4p from the new .m4a I made. It wasn't convenient, though, so in future I don't think I'll bother with the re-ripping. I'll just burn my .m4p files to audio CD and put that disc someplace safe, just like I would with any CD I buy.

God bless you, Apple. You've come up with a system for distributing digital music that works.

[arn]

Authorization/Deauthorization appears to be based on a central server model... as Apple claims that "Initializing the drive will not deauthorize the computer. If you will be initializing the drive, deauthorize the computer first, then initialize the drive.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by Perceptes
The fact that there are any limitations on music that you download makes this service not worth it to me. And even if AAC is better quality, I won't rip my own CD's to it until it becomes the common format between Macs and PC's. It's not going to take off if only iTunes and iPod can play them, even if both products exist for Windows.

One: speaking from 1-1/2 days' experience using the new service, I can say with a fair degree of confidence that the protection built into the system doesn't prevent you from doing anything that you're legally allowed to do. Well, there's one grey area. When you rip a CD into iTunes and share your library, anybody on your LAN can connect to your machine and listen to your music. (You can specify a password if you like.) But only computers that are authorized can play your .m4p files. That doesn't seem right to me. I would prefer that any computer be able to stream .m4p's, but only authorized computers be able to play them off of locally attached or network-mounted disks. But that's a nitpick. The workaround is trivial: burn the .m4p file to CD, then rip the CD to .m4a, and share and share alike.

(Note well that I'm talking about sharing in the Rendezvous sense here, where one machine streams another's music library over the network. Copying files from friends is a no-no.)

Other than that nitpick, I can say that the protection doesn't interfere in any way with legal and fair use of the songs you buy. You can burn .m4p files to audio CD and play them in your car. You can back them up to DVD. You can use them in your iMovies, which you can also burn to DVD with iDVD to make a video Christmas letter or whatever the kids are doing these days. You can do anything that a reasonable person would want to do, and in a case where you've got a legitimate reason to want to bypass the .m4p protection (although I can't think of one at the moment) you can turn an .m4p into an .m4a by sacrificing a negligible amount of quality.

So the protection is not a problem. Now let's look at the other side of the coin: the benefits. I won't go on at length about these, but suffice it to say that the iTunes Music Store is faster, more reliable, and easier to use than P2P or Usenet or FTP or any of the other ways of illegally obtaining music, and it's nearly as inexpensive. Anybody can handle a buck a song.

I'll give you a real-world example. I was sitting here at my desk today minding my own business when that song "Mais Que Nada" by Sergio Mendes popped into my head. (You've heard it, even though you may not recognize the name. It's a popular tune.) I toggled over to iTunes, clicked "Music Store," typed "Sergio Mendes" in the search box, scrolled down to find the song, clicked "Buy Song," typed my password, and clicked "Buy" one more time to confirm. About a minute later, the song was in my "Purchased Music" playlist waiting for me. It cost me a dollar and took about ninety seconds of my time.

If I'd wanted the whole album, it would have cost $10, and taken no more of my time, although I would have had to wait for the songs to download.

Two more clicks and a blank CD means I now have in my hands a permanent, unrestricted copy of what I bought. If Apple goes out of business tomorrow (Heaven forbid), that CD will be as good as it is right now.

That is how music should be distributed.

Finally (sorry for the lengthy post), AAC support is built in to WinAmp. Yes, it's a little bit inconvenient to have to go out and download a program to play .m4a files on a PC, but that was true in the early days of MP3's as well and people did it anyway. So you can move an .m4a from your Mac to a PC and play it without much trouble at all. And besides, we all know that iTunes for Windows is coming soon, so that won't be an issue much longer.

You really should jump on the bandwagon on this one. First, because it's really cool and it works well, and second because this business model will succeed or fail based on how many users adopt it and how enthusiastically.

[a9mike]

This DRM is slick - period.

Anyone who is complaining about it's implementation doesn't know what Apple went through to get it approved. I'm frankly surprized that the labels agreed. I feel bad calling it DRM. It's so easy to bypass it's laughable, just switch your iTunes encoder (BUILT-IN) to AIFF or WAV and convert the file (via Advanced menu) - DRM gone & no loss in quality - re-encode to MP3@192Kb or AIFF and you've lost practically/absolutely nothing in quality and can do ANYTHING you want to your files, even if you want to burn 1,000,000 copies of Enya and throw them from the rooftops while yelling "Freedom!!!" and lighting your hair on fire. I don't understand the complaints on how they "restrict" you?!?!?! You want a $.99 song that you can play anywhere (and yes I mean anywhere), fire up iTunes and get it in 30 sec. - You need better quality and zero DRM? - go buy a cd for $17. Simple really.

I worked as an encoding engineer for an unnamed music website back in the days of milk and honey (er... I mean the days of throwing money at anything with a .com). We had all of these startup companies trying to sell us some encryption method to apply to our MP3s. The basic rule is that no encryption is full proof - of course. I had a rep come in and demo his software and when he was done he asked me to "crack" it and get the file to play on a machine that wasn't authorized. So I grabbed me a 1/8" cable and a copy of SoundEdit and made a new AIFF file. From there I could do anything I wanted with it. He called me a cheater. I told him we wouldn't be purchasing their software. This is the cold hard truth that the labels understand now. You can't protect it, only make it a little more difficult.

Make it easier, faster, and with a better selection than the "free/stolen" option and people will buy it.

I guess my point here is that I believe they did it right... or at least are off to a really good start. We tried to do this 5 years ago and it didn't work. A lot of companies have tried it but didn't understand the whole process as much as I think Apple does now.

A few other items:
However, I notice that no menu option exists to export my new AAC's to MP3 format, so DRM must also apply in this scenario.
Actually no - goto your prefs under "import" and choose the encoder (such as MP3) you want iTunes to use. Then go back to your file and in the "advanced" menu choose to "covert selection". iTunes will make a copy in the new format - no burning required. This is not the cleanest way however, there will be some loss to the MP3 version. The best way is to re-rip all of your CDs to AAC, but if time is a bigger issue --> set up iTunes to do your whole library and walk away.

I ran my purchased CD through the AAC compressor in iTunes. It sounds EXCELLENT when I compress my CD to my iTunes library with AAC at 128Kb/s. Literally CD quality. I must admit indistiguishable. Just the version on Apple Music is terrible! it sounds like a degenerated version.
The 30 sec. sample does not represent the downloadable version - though it should confirm this somewhere in the Music Store yet doesn't. I was worried when I first heard the samples because yes, some do sound like crap... with lots of high end swashing in the hi-hat and guitar. These are lower bitrate streaming files though.

My biggest complaint... More songs! More selection!!! Sooner than later, please!!!! Excited... and getting my first iPod soon...

Back to my Kool Aid...

[Perceptes]

Quick question before I start the bulk of my post: How can Winamp play AAC's encoded with iTunes if Apple claims these files will only work with iTunes or the iPod? Are they referring to only the protected AAC's? I want to be able to rip on the Mac and play on the PC.

