Apple vs. Anti-DRM

[dudemac]

what's the point in hacking the apple drm anyway? I think it's fair enough already..

Sure its fair enough if you own an iPod or have a win box that has XP or Win2k on it. But if you don't then the music you just paid for is impossible to play. Sure you could rip a bunch of CD's then re import them, but we are talking a lot of work, not to mention a reduction in sound quality. Stealing is different from using. There are laws that are violated by the use of DRM but that issue is not being addressed. So why are we paying for something that is less usable but more expensive? iTunes has done some really great things, but there needs to be more concessions made to the end user to really get a full blown adoption. Opening the DRM to others would be a start or just the elimination of it completely. And getting rid of lossy compression.

I don't use these apps to steal/trade/distribute but I do use it to play it on my other none mac machines. 5 machines might be enough for most but I happen to have several more than that and not all can run iTunes. So what am I to do? Personally I am hoping to be able to purchase loss-less music soon that has no DRM..... what a CD is currently. I like the single song concept, much better than the album, so I really hope apple is listening, because I know the record companies are not.

 

[travishill]

There are laws that are violated by the use of DRM but that issue is not being addressed.

What law(s) might those be? Fair use is not a right, it is a defense to copyright infringement. No where in the law does it say "you have these rights to do X, Y, and Z" it only says that you cannot be considered in violation of copyright if you meet certain conditions. Just because you may or may not be able to do certain things with a piece of copywritten work has nothing to do with copyright law.

No one has a license to any copywritten material by default. DRM and licenses that describe what you can do with copywritten material as part of the agreement for allowing you to use something is certainly fair game.

As an example, that's what the GPL is all about. You have no right to use the copywritten material unless you agree to their licensing terms, which include making the source available to a project that you may create with other GPL'd code.

I don't see what the issue is here. Do I think DRM will be a failed experiment, and should it go away? Probably. But there is certainly nothing illegal about it under current law.

 

[123]

Hmm, russian download, 6¢ a track...no, that's not shady in the least, not shady at all.

What is this russian site?

http://www.allofmp3.com

 

[ZildjianKX]

In the current form of the DRM, are you allowed to sell your AAC files to anyone else? If you purchase them, you should be able to transfer/sell them to another user. If not, this seems a bit limiting.

 

[Torajima]

This is all a continuation of the immature, adolescent-minded idea that somehow the average Joe on the street is entitled to listen to every piece of recorded music ever written. Sorry. If you don't want to pay the artist who wrote and recorded the music (either directly or via his agents, i.e., the "evil" record labels), then fine: write your own songs.

When I was in college, we didn't have mp3s or the internet, so we taped music off the radio. This was perfectly legal.

I fail to see how downloading music off the internet is much different.

What you, and apparently the music industry, mistakenly assume is that every downloaded song equals a lost sale... nothing could be further from the truth. On the one hand, you've got poor college students who wouldn't have bought the music anyway... no lost sale there. On the other hand, you've got people like me, who sample music before buying the CD. There is actually some evidence that the shutdown of Napster may have hurt the music industry more than it helped, for this very reason. People were discovering new music, and many were *buying* it.

Of course, I use iTunes for this now. If I like the whole album, I'll go to a music store and buy the CD. If I only like one or two songs, I'll buy from the iTunes store.

Still, I have some problems with iTunes. I don't like DRM. It assumes everyone is a thief, and in the end only harms the consumer. Any real pirate can easily circumvent pretty much any DRM scheme ever made.

iTunes has a 30 second preview, which is rarely enough to actually get a feel for the song. This may cause me to download songs "illegally" just to sample them.

iTunes has a horrible selection. Sure, it's getting better, but I'm surprised just how many Artists are missing, and how many CDs are imcomplete.

iTunes gives too large a cut to the record label, and not large enough cut to the artists themselves. This is my number one complaint about iTunes... Apple is basically helping the labels steal from the artists. Of course this has been going on for years, but I had hoped digital distribution would allow us to cut out the "middle man". Of course, this is what the recording industry truly fears.

 

[zync]

This actually answers a previous post, where they asked why people would want to strip protected iTunes music instead of just using Kazaa and getting them for free anyway.

People figure "I paid 99 cents for this song, I should be able to do whatever I dang well please with it."

On Kazaa, they can't justify it. It's blatantly wrong. It's pure stealing.

On iTunes, they think "I paid for it, so I own it." They think they can justify it.

But you don't own the music. You own a copy of the music. When you buy a book, you don't own the book, you own a copy of it.

To be more precise, iTunes now gives you the right to own FIVE copies of any given song for 99 measly cents. Less than 20 cents a copy!!* And that's STILL not good enough for some people, because they "paid for" the song.

Does anyone truly think 99 cents should buy unlimited copies of ANYTHING?!?

(* That's not even counting being allowed to make more copies for yourself by burning CDs.)

OK. Well, I'm glad that I at least made sense Anyway no, I don't really think that 99 cents should by me unlimited copies of anything, however if I had a network of 6 computers in my house I don't want to have to auth/de-auth the 5/6 computer just so I can stream a song that I own! No, I don't own the song itself, that's obvious, but I own the right to listen to the song. Techinically it's wrong for me to let anyone else hear it if you want to go that far with it. I don't care about putting the songs on unlimited numbers of CDs as in any case I may need a song on one or two CDs (I rarely ever burn CDs anymore). I just don't think it's right to have these freedoms with the CDs and not be able to have the same freedoms with my AACs. That doesn't make sense.

So as you can see, five copies may not be enough. Eventually I will have a studio with more than five computers and so this will become a problem. And yes we can expect to do whatever we dang well please because we paid for the license, just as you do with CDs. With CDs I can have as many copies as I can hold on a drive, why can't I with AAC.

And since we're on the topic of licensing, since I don't own the music itself, why can't I get a new CD at cost when I accidently scratch one? DVDs aren't like this either. DVDs can easily be messed up, but if I do the license doesn't get me squat. Why can't I turn in my tapes and get CDs at cost? I own the license don't I. My dad has some Atrac tapes so why can't he use his "license" to get a CD at cost? The point is, if they're going to argue this "licensing" stuff then they should stick by the other aspects of it.

 

[sibelius]

New car... Lots of money

Depends. I have a few friends that have over 18,000 songs, one with 28,000 I asked him to play something from Turkey 2 weeks ago. Don't aks. ) on their system that they have downloaded, swapped with friends, ripped from friends CD's, etc, etc. Hmmm let me think about that a second. New car.....lots of music....new car....lots of music. hard decision. Is it right? I'm not making that call. But is it worth their time. I'd say yes.

Well... I think you've hit the nail on the head. Is it right? Let's see.... new car... lots of money... new car... lots of money. Hard decision here as well. Yep... I guess I'll just have to walk into a bank and take their money in the middle of the night. Shoot... it's insured, so who's it really hurting, right? I see no difference.

The new car/lots of songs isn't the issue. Is it right? Is it legal? THAT's the issue. You can't compare the new car/lots of songs debate until the legal issue is resolved, as it's not the same argument.

Personally, if I don't think the rights (5 computer + iPods) is enough for me then I always have the option of purchasing the music elsewhere, listening to it for free when it pops on the radio, or just purchasing the music from a CD store. Better yet, get it at a used CD shop, or Pawn shop. There are a LOT of different options to the 'stealing' method. No one is twisting my arm.

Besides, if you have enough music to listen to that would equal the cost of a new car I would venture to guess that you couldn't afford the car in the first place... too busy listening to music to work, sleep, eat, or anything else. Come on... 28,000 songs, at an average of 3.5 minutes each is over 1,600 hours of music. I think that's more of a physological addiction to 'collecting' stuff (or pack-ratting) than it is really appreciating the music. Even top record producers don't have that kind of time on their hands... and they live in the industry.

sibelius

 

[zync]

When I was in college, we didn't have mp3s or the internet, so we taped music off the radio. This was perfectly legal.

I fail to see how downloading music off the internet is much different.

What you, and apparently the music industry, mistakenly assume is that every downloaded song equals a lost sale... nothing could be further from the truth. On the one hand, you've got poor college students who wouldn't have bought the music anyway... no lost sale there. On the other hand, you've got people like me, who sample music before buying the CD. There is actually some evidence that the shutdown of Napster may have hurt the music industry more than it helped, for this very reason. People were discovering new music, and many were *buying* it.

This is the argument I have used from day one. It's true of all of these arguments the RIAA and MPAA have made. In downloading music I have found that I have bought stuff more often. I feel that if I've downloaded and artist that deserves to get paid, I'll pay them and I'll also have quality songs that I know are great because I've ripped them myself. If music downloading didn't exist I wouldn't buy the artists' stuff anyway. So as I see it by downloading stuff I've actually given them more money, besides the goal of "art," which is what they're producing when they call themselves artists, is to get your stuff out no matter what.