And now for my real post:

Good posts, Jeff. Let me say again that I do think this new service is great, it's a huge step forward and going in the right direction, as Apple once again leads the way into the future.

I was planning to start ripping my CD's to AAC instead of MP3, but I just did a test and was totally unimpressed. I encoded an AIFF of my music to AAC at 128 Kbps, and not only was it the exact same size as the 128 Kbps MP3 encoded from the same AIFF file, but I could detect no difference in quality listening to the two back to back. And yes, I'm sure that I encoded it as an AAC and not another MP3. Did I miss something? I'm not surprised that I can't tell the difference in quality, but why are the two files the same size?

Concerning the limitations of the protected AAC's, I don't want to get into a big debate on the morality of music sharing, but here is my justification for my position:

I have downloaded lots of music that I don't own. After listening to it, I have subsequently deleted what I didn't like and eventually bought a real copy of the ones I do. While this is not legal in the black and white sense of the law, I don't have a guilty conscience about doing this. As an artist myself, I in no way support stealing from artists, and as a person with decent morality, I don't believe in stealing from record companies either, as bloodthirsty as they might be.

I just don't like the fact that you are actually purchasing a copy of the music and yet are still limited in some way. If I'm paying for it, I want it. Not a limited version of it. With MP3, although it is not legal to share files you don't own, you have the moral choice to make that decision on your own. To illustrate my point, here are two somewhat philosophical quotes:

"Goodness comes from within. Goodness is chosen. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man."

"I don't like what he does. But I like the fact that I live in a country where I have [the choice to do it or not.]" (I forget the exact phrasing, it's been a while.)

Again, I am not saying any of this makes illegal sharing any less illegal, just saying that I feel comfortable with what I do and I don't think something you rightfully pay for should be limited.

I would love to jump on the bandwagon with both the music service and AAC. Just a little wary of it before I begin...

Feel free to flame me, and let me know if admitting or discussing this sort of behavior is against the rules of the boards or anything.

[a9mike]

How can Winamp play AAC's encoded with iTunes if Apple claims these files will only work with iTunes or the iPod? Are they referring to only the protected AAC's? I want to be able to rip on the Mac and play on the PC.

Yes, the protected ones only. You can encode from CD (or MP3 or any other supported file on your HD) to AAC through iTunes and play it on any player that supports AAC/MP4/MPa.

For a protected AAC, you would have to "strip" the file by converting to AIFF/WAV/burn a CD, then re-encode it to AAC. Easy, just time consuming and a loss of quality because of the re-encoding.

I encoded an AIFF of my music to AAC at 128 Kbps, and not only was it the exact same size as the 128 Kbps MP3 encoded from the same AIFF file, but I could detect no difference in quality listening to the two back to back. And yes, I'm sure that I encoded it as an AAC and not another MP3. Did I miss something?
[Edited]Everytime the AAC should be (exactly the same size) and have better high end clarity without as much hiss and with less of a "swishy" (is that a word) sound. MP3 often compensates for a lack of high end clarity by applying more frequency gain above 4k (high end). Also AAC has better bass response, the MP3 format is good at providing bass - but not bass response, ie. a tighter solid tone without the distorted rumble.

To hear the difference you need to listen through better speakers than the average computer. <generally>That's why MP3 was such a hit, not many people cared/care about the difference between a CD and an MP3 on their computer because you can't hear the difference (as much) on a pair of $8 speakers. Now people are hooking up better speaker systems and are starting to notice more.</generally>

Now the ogg people are after me... gotta go.

[GBRocksFan]

My understanding is that the sample rate dictates the size of the file. Ogg Vorbis, AAC and MP3 would all be the same size at the same bit rate.

The difference is that a 128kbs AAC is supposed to sound equivalent to (say) a 160kbps MP3. And there's the size difference.

Anyone confirm/deny that?

[Perceptes]

Ohhhhhhh... Thanks for the replies.

GBRocksFan: I seem to recall that now. That makes perfect sense. Better quality for the same size, or smaller size for the same quality. Same as Ogg Vorbis.

a9mike: GBRocksFan seems to have answered the question about the file size, unless there is something both he and I are missing. Also, I actually have Roland speakers that are intended for pro audio, although not great ones- I'm not using cheesy Best Buy type computer speakers. I also listened on my Sony studio headphones and couldn't tell the difference.

[a9mike]

My understanding is that the sample rate dictates the size of the file. Ogg Vorbis, AAC and MP3 would all be the same size at the same bit rate. The difference is that a 128kbs AAC is supposed to sound equivalent to (say) a 160kbps MP3. And there's the size difference. Anyone confirm/deny that?
My bad... you're right. What I ment is that for the same quality you have a smaller file. All my MP3s are @ 192kbps and my new files that I've encoded since yesterday are all smaller (because they are @ 128kbps AAC).

A 128kbps MP3 has a lot of the junk in it, and at 192kbps a lot of the artifacts are not very noticable. A 192kbps MP3 is very similar to the 128kbps AAC. So... 128/192=.66 = 66% of the size for similar if not better quality. Try it, i did. I took my Powerbook to my sound studio tonight & the AAC sounded a lot clearer, in the high end and bass response especially.

I have downloaded lots of music that I don't own. After listening to it, I have subsequently deleted what I didn't like and eventually bought a real copy of the ones I do. While this is not legal in the black and white sense of the law, I don't have a guilty conscience about doing this. As an artist myself, I in no way support stealing from artists, and as a person with decent morality, I don't believe in stealing from record companies either, as bloodthirsty as they might be.

I have downloaded my fair share as well. I too am a musician and I too have gone out and purchased the CDs I liked and thrown away 1,000s of MP3s I didn't - but I'm not going to lie and tell you I don't have a lot of singles that I would never buy the whole album for. Yes I feel remorse for stealing, believe it or not - BUT, and that's a big but... we are living in a single serving society (yea, I know I stole that quote too) and things are changing.

If the average person was on the street corner and saw a McDonalds, and a guy named Joe with a hot dog cart was right out in front of it giving away free Big Macs... He'd be really busy! People would go for the free Big Macs everytime. People would even wait in line longer for the free burgers. Why? Because they're free! Free wins!!! I know the guy stole the Big Macs and is reselling them... and I've given more than enough $$$ to McDonalds, they're a huge corporation... should I feel bad, yes. But I'd grab me one of those Big Macs and chow down.

What's going to change this? Morality? No, I don't think so. I think I'm a pretty moral guy and most people have a fair share of morality rolling around in their heads, but we still have illegal matieral on our hard drives. How does it change? It's simple and Apple's doing it... easier, faster and a better selection than the free stuff. You don't ban P2P, you can't. You don't pass laws that allow "internet officials" to raid IRC channels. This is the right way. It's the future and it's inevitable, whether Apple succeeds or someone else does in a few years. They need to work on that last part about the selection...

I guess I'm a thief, but not a liar.

[mustang_dvs]

Here's my question about authorization:
Is the authorization key specific to the user OR the computer?