The same holds true for that movie ad they show in theaters. Not all of those people profit from the movie, and most of them are paid regardless of how well the film does. The only thing that gets hurt is, guess who, the execs. In the case of movies it's more understanding that it's harder for the movies to be made if people get stiffed with the costs, but when most of the money for a CD goes to a representational body that has no other affiliation to the artists except through their labels it becomes a little harder for such claims to be made.

I don't think anyone has said it better than Torajima. Either the person is poor and wouldn't buy the CD anyway so there's no loss of sale and possibly a new reference if the songs are good. On the other hand someone may sample it and decide to buy. It's only the people who have money to buy such CDs and who are frugal with their money to the point that if they can get away with stealing they won't pay. There is also the chance that someone will hear the rest of the songs and dislike the CD, but all that does it make the general public happy that they didn't buy something they didn't like and that keeps negative feedback about the artists under control. After all if someone gets stuck with a CD they are more likely to badmouth it.

I'm still making this complicated so here goes:

Poor college student - downloads with no intent to buy anyway, so if the service didn't exists they still wouldn't be able to buy (however keep in mind they may buy later)

Sampler - either buys it or doesn't (representing normal sales anyway)

Full on Thief - has the money but won't buy anyway (there's probably only a 50% chance that they'd buy in the first place)

So what's the RIAA to do? Well, leave downloading be, don't sue the consumers who might buy your albums, and don't make yourselves look like an ass since you aren't the record companies themselves anyway and you couldn't be further from the artists who produce the music you get rich off of!

Also: we're forgetting here that we're buying a lossy copy of the song from the get-go so we're not even getting a copy of the exact song! With this limit in mind it would seem like you should have greater freedom with the iTMS AAC than the CD itself. Any derivative of the CD (MP3, AAC, etc.) should be treated with the same regard. That, my friends, is like the tape copy of a song from the radio, which is legal, AFAIK, since it's not a master copy of the song but a derivative.

 

[applebum]

So as you can see, five copies may not be enough. Eventually I will have a studio with more than five computers and so this will become a problem. And yes we can expect to do whatever we dang well please because we paid for the license, just as you do with CDs. With CDs I can have as many copies as I can hold on a drive, why can't I with AAC.

I was all prepared to blast this statement, as it has been my understanding that we were only allowed to make one copy of a CD - much like software - just for backup purposes. I went to research that just to be sure and came across this:

"When the United States Constitution was drafted, the idea that authors were entitled to a copyright monopoly was proposed--and rejected [9]. Instead, the founders of our country adopted a different idea of copyright, one which places the public first[10]. Copyright in the United States is supposed to exist for the sake of users; benefits for publishers and even for authors are not given for the sake of those parties, but only as an inducement to change their behavior. As the Supreme Court said in Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal: "The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the [copyright] monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors."[11]

Under the Constitution's view of copyright, if the public prefers to be able to make copies in certain cases even if that means somewhat fewer works are published, the public's choice is decisive. There is no possible justification for prohibiting the public from copying what it wants to copy."

Link to article

This makes an interesting point that would seem to say that DRM is just wrong. Perhaps our copyright laws have been twisted beyond what our forefathers would have expected??

 

[zync]

I was all prepared to blast this statement, as it has been my understanding that we were only allowed to make one copy of a CD - much like software - just for backup purposes. I went to research that just to be sure and came across this:

"When the United States Constitution was drafted, the idea that authors were entitled to a copyright monopoly was proposed--and rejected [9]. Instead, the founders of our country adopted a different idea of copyright, one which places the public first[10]. Copyright in the United States is supposed to exist for the sake of users; benefits for publishers and even for authors are not given for the sake of those parties, but only as an inducement to change their behavior. As the Supreme Court said in Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal: "The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the [copyright] monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors."[11]

Under the Constitution's view of copyright, if the public prefers to be able to make copies in certain cases even if that means somewhat fewer works are published, the public's choice is decisive. There is no possible justification for prohibiting the public from copying what it wants to copy."

Link to article

This makes an interesting point that would seem to say that DRM is just wrong. Perhaps our copyright laws have been twisted beyond what our forefathers would have expected??