What I mean by this is if a given Mac has multiple users (via separate logins), does the authorization apply globally to all users, or a per user basis.

For example, I have a few interns who have iPods, but PCs at home. If they purchase music on a Mac in the office, while individually logged-in, (to transfer to an iPod), does everyone else who logs in as a separate user have to de-authorize iTunes or does it treat separate users separately?

I guess what this boils down to is: does iTunes maintain the authorization information in the individual home folder or in the global library folder?

This has some serious implications (either way) for some uses, such as networked-home folders, family computers and workstations with multiple users and I am keenly interested in discovering the answer. I will give it a shot on my Mac at work and let you know the answer, if no one responds before I arrive in the office.

[rundevilrun]

One thing I have not heard about yet is how they handle it if you buy a few individual songs and then decide to buy the whole album. I read somewhere that the system keeps track of what you have bought so you don't download duplicates, but if you buy say 3 songs for $3 and then buy the album do they charge you $8 instead of $11 for it?
If they do that I'm going shopping tonight!
:D

[evoluzione]

Originally posted by rundevilrun
One thing I have not heard about yet is how they handle it if you buy a few individual songs and then decide to buy the whole album. I read somewhere that the system keeps track of what you have bought so you don't download duplicates, but if you buy say 3 songs for $3 and then buy the album do they charge you $8 instead of $11 for it?
If they do that I'm going shopping tonight!
:D


i was wondering this, if you buy a song off an album, and then you decide that you really should buy the whole album, do you still have to pay the $10? i hope not

[Kid Red]

Originally posted by grahams
Are you absolutely sure about that? I note that when ripping from my own CDs .m4a files are created on my hard drive, which I think may be the DRM variant of .mp4 files.

Also interesting to note that these .m4a files cannot be previewed (ie. played) in the Finder, whereas MP3s can. This suggests DRM is being used as playback is restricted to the iTunes application.

Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

The article said AAC files can only be played in the iPod and iTunes so that means the finder can't play them AFAIK.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by Kid Red
The article said AAC files can only be played in the iPod and iTunes so that means the finder can't play them AFAIK.

Fortunately, you're wrong about this. AAC files come in two flavors: m4a (MPEG-4 Audio) and m4p (MPEG-4 audio protected). Both can be played by any application that uses QuickTime for the job. That means you can play AAC files in the Finder, or in the iLife applications, or Final Cut Pro, or whatever you like as long as it uses QuickTime.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by Perceptes
I want to be able to rip on the Mac and play on the PC.

According to some folks who should know, the full install of WinAmp includes AAC playback support. I don't have a PC, so I can't personally confirm this. Can somebody else, maybe?

I'm not surprised that I can't tell the difference in quality, but why are the two files the same size?

Because a 128 kbps file will be the same size no matter how it's encoded. That's the definition of a 128 kbps file: that it's encoded with 128 kilobits per second. (QuickTime 6.2's AAC encoder uses an adaptive bit rate scheme, I think, that means the file probably won't be EXACTLY 128 kbps per second, but it should average out to 128 kbps over the length of the song.)

The magic happens when you rip (not convert, but re-rip from scratch) your CD library to 128 kbps AAC instead of 192 or 256 kbps MP3. You get the same or even better audio quality in 25% or 50% less disk space. I'm converting my entire collection, and based on what I've seen so far it looks like a 35 GB library is going to become about a 26 GB library, even with album art embedded in every file. That means I can fit about 25% more songs on my iPod at a given time without sacrificing sound quality. That's REALLY cool. It's like trading in my 5 GB iPod for a 7 GB iPod for free.

(On preview: Oops. Others have answered this one already. Sorry.)

I just don't like the fact that you are actually purchasing a copy of the music and yet are still limited in some way.

Fair enough, though I think it's kind of silly. No offense intended, of course. From everything I've seen so far, you can do everything with an .m4p that you're allowed to do with a CD. So as long as you don't try to do anything illegal, you'll never notice that you're dealing with .m4p files.

But if it bothers you, simply burn your .m4p's to audio CD. At that point, they become simple AIFF files that you can do whatever you want to or with, up to and including stuff that's illegal if that floats your boat.

There's zero reason to take a moral stance here. If you don't want to use protected files, don't. Burn CD's of your purchased music and stick 'em on your shelf, then delete the .m4p's or back 'em up or whatever.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by a9mike
It's so easy to bypass it's laughable, just switch your iTunes encoder (BUILT-IN) to AIFF or WAV and convert the file (via Advanced menu) - DRM gone & no loss in quality

For the record: no. You get an error message that says the song "could not be converted because protected files cannot be converted to other formats."

even if you want to burn 1,000,000 copies of Enya and throw them from the rooftops

If by "1,000,000 copies" you mean "10 copies," you're right.

The best way is to re-rip all of your CDs to AAC, but if time is a bigger issue --> set up iTunes to do your whole library and walk away.

I did a test, and found that the sound quality of a 192 kbps MP3 converted to an AAC is unacceptable. For me, it's worth the time to re-rip my 400+ CD's. Luckily, I have a G4, so it's a simple matter of setting iTunes to batch mode and feed it CD's while I do other things. Two CPU's, no waiting.

[mustang_dvs]

Well, I finally got the chance to buy a couple of songs, put them in a shared folder and log in as a different user on my computer...

Well, it seems I should have taken a cue from the fact that the iTunes menu item is "Deauthorize Computer."

It seems that the user authorization key is global.

Personally, I do not believe that this is a Good Thing&trade; -- it prevents multiple users from accessing their music accounts easily from the same computer.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by mustang_dvs
Personally, I do not believe that this is a Good Thing&trade; -- it prevents multiple users from accessing their music accounts easily from the same computer.

What? No, it doesn't. My girlfriend has an iBook and I have a G4. Both of our computers are authorized to play both of our music collections. A given computer can be authorized on more than one Apple ID at a time.

[Dave Marsh]

OK, this is getting clearer. So, we now know that the computer authorization is global. That suggests the Apple Music server downloads encrypted keys unique for that computer and user when the user authorized the computer, and probably saved it somewhere in the common Library.

We also heard above from one poster that the purchasing user's Apple ID is embedded in the songs they purchase. So this suggests multiple users are handled like this:

Click on a song. ITunes checks the ownership embedded in the song. It then looks for a central key on that computer for the identified user. If the central key matches the ownership embedded in the song, it plays the song. If not, it asks for your Apple ID/password and attempts to setup an authorization for the new user.

It does this by connecting to the central Apple Music server, which then confirms fewer than three authorized computers are associated with that purchased song. If this is true, it creates an additional encrypted key for that user/computer combination and downloads it to the user's Mac into whatever Library directory has been setup for these computer keys.

This arrangement suggests there must be a common Library directory for these central keys. It also suggests these keys identify both authorized Apple user IDs and a unique identifier for that Mac (e.g., firmware embedded serial number). It also explains why each purchased song has the purchasing user's Apple ID embedded in it.