That's an interesting find. Actually I was working on the grounds that copying CDs cannot be stopped because it'd be too difficult to enforce without abolishing CDs altogether. I have heard that only one copy of a CD can be made but I feel that that is preposterous in and of itself. Sure, I can take that copy and put it into every CD player in my house so that the most I can have playing (though it would still be illegal under usage rights) in my house at one time is two.

However this gets back to licensing such as that which Apple uses to sell OS X. Sure I have a license to one copy of OS X Panther, which means that I can have OS X Panther on only one machine at a time. I could legally have it on two machines if each time I used it on another computer I removed it from one. However this is just pointless. A person only has the capacity to use one computer to it's full extent at a time (disregarding automated tasks and what have you) so why not just skip the middle step (which is pointless) and just install on two machines and be done with it? If I'm the only person using those two machines why would it be illegal?

The same argument goes with iTMS DRM. I can auth/de-auth an unlimited number of computers. Why not just let me auth an unlimited number of computers and be done with it? Why have DRM in the first place? Simple. The RIAA (which isn't even the artists and doesn't represent the artists mind you) wouldn't let that fly. However they figure that 5 computers is a reasonable (originally only 3) estimate on the amount of computers that can play the song. If it were unlimited I could give the file to anyone to use, however with only 5 copies that can be used, the most I can ever give out is 4 (5 if I don't keep a copy). While this satisfies the RIAA, it doesn't satisfy me, or anyone else I know outside of these forums.

It's pointless. You know what they really could do? Remove the limit of computers only. Each song is tied to an iTMS account. Why, then can't I have the song on all of my computers. The RIAA probably wouldn't believe this, but normal users don't like to give their account info out to just anyone. This is an automatic limiter to the amount of people that can use the song to the people who own the account. Wow, great solution, huh? It's already done in a correct manner, so why not remove that restriction?

Besides doesn't the Apple DRM allow unlimited iPods? I mean, you can listen to music from your iPod when it's connected to iTunes so what's stopping a person from giving the song to all of his friends that own iPods? Unless iTunes checks the file from the iPod to see that it's not authorized this will work. Otherwise they can still listen to it on their iPods. Fairplay seems to flip flop all over the place on who can listen to what and how much.

 

[Windowlicker]

Sure its fair enough if you own an iPod or have a win box that has XP or Win2k on it. But if you don't then the music you just paid for is impossible to play. Sure you could rip a bunch of CD's then re import them, but we are talking a lot of work, not to mention a reduction in sound quality. Stealing is different from using. There are laws that are violated by the use of DRM but that issue is not being addressed. So why are we paying for something that is less usable but more expensive? iTunes has done some really great things, but there needs to be more concessions made to the end user to really get a full blown adoption. Opening the DRM to others would be a start or just the elimination of it completely. And getting rid of lossy compression.

I don't use these apps to steal/trade/distribute but I do use it to play it on my other none mac machines. 5 machines might be enough for most but I happen to have several more than that and not all can run iTunes. So what am I to do? Personally I am hoping to be able to purchase loss-less music soon that has no DRM..... what a CD is currently. I like the single song concept, much better than the album, so I really hope apple is listening, because I know the record companies are not.

your case is clearly an exception, but then again, not all of us have a CD player hehe ;D no but honestly, I can't even use itms yet because of my location. i've been leeching loads of music in the past years, but when my incomes started going up I started buying music. I think it's totally ok to buy a cd and rip it (I do it all the time), but in case you wanna use itms, I think you just have to make your decision: to buy or not to buy. it's the same thing as it is with the copy protected cds, except for the part that copy protection on cds sucks big time because it lowers the usability dramatically (for example not being able to play on car cd players).

I quite don't trust the 128kbps aac. it sounds good with electronic music, rock, pop etc, but how about classical? I listen to mozart at 160kbps and can't really tell much difference to the original. so I think apple should offer us 160 or even 192kbps aac. the lossless format isn't that good an idea, because the files are still huge and therefore take loads of bandwidth when people dl them. also not many people wanna wait for the songs to load (350mb for an album takes it's time even on a 2mb connection). most people wouldn't probably care if their songs were say 96kbps aac (it sounds pretty good btw

apple made it easy for customers to buy the music and listen to it. they even allow you to burn plenty of copies (and if 7 isn't enough, you can always rip a burned cd and burn that one). so if the drm really has to be cracked then well, I guess I cannot do anything about it, but I still think it's pretty useless.