This would easily accommodate the local network streaming scenario. Click on a song in a Rendezvous mounted playlist from anywhere on your subnet. If you have the central key for the song's owner on your local Mac, the song plays. If not, it requests you login to get the central key. When you login, the Apple ID you use must match the one embedded in the song. The Apple Music server performs its authorization check, downloads the central authorization key for the new Mac, and plays the song. The next time that user on that Mac makes the request, the key's there.
:D

[old_macpro]

I know this has been touched on before, but it is worth mentioning again. AAC is a better format, and at 128 bits, it is equal to a 160 bit MP3 or better in terms of dynamic range. When you master the AAC files to an Audio CD - you are getting very very close to the sound of the original CD.

Now, when you decide to RIP the CD back to an MP3 (say using the older itunes or such), you will experience very little loss. In fact, if you use something higher than 128K (like VBR) setting for your MP3 - the entire round trip will still sound better than a normal 128K MP3 you ripped yourself.

I have seen people are already testing AAC -> WAV -> MP3 to see how it works (same thing as moving it to a CD first).

So...
- If you have an original CD, AAC ripping is best at the same bit rates.
- If you need an MP3 file, re-rip or convert the AAC to a higher value MP3. It would also be useful to use some of the key presets of the encoder (like LAME) to get the best possible results.

[Doctor Q]

I interpret the comment from Perceptes as saying he wants to have the same rights with downloaded music as he has with audio CDs from a store: unlimited personal use. Most practical uses seem covered with minimal interference, so it may be simply a matter of principle. But I can see both sides. Apple couldn't offer this service without some kind of DRM. But you can't as easily lend music to someone (such as letting them borrow your new "Dolly Parton sings Marilyn Manson" CD for the weekend) if your music is computerized and you have to give them a password and they have to have Internet access to enable it, and you can't be as confident that your music is safe should your computer die or Apple suddenly decide to go out of the music business. To get this safety and freedom, however, you can simply make your own CDs out of everything you download. So I'm happy with Apple's solution.

[Perceptes]

Originally posted by old_macpro
In fact, if you use something higher than 128K (like VBR) setting for your MP3 - the entire round trip will still sound better than a normal 128K MP3 you ripped yourself.

Can anyone else confirm this? If that's true, I'm definitely all over AAC.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by Perceptes
Can anyone else confirm this? If that's true, I'm definitely all over AAC.

I can confirm it subjectively. I downloaded an album from the Store today (U2's "Achtung Baby," if anybody cares). I immediately burned it to CD, so I could put the CD on my shelf with my other CD's. Then, for fun, I ripped the new CD into iTunes. So now I have a set of M4P files that I downloaded and a set of M4A files that I ripped from the CD produced from the M4P files. Does that make sense?

I can't tell the difference between the first-generation M4P's and the second-generation M4A's. On my equipment (which is medium; I have SoundSticks on the Mac and a decent stereo downstairs), they sound slightly different, but I can't tell which is the first-generation and which is the second.

[brhmac]

Apple had mislabeled a song I'd bought in the Apple Music Store. In keeping with their policy, of course, no refunds.

Apple:

"Based on our Music Store policy we are unable to offer any refunds on purchased music. We do offer a preview function to eliminate issues such as this."

Problem is: The song was supposed be a studio version -- not a live version with some obnoxious person yelling at the beginning.

:mad:

Three days into the new service and Apple won't acknowledge the possibility of a flaw in its system.

:)
UPDATE: Apple, this evening, gave me a credit as a "gesture of goodwill."
:)

[Doctor Q]

I understand the letter of the law: you can authorize up to three Macs. I'd like to know the intent too.

Does Apple intend that my authorized Macs be three semi-permanent Macs in my household, used by my family (or maybe my personal Macs in three locations)? Or is it perfectly fine for me to share with as many friends on as many Macs as I like as long as I only have three authorizations active at any given time? By adding and removing authorizations constantly (I wonder if you can AppleScript this?), I could use my music on whichever Mac I was close to, even if I had more than 3 of them.

A simpler case: Suppose my two friends and I have exactly the same musical taste. Is it OK with Apple and the music publishers who agreed to Apple's contracts if my friends and I share one Apple ID and all of the music we buy, on our three separate home computers?

[Jeff Harrell]

I think the intent would probably be that you should be able to listen to your purchased music on all your computers. For the majority of people, that amounts to one Mac at home, one laptop, and one Mac at work, or two Macs at home and a laptop, or something like that. I don't think the intent of the three-Mac limit is that you should be able to give copies of your purchased music to your friends.

This is where I differ oh-so-slightly from Apple. I think anybody should be able to stream any song, protected or otherwise. Right now, only unprotected songs can be streamed by anybody. Protected songs can only be streamed to authorized Macs.

It seems to me that letting people stream music is a good way to give people the ability to easily share their tunes in a way that doesn't violate (or at least doesn't seriously violate) any copyright laws. Copying: bad. Streaming without copying: good. So I'm not sure what I think about that just yet. I reserve the right to change my mind, of course.

In general, I think the intent of Apple's FairPlay is to give the artists the protection they deserve, but give the consumers the ability to do everything they are legally entitled to do with the minimum of hassle. I think they've done a better job of accomplishing that goal than anybody else so far.

(Oh, as for your simple case, if you can get together with three friends and agree on a way to deal with the credit card charges, I think it would be possible to share one Apple ID. But it would probably be more trouble than it's worth, so anybody trying to do that would probably just choose to steal their music anyway. I'm just guessing about that last part, obviously.)

[Fireball1244]

Originally posted by tYNS
Just the version on Apple Music is terrible! it sounds like a degenerated version. listen to it.. you can here the typical high frequency guitar compression wavers. TERRIBLE.. my ear picks this up instantly and it annoys me.

Apple (or the record company) needs to REALLY monitor this.

Were you listening to the stream? Chances are the stream isn't as high quality as the file itself, in order to cut down on streaming costs. All the .m4p files I've downloaded have been very formidable in terms of sound quality.

Kirk

[rockman2023]

Originally posted by mjtomlin
"Only the iPod and Apple's iTunes currently allow playing of these Protected AAC's."

Actually the QuickTime Player, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD can play them also. And i suspect any application that utilizes the QuickTime layer.

Another thing to add...

- You can only use iTunes 4 to authorize and deauthorize your system.

mikey T.

Maybe that's why we needed to DL QT6.2.....


Originally posted by Kamu-San
Suddenly a realisation dawned. If this works with music, then the next thing we can expect is on-line film buying! Not DVD-quality & encoding, but DivX.

I'm so happy that I have broadband ;-) But even then it will take days to dl a DVD...

Definetly off topic, but I saw something on TechTV's TechLive a short while back, where it was mentioned that some guys had transfered 2-6GB from the USA to Europe in about 19 sec!!! http://forums.macrumors.com/images/smilies/eek.gif
"Trying to make the internet faster", something like that. Too bad I still have 56k http://forums.macrumors.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by rockman2023
Definetly off topic, but I saw something on TechTV's TechLive a short while back, where it was mentioned that some guys had transfered 2-6GB from the USA to Europe in about 19 sec!!!

Yeah, I heard about that. In truth, that test wasn't really that impressive. I used to work with SGI, and I knew some folks who worked on a technology called GSN. It's a computer-to-computer network technology kinda like Ethernet, but different in some important ways. It's 6400 megabits per second.

They did a test one time for the government-- most of their work was for The Customer, if you know what I mean-- where they leased a dark fibre loop and put one big SGI supercomputer at one end (in Reston, VA) and another on the other end (in Mt. View, California), and ran GSN between them. They pushed something like 800 MB per second through that pipe for days. Instead of 2.6 GB in 19 seconds, that would be 15.2 GB in 19 seconds.

The really cool part of the test though had to do with latency. The two machines were synched to GPS time, so they were able to measure the delay in transmission between Reston and Mt. View. In other words, if you take out fibre optic repeaters and whatnot, the limiting factor in the latency experienced by that system was the speed of light. Which is pretty damn cool, if you ask me.

Topic? What topic? :rolleyes:

[Doctor Q]

Originally posted by rockman2023
Definetly off topic, but I saw something on TechTV's TechLive a short while back, where it was mentioned that some guys had transfered 2-6GB from the USA to Europe in about 19 sec!!!There was a recent Caltech breakthrough (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23216) too. 8609 Mbps.

[antichrist]

When the bloated record companies stop paying innapropriate salaries and bonuses to half-assed musicians like Jennifer Lopez, Eminem and Cocoa Puffs, then we should see prices of CD's dramatically reduced. 18.99 for Jello? **** that, I'll continue to steal, guilt free. I have over 20,000 mp3's, if I paid 99 cents for half of them, I would have to give up my crack habit.

Itunes4 sucks too, you can't rip a CD at 48K sample any longer.

Don't depend on my 99 cents Steve. I don't even pay for your ****ty software.:mad:

[Doctor Q]

Welcome to MacRumors.

I'm no fan of the record companies, but they pay musicians what it takes to get them under contract, and they won't do it if they can't make money at it. I'm not much of an Eminem fan, but some people must be. If people want to buy "Roseanne Barr sings the Star Spangled Banner", then that's what a record label will sell.

Also, it seems to me that this week, with the Apple announcement, was the first time in a long time that the record companies showed signs of real intelligence.

If you steal the music you like, the rest of us end up paying more to get it legally. Just out of curiosity, antichrist, what price would you be willing to pay without giving up your crack habit? If legal downloaded music was, say, 25 cents a song, would you change your mind?

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by antichrist
Itunes4 sucks too, you can't rip a CD at 48K sample any longer.

Actually, I've been told by some folks whose opinions I trust that ripping a CD at 48 kHz will produce a file that sounds certainly no better, and quite possibly worse, than the original. That's because a CD uses 44.1 kHz. So you'll end up with some quite a lot of samples that are averages of two source samples. The net result might not be something you can hear, but it certainly won't help anything.

So you shouldn't rip CD's at 48 kHz anyway.

Now, if we were talking about ripping DAT's, or digitally recorded AIFF's, that might be something else. But CD's? No.

Then again, it seems fairly clear that you're just trolling the board to badmouth Apple and their products, so what's the point of correcting your misaprehension on this topic?

[cbond]

Originally posted by Jeff Harrell
Then again, it seems fairly clear that you're just trolling the board to badmouth Apple and their products, so what's the point of correcting your misaprehension on this topic?

Because Mac users, young and old, ALL CARE and WANT TO HELP OTHERS OUT! :) :D :cool:

No envy or hopelessness or whatever on this side of the fence, baby!

(Note: I *am* generalizing. But would that really be a crime? Come on!) :)

[bulletinwriter]

Hi everyone. Could a few of you please address my following issue:

I have about 20 GB worth of MP3s, all taken from the original CDs that I bought over the years, and all put into MP3 via iTunes, thus making all legal (just some info for all you ethical ones out there.)

Well there is no way in HELL that I would ever go through the proccess of putting all of those CDs into AAC as I did into MP3, plus I sold a majority of the CDs after putting them onto my machine.

I've tested converting a few of my MP3s (all of which are at 192) to AAC (at 128) and I hear absolutely no loss of quality, maybe some improvement.

My question is some one you have said that going from MP3 to AAC like this takes away from the sound quality. Is this a fact, opinions, too small to notice, better quality in AAC??

What do you all think? I'd love to switch to AAC, but I want to keep my music at the high sound quality that it is now. Hey, thanks alot everyone.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by bulletinwriter
My question is some one you have said that going from MP3 to AAC like this takes away from the sound quality. Is this a fact, opinions, too small to notice, better quality in AAC??

I just did a really unscientific and informal test. I took an MP3 that I really like and converted it to AAC and listened.

The MP3 is "Take Five" by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. It's encoded at a whopping 320 kbps from the CD. Yeah, I know, 320 kbps is nuts. I encoded this one in the old days when I was first into MP3's. I can't remember what I used to encode it. It might have been a very old version of Audion.

I converted it to 128 kbps AAC using iTunes's "Convert to AAC" item under the Advanced menu.

To test them, I opened them both in QuickTime Player and used the "Play All Movies" item. (That might only be availble if you have QuickTime Pro.) I toggled back and forth to hear the difference.

They both sounded acceptable. There was a difference, but it wasn't an objectionable one. I couldn't say that one sounded "better" than the other, just that they sounded VERY SLIGHTLY different from each other. If I listened for it really, really closely, I could hear a slight something during Morello's drum solo in the middle. But we're talking really subtle stuff here, folks.

Then I reached for my nearest CD, which happened to be Sarah McLachlan's "Surfacing." I ripped the first track, "Building a Mystery" to MP3 at 192 kbps with iTunes, then converted the MP3 to 128 kbps AAC and did the QuickTime Player test. I couldn't really tell a difference.

Then I ripped the same track to 128 kbps MP3 and converted THAT file to 128 kbps, and tested again. The resulting MP3 and AAC both sounded like chisled SPAM to my ears, but neither one sounded worse than the other. Of course, this was strictly an academic test, because there's no reason at all to convert a 128 kbps MP3 to 128 kbps AAC. You won't save any disk space.

Finally, I converted an MP3 that was encoded with VBR at an aggregate bit rate of 94 kbps (that's not a typo). It was "Bad Stone" by the Crystal Method. The resulting AAC sounded just like the MP3 to my ears. Of course, in this instance the AAC was LARGER than the MP3, so that's a degenerate case.

So my own personal results: converting MP3's that were encoded at rates higher than 128 kbps will probably result in AAC's that sound no worse (to my ears) than the MP3's did. If you want to free up 33% of the disc space occupied by your music library by converting your 192 kbps MP3's to 128 kbps M4A's, I'd say you'd probably be okay. But since we're talking about music that you don't have CD's for any more (that's illegal, by the way, just in case you didn't know that already) you'd probably be wisest to back up your MP3's somehow. Burn them to half a dozen DVD's as files-- not as audio-- before you do the conversion. That way you'll always have a copy to fall back to if something goes horribly wrong.