 

[Fofer]

You know, I have been breaking the DRM on these songs losslessly (aside from the loss built into ITMS songs) since day one. This requires no software. I simply plug my Mac into my stereo, play the playlist I want to record and then record it using my stereo comonent CD recorder. I realize that it is real time and a very slow process, but this is just what we had to do with tapes.

Sorry to break it to you bud, but this process is far from lossless! It might sound "good enough" to your ears, but it by no means is an identical bit-for-bit copy of the original.

Not to mention having to do it in real time... song by song, to differentiate individual tracks. (or do you just record the album as one long track?)

Ouch. I'd rather buy the download *and* the physical CD than put up with that crap.

 

[fpnc]

...I quite don't trust the 128kbps aac. it sounds good with electronic music, rock, pop etc, but how about classical? I listen to mozart at 160kbps and can't really tell much difference to the original. so I think apple should offer us 160 or even 192kbps aac....

It has been suggested that the iTunes Music Store's 128kbps AAC files are actually somewhat better than you can encode yourself at the same bit rate. Apparently they use a more advanced encoder and/or a higher quality setting than is available via the iTunes Player. I'm fairly certain that this was true when iTMS was first introduced, but lately I've seen some reports that the iTunes encoder has been updated so perhaps there's not as much difference now as there once was.

In any case, I think 128kbps AAC sounds very good, I have to listen very carefully to hear any difference between the copy and the original (and doing multi-source comparisons requires carefully matched volume levels in a very quiet room -- a difficult and somewhat uncertain task). Even after a good setup I find it difficult to explain how the samples differ, I guess I'd say that there is a very slight change in the background separation between instruments. I've also had a few friends try to tell the difference and I'd have to say that those results were no better than random selection. When asked to select the encoded sample over multiple trials they just as often selected the copy as they did the original. They concluded that the original and copy were too close in quality to reliably select one as different from the other. I don't find that to be true in all cases, but I can be a fairly critical judge.

I'll admit, however, that when I encode from my original CDs I typically use 192kbps (as a kind of safety margin and considering that I may want to perform a batch re-encode at a future date). So, I guess I'd also like to see AAC files offered at higher bit rates.

 

[sdunlapa]

So wait....i can't even export it to an .aiff or mp3 file to use in FCP??

I think "Fair use" should include using it in your own home movies....

That's what I'm talkin 'bout. Goodbye iTUNES!!!! Hello again, my friend, Limewire!!

 

[dekator]

Boneheads....

I know these two guys... they have a screaming 2MB internet pipe and they spend ALL THEIR TIME downloading these DVD image files off the internet, re-ripping the image files into these DiVX encoded pieces of crap and burning discs. They have THOUSANDS of these things. They spend hours, and hours, and hours, every single night doing this illegal stuff... all for movies that were videotaped in a theater that look like crap.

Me? I prefer to go to Target and drop $15 on the real DVD. It saves me about eight hours and my copy is perfect. Plus, I'm not a thief.

If they were to rack up the time they spend on blank media (not to mention the media you toss out because of a bad burn) the cost of their $150 per month internet connection, the TIME they spend tracking all these downloads... the time they spend on encoding, trimming, and editing these clips, etc., etc., etc.... all for a single movie. Divide all that time up into the $15 the disc would cost you at the store and you can easily see that they are actually PAYING money out of their own pockets in order to get these low-quality rips for "free".

sibelius

Well, actually you can just start a download and let it run. Tracking downloads doesn't take more time than buying a DVD. Blank media, yes but they don't cost you a penny if you just leave the stuff on the computer. I'd personally not re-rip this stuff into DVDs as the quality is too poor. I do buy DVDs... but not each single one. It's really just a question of how much you download, a simple calculation.
Other than that, why do files have to be protected ? As you said yourself, protection can be circumvented. Ok, DRM makes it a little harder...
Still, downloaded songs should only have one string attached to them: "Please don't share illegally".
We used to recorded LPs on tape and no-one made a fuss... The reason the RI does now is simply greed. Boy, if I get to download music in decent quality I'm most certainly willing to pay. Still, 128kbps AACs just don't do it for me. Apple should really offer files in their lossless format.