And finally, my last, best piece of advice: try it for yourself, and decide what you think by listening to the resulting files. You might find that the second-generation AAC's are unlistenable, or you might find that they're just dandy. It's all subjective.

[Jeff Harrell]

Okay, I have more to say on the whole MP3->AAC thing. I've just done some more conversions, most recently "Clock" by Coldplay which began its life as a 192 kbps MP3 and met its destiny as a 128 kbps AAC.

I listened REALLY closely to this one, and I found something very strange. Every time I thought I heard distortion or an artifact in the AAC, I said "A-ha!" (out loud at first, until later when my girlfriend came in and asked me what all the ruckuss was about, at which point I began the inner monologue) and toggled over to the MP3 and found THE EXACT SAME distortion or artifact THERE.

This happened to me at around 1:00 and again at around 3:00, if you're playing along at home.

So the main fault with the second-generation AAC's, that I can hear, is that they TOO ACCURATELY reproduce the flaws of the original MP3's.

There will be more tests and more opinions in the future. But for right now, I vote convert. Take any MP3's in your collection of 192 kbps or greater, back 'em up to DVD or whatever you have handy (I'm using a spare hard drive for this until I take the time to burn some discs), and convert 'em. Nothing to lose but time.

[keltorsori]

Originally posted by Doctor Q
I understand the letter of the law: you can authorize up to three Macs. I'd like to know the intent too.

Does Apple intend that my authorized Macs be three semi-permanent Macs in my household, used by my family (or maybe my personal Macs in three locations)? Or is it perfectly fine for me to share with as many friends on as many Macs as I like as long as I only have three authorizations active at any given time? By adding and removing authorizations constantly (I wonder if you can AppleScript this?), I could use my music on whichever Mac I was close to, even if I had more than 3 of them.

A simpler case: Suppose my two friends and I have exactly the same musical taste. Is it OK with Apple and the music publishers who agreed to Apple's contracts if my friends and I share one Apple ID and all of the music we buy, on our three separate home computers?

The first time you log in with your Apple ID in iTunes, the first screen you get to, at the bottom says: "The music you buy is for your personal use only."
So I guess that settles that question. :-)
No sharing with friends, at least no Apple-sanctioned sharing with friends

[Doctor Q]

Originally posted by keltorsori
The first time you log in with your Apple ID in iTunes, the first screen you get to, at the bottom says: "The music you buy is for your personal use only."
So I guess that settles that question. :-)
No sharing with friends, at least no Apple-sanctioned sharing with friends Then that's the rule we should all follow.

---

I'll keep probing the depths of your opinions with other ethics questions:

Suppose you purchase and download a song and listen to it yourself on your own Mac. So far so good. Now you burn it to CD, rip it back to your Mac, and still use it only for personal use. As we've learned, you might lose some sound quality but it works and it removes the DRM. If you only play the resulting song on your own Mac, people seem to be saying that you are still within your rights.

Would it then be OK to move the resulting file (say an MP3 version) to your Windows PC or non-Apple MP3 player and play it there, still for personal use on a single computer or device?

Now suppose you then throw away both the downloaded and ripped versions and replace them with a new version ripped from a friend's copy of the original CD. You can pick a high bitrate and get a better quality sound file, but you're still going to use only a single copy and only on your own computer. Still OK?

In each case, you are using exactly one copy and you paid for exactly one copy.

The restrictions in place, and the words used to describe them, seem to be intended to limit you to personal use of the music, not to control or limit the quality of sound you get or where you play it. Are the scenarios I describe still playing fair with the intent? If not, why not?

[Ugg]

Originally posted by Doctor Q
Then that's the rule we should all follow.

---

I'll keep probing the depths of your opinions with other ethics questions:

Are the scenarios I describe still playing fair with the intent? If not, why not?

I'm no attorney but I would think that as long as you kept the music for your own personal use and didn't sell or trade it then no problem. I would also think that if you had burned a cd and dumped the files from iTunes, then it would be perfectly legal to sell the cd. Just like it is perfectly legal to sell a book or video tape that you have legally puchased.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by Doctor Q
Would it then be OK to move the resulting file (say an MP3 version) to your Windows PC or non-Apple MP3 player and play it there, still for personal use on a single computer or device?

I think so. I think it would be hard to argue that such a use of your legally acquired copy is unfair or unreasonable.

Now suppose you then throw away both the downloaded and ripped versions and replace them with a new version ripped from a friend's copy of the original CD.

Let's boil this question down to something simpler. Let's say you buy a copy of CD X, and so does your friend. At some point in the future, you make a copy of your friend's CD X. (Why? That's not important right now. Just go with me for sake of argument.) Is that act legal? Technically, no. Practically, it's highly unlikely that anybody would object to it.

The restrictions in place, and the words used to describe them, seem to be intended to limit you to personal use of the music, not to control or limit the quality of sound you get or where you play it.

Yes, that's pretty much it. Once you've bought a piece of music, be it a CD or an M4P, you can do pretty much whatever you want with that music, as long as you're the only person involved.

That's the spirit of the law. The letter of the law is necessarily more complex.

[Dave Marsh]

quote:
Now suppose you then throw away both the downloaded and ripped versions and replace them with a new version ripped from a friend's copy of the original CD.


I don't think this would be ethical or legal. In this case you wouldn't be using music you had purchased. You'd be using someone else's. It doesn't matter that you at one time purchased the music legally. If your purchased copy is gone, it's gone.

[Doctor Q]

That's an interesting point, Dave.

It could also be that the end result was justifiable (because only the form of media changed, not the fact that you have a copy of a song), but that the means used (copying a borrowed CD) was a violation at the time you made the copy.

The laws involved are probably not the same, but as a thought experiment you can consider how it would work with books, instead of music, if photocopying was free. Suppose you buy a book, photocopy it, and then throw out the original book. Did you violate the copyright by copying it? Or is it acceptable because you ended up with one legal copy for personal purposes, which is what you started with?

[Dave Marsh]

While I suspect the copyright owner probably would consider it illegal to photocopy even your own purchased book, this scenario doesn't bother me a bit since the copy wasn't given/sold to anyone. Now, even though I'm sure the ethics police would say that knowingly violating the copyright in this manner would always be wrong, I'd sleep just fine. To my mind, if this isn't fair use, it should be. Neither the owner of the copyright, nor any third party was materially affected in any way.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by Dave Marsh
Now, even though I'm sure the ethics police would say that knowingly violating the copyright in this manner would always be wrong, I'd sleep just fine.

Hmm. Let me just pin on my Ethics Police Junior G-Man Badge here (four Captain Crunch box tops, $2.95 for shipping and handling, and four to six weeks of interminable waiting by the mailbox).

Copyright provides legal protection to an author's exclusive right to distribute his works. (In the real works, distribution is almost always handled by a delegate, a publisher or some such, but that individual or company is merely acting with the written permission of the author.) So any act that infringes on the author's exclusive right to distribute is wrong.

(Remember, we're talking ETHICALLY here, not LEGALLY. The two are mostly congruent, but not completely.)

If your friend buys a copy of "Gravity's Rainbow" and you copy it using your handy Xerox machine, you have distributed a copy of the book to yourself. That infringes on the author's exclusive right to distribute the book. So your action is unethical.

If you buy a copy of Gravity's Rainbow and then lose it or something, then copy your friend's copy, that's not really an infringement. You already bought the book. The author already distributed it to you. The fact that you subsequently make a copy of somebody else's book for yourself doesn't change this fact.

Let's speak more specifically. I have a CD, "Reel Life" by Trout Fishing in America. It has a scratch on it. That scratch makes it impossible for any CD player to play the track entitled "Ode to Big Blue." (It's a Gordon Lightfoot cover. Frankly, I like the Trouts' version better than the original.) If I could find a high-bit-rate MP3 of that song on-line, I would probably download it. It would be illegal to do so, but I personally wouldn't have any ethical problem with the act itself, because my intent is to regain access to a song that I can't currently listen to because of a damaged CD.

(I can't find it, and the Music Store doesn't yet sell Trout music, so the whole question is moot. Which makes it a GREAT example. :) )

However, there's another question, a larger question. Given that in these two examples (hypothetical and concrete) the act of copying is illegal but not unethical, there is still the ethical question of whether it is okay to do something that is illegal.

Our society is based on universal respect for the law. We have punishments that are intended to deter potential criminals from acting in defiance of the law, but those deterrences alone are insufficient to maintain an orderly, prosperous society. In order for a free society to work, people must obey the law not because they fear punishment, but simply because they respect the law. Without respect for the law, society would disintegrate into an adversarial environment where the people would constantly be trying to find new ways to commit crimes without being caught, and in turn our justice agencies would be forced to extend their powers in order to deal with the concerted efforts of the criminals. It'd be an ever-escalating arms race, and in the long run the net result would either be anarchy, if the criminals succeed in running circles around the police, or totalitarianism, if the police succeed in rounding up all the criminals. Either way, the victim is our free society.

(If you'll notice, this is precisely the present situation between those who wish to steal music and those who wish it not to be stolen. On the one side we have the pirates, and on the other we have the publishers and the white-hat security experts. Each side is constantly trying to surpass the other, and as a result a huge amount of money and time and effort is being wasted.)

So: for the good of society, we must respect the laws. I say that in the most abstract sense; it's not a hard-and-fast thing. Judgments must be made based on circumstances.

For instance, if "Ode to Big Blue" were available on the iTunes Music Store, I would buy it rather than pirating it. I would do so for several reasons, not the least of which is that it would be faster and easier, but neither would the least of which be that I wish to act within the law solely for the sake of the law itself.

On the other hand, I am not rushing out to buy another copy of "Reel Life." I don't have money to burn (who does these days?) and spending $16 to replace a CD that is perfectly fine but for a scratch on one track seems unreasonable to me.

I think the Music Store is a step in the right direction: make it easy, convenient, fast, and cheap for people to acquire music on impulse legally. But I don't think that by itself is going to solve our piracy problem. Part of our problem is cultural. We need to cultivate a culture of respect for intellectual property, and for the law. That's not an especially difficult problem to solve; it just takes time. We went from a country where black people had to sit at the back of the bus to a country where the third highest office in our land is held by a black man in about fifty years. We've still got a ways to go, but we've made astounding progress in about two generations. That's going to be our solution to the piracy problem, too, I think.

Hmm. As I go back and re-read the previous paragraph, I get the feeling that it might be somewhat inflamatory. But I think the point is valid. I think if we look at people who pirate music like people who suffer from race prejudice and educate them rather than either (1) aggressively criminalizing them, or (2) accepting them without challenge or question, then we'll be able to solve the problem of piracy in our lifetime. I hope.

[Ugg]

The use of the word piracy when it comes to P2P networks has always intrigued me. Pirates, while thieves, mostly exist due to inequal distribution of a society's resources. It would be hard to claim that someone with a computer in today's world is suffering from inequal distribution but I do think that it is part of the problem. It is also a reaction to the corporatizaion of the music business. How many people at the top listen to the music that their company distributes? Where is the connection between artist and CEO? or for that matter CEO and customer?

The other aspect of this is that technology continues to outpace our ability to adjust morally. Whether it be stem cell research, music and video piracy, etc.

The Music Store is the best thing ever to happen to the music industry in the last 5 years. I've bought 3 albums already and am slowly replacing mp3s with AACs as they become available. I'm of a different generation though and it remains to be seen whether the under 30s will embrace it as well.

The internet has the ability to revolutionize the way we interract with the world. The music industry has totally and utterly failed to take advantage of this technology. They and the artists are suffering as a result.

The more I read about digital vs analog recordings the more I realize that it is a matter of taste not quality. What is the average age of sound engineers and producers? Could it be a generational reluctance to embrace the digital world and the internet that is causing a lot of the problems?

[Doctor Q]

You guys really met my challenge to think these issues through. Jeff, your description is insightful and very well written. I agree with you 100% (rounded off from 99.52%), but I'm not implying that yours was the one and only interpretation and that these issues are settled. Anyone else concerned with the ethics issues, please chime in.Originally posted by Jeff Harrell
Part of our problem is cultural. We need to cultivate a culture of respect for intellectual property, and for the law. That's not an especially difficult problem to solve; it just takes time.Excellent point. A couple decades ago, people would tell Polish jokes or make fun, in a mean way, of gays, women, or people in other groups, without a second thought; someone might make loud gay-bashing comments on the subway, while strangers who didn't approve fumed but kept quiet. Now most people would think twice before doing these things, not because law enforcement is looking, but because society doesn't approve. Ethnic jokes haven't gone away, but people tend to show that they mean no harm when telling them, or they tell them privately rather than publicly.

When taking music without paying for it will lessen your status in the eyes of your peers, it will go from a blatant and pervasive habit to an underground one (done but not mentioned and not boasted about), and then to low enough levels that the music business can "tolerate" it, akin to theft from record stores.

Let me just pin on my Ethics Police Junior G-Man Badge here (four Captain Crunch box tops, $2.95 for shipping and handling, and four to six weeks of interminable waiting by the mailbox).A challenge to all: Who knows the connection between Captain Crunch and Apple? I'll post the answer later if nobody else does.

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by Ugg
The use of the word piracy when it comes to P2P networks has always intrigued me.

Me, too, but I suspect in a different way from the way you're intrigued. I'm struck by the fact that "piracy" is, itself, a euphemism. My dictionary (yes, I'm using Sherlock for this) defines piracy as being robbery on the high seas, which strikes me as an odd term to co-opt for use in this context. I'm not sure where "piracy" in the sense of intellectual property theft came from, but it seems evident to me (mister blindingly obvious over here) that "piracy" is itself a euphemism for the more accurate term: theft.

And yet today we have people who are actually arguing that "piracy" is an inappropriate term, what with the connotations of violence and all that, and that the act should even-more-euphemistically be called "copyright infringement."

This reminds me of the old George Carlin bit about euphemisms. He talked about the term "shell shock." In World War I, you suffered from "shell shock." By World War II "shell shock" had given way to "battle fatigue." When you came home from World War II, you had "battle fatigue." By the time of Vietnam, "battle fatigue" had become "post traumatic stress disorder." Two syllables had become eight.

It's exactly the same thing. "Theft" became "piracy" which is becoming "copyright infringement." But it's all the same thing. It's stealing.

The other aspect of this is that technology continues to outpace our ability to adjust morally. Whether it be stem cell research, music and video piracy, etc.

No offense, but I have a very hard time putting petty theft on the same plane as questions of life and death. I see both sides of the stem cell argument. (I'm not going to get into it here. I'm just gonna describe the argument to point out how different it is from music theft.) On the one hand, we have the potential to save many lives. On the other hand, we have the question of whether it's okay to sacrifice embryos for any purpose. This is serious stuff about the nature of life itself.

Stealing music, on the other hand, is really cut-and-dried by comparison. When you take something that's not yours without the consent of the owner, you're stealing. If the owner offers to sell it to you and you decide not to buy it but rather to take it for free, you're stealing. I really don't see it as a question of technology outpacing morality; I think morality (and more specifically ethics) tells us exactly what to do in this situation already: don't steal. Stealing is bad and wrong. It doesn't matter if you start with the Ten Commandments or Adam Smith, the conclusion is the same.

The problem is not that technology has outpaced our society. The problem is, in my opinion, that technology has outpaced our ability to teach moral values to our children. Who does most of the music stealing? The under-21 crowd. College kids who have unlimited broadband access in their dorm rooms. (That was just a pipe dream when I was in college a mere decade ago.) Why do they do it? Because we have failed, collectively, as a society, to teach them that it's wrong to do so. It's not a problem of morality; it's not a conundrum. It's a simple problem of applying the moral rules we already have to a new situation.

Or so I see it, anyway.

The internet has the ability to revolutionize the way we interract with the world. The music industry has totally and utterly failed to take advantage of this technology. They and the artists are suffering as a result.

I have a serious problem with trying to place the responsibility for this on the music industry. I'd like to buy a Land Rover for $13.50 (that being what I have in my pocket right now), but they are totally and utterly refusing to sell it to me. They refuse to take my money! How absurd is that!? So I'm just gonna go sneak onto the lot and steal one. It's really their own fault, because I was willing to pay, just not at the price they were asking. They're suffering as a result of their own greed.

See how silly that whole argument sounds? The whole "they're too greedy" (or the closely related "they're too dumb") argument never sat well with me. Even if these things are all true, it still fails to justify theft in my mind.

Could it be a generational reluctance to embrace the digital world and the internet that is causing a lot of the problems?

I think it's the mob mentality among the segment of society that commits these acts of theft that's causing the problem. Think of it this way. Under ordinary circumstances, a normal person would never consider throwing a brick through a window and stealing a TV. But in a riot, when everybody around is doing just that, the learned compulsion toward lawfulness can disappear. We've seen it happen a million times. This is basically the same situation. First, the act of stealing music is an easy and solitary thing. It requires a cognitive leap to associate clicking the mouse button with theft. Because a person is interacting with a computer and not with another person, the learned inhibitions are automatically surpressed. (Ever been flamed in an email? Ever flamed someone yourself? It's a lot easier to be an ass in writing than it is face-to-face. Same thing here. It's easier to be a computer thief than an ordinary thief because of the degree of abstractness surrounding the whole act.) Compound this with the "everybody is doing it" perception, and you have the world's biggest, most diverse, slowest looter riot on your hands.

Gee whiz. I am one long-winded son of a gun, aren't I?

[cbond]

Originally posted by Doctor Q
A challenge to all: Who knows the connection between Captain Crunch and Apple? I'll post the answer later if nobody else does.

Well, the connection between Captain Crunch and Apple is that (at one time, at least) "piracy" of a different kind. This is where blue boxes were to be used with pay phones to make free calls and both(?) Captain Crunch (a celebrated "hacker" aka Jon Drapper(?)) and the two Steves of the very, very, very early days of Apple Computer (or a few years before just such a partnership had started between the two Steves) and had been using them themselves or at least creating and selling them.

That particular reminder strikes me as growth (which we all go through) which I see in Steve Jobs. One cannot continue to go through life stealing. One has to have respect for the system, to just pay the fee of a phone call or a file of an album. At one point, he didn't care about giving a dime to ma bell. But through the years, he has gained maturity.

I saw the quicktime feed of his latest iTunes announcement at least a week ago. It seems as if he has had much discussion through the past few years with recording executives to build a business model that would suit both the computer and recording industry. And, in the world of post-Napster, Steve had to do something to rescue two different worlds of America at once. They were, in effect, destroying each other...

But now, this just reaffirms my position he's a miracle worker. It's like, he can really make anything work. I'm just glad he was able to do so. I can't wait for January for the next breakthrough announcement. A tablet Macintosh, perhaps? :)

Go Steve, go! :D

(I also remember that Bill Gates was angered when the two Steves were using computer code for their own purposes. But they were like, "no, we like what we do here and we're not harming anyone." Is this true?)

[Doctor Q]

Correct, cbond. You are new around here (unless you've been lurking for a while), yet you win the grand prize: $1,000,000 in cash, a new sports car, a trip around the world for two, and 51% ownership of Apple! (I'm sure arn, who runs MacRumors, will explain how to collect your prize.)

Here's a mini-bio (http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/hackers/captain-crunch/) of John T. Draper, alias Captain Crunch, the pal of the Steves who got his nickname from the cereal box prize toy whistle that could fool the phone company's switching system.

Given Steve and Steve's history as phone phreaks (http://telephonetribute.com/phonephreaking.html), it's ironic that Apple is leading the world to an alternative to the music-hacker mentality.

[cbond]

Originally posted by Doctor Q
Correct, cbond. You are new around here (unless you've been lurking for a while),

Well, actually I'm a die-hard fan of history, computers, Apple (I loved growing up with the ][e, although getting magazines in the mail every month with BASIC programs inside, sometimes they were less than stellar. Needless to say, I was most impressed with programs what went into graphics mode on the ][e, which wasn't very often), and somehow, that's where I'm at today... plus or minus about 15 or 20 years... :D

The source of Bill getting angry at Steve for using his code for illegal/immoral/unethical/arrogant purposes, for example, was... oddly enough... the History Channel.

It had occured to me that when I was writing about blue boxes a few hours ago, the Steves also had raised the ire of not only ma bell (if ma bell was on to them at all) but also Bill Gates.

I have just looked quickly through Google and I found nothing about Bill Gates and the Steves on piracy... or something somewhat related to piracy. That doesn't mean I'm giving up. I'm just taking a break. ;)