 

[SiliconAddict]

I've looked, but I just don't see anything in any open-source license that says the licensor (i.e. Apple) must produce application software for a particular flavor of UNIX. If the people who created the software Apple is using wanted something specific for it, then they shouldn't have released their software as open-source. It's not an "open-source unless you happen to make some highly desirable software" license.

Is apple required to? Obviously not. But you'd think it would be common courtesy that they might throw a bone to the open source community.

 

[niar]

100 Positive 50 Negative - that's positive!!

at least there is 100 votes positive..

 

[michaelal]

I don't usually run into the DRM problems, and I'm glad Apple gives us the ability to buy and download music. But I, for one, like the idea of stripping out the DRM without losing quality because, in theory, Apple could simple shut down the service one day and make all of the music I purchased useless once I buy a new computer. That's the same kind of thing as the problem of a DVD getting damaged - without the ability to copy the DVD, I'm out of luck and have to buy it again.

I do think DRM in technically evil, but I also think that consumers will drive keeping DRM from being too restrictive. People won't buy music they can't listen to in the manner they wish.

It would be nice if Apple put in their contract that, should they shutdown the service, we will be given a program to strip out the DRM. That would only be fair.

And what happens in the future when none of this stuff matters to Apple anymore. We will be left with songs we can't use, convert or play on our new 'xyz' machine. Copy protection is just plain wrong. A generation ago we found out that it caused nothing but problems for the software industry over the long run and we will find that to be true in the future for the music industry. Somehow we have been made to believe that $.99 a song is a bargain. What a crock. These are compressed songs with some loss and a whole album's worth (various artists) is going to cost almost the same price as a CD. Where is the bargain in all that. As usual the fat cats just keep getting richer trying find ways to strangle your hard earned money from you. Put a fair price on all music and leave it un-copy protected and MOST of the problems with all of this will disappear on there own.

 

[spud]

broken already...

"iTunes 4.5: iTunes 4.5 uses a new authentication algorithm. However, not even 24 hours after I downloaded it, and that includes a little sleep and lots of uni time, I've broken it. Hah. Anyhow, libopendaap 0.2.0 and tunesbrowser 0.1.4 are now available."

go find the link yourselves...

this is in reference to the LAN music sharing feature. apple has it so only itunes as client can access music on itunes as server. for 4.1, there were a slew of programs that got around this, so linux users (among others) could access this feature. in 4.5 they changed the authentication algorithm for this feature, and it was broken by this guy

 

[ethernet76]

Yep... this is a must-do for Apple. Apple needs to keep appearances of protecting the DRM - otherwise, the labels aren't going to like it.

arn

So what exactly is it the music industry isn't going to like?

The copies bought off of iTunes are generally lower quality than what you would find when someones rips off a CD. Most people don't trade ACC files, I can't remember once when I've downloaded one. Also, when made my ACC files available to others no one has downloaded them.

I find the DRM extremely restrictive and have stripped it from all my songs and won't upgrade my computer until the new fairplay comes out.

So here is what I get with a 9.95 album. More restrictions, no jewel case or alvum art, and lower quality medium. Having to authorize is real convienient when you don't have an internet connection and all you want to is just play a song off of my iPod. Also,

I use more than three computers and I don't think it's fair that I am only allowed to listen to my music when the record companies feel I should.

I use to be all about iTMS, but it's not listener friendly.

Call me a theif, but I do more to support music than most anyone else here does. I go to shows. I buy CDs from up and coming bands that rely on their homemade copies to get started. I buy merchandise from bands. All of these are almost pure profit for the band members. As downhill battle pointed out, artists get 11 cents of every song you buy. Eleven cents. That's 11 percent of something they created. It's like buying a painting, but the artist only getting 11 percent because well someone had to frame it, put it in a gallery, buy it. They're not gouging they're just taking their "fair share." Please, Apple makes 35 cents per song.

 

[applebum]

Sorry to break it to you bud, but this process is far from lossless! It might sound "good enough" to your ears, but it by no means is an identical bit-for-bit copy of the original.

Ok - how's that? I know if you are using an analog connection there will be some loss along the line, but that is minimal. If I record straight from a cd to another cd on my stereo, there is no compression. I may change some equalizer settings and change the sound of the original, but I am not losing much from what is there. Certainly much less lossy than ripping to mp3 and then re-importing.

Beyond that, the point primarily is that there are ways to continue using the music - even if Apple were to go out of business. It may not be ideal, but it is still an option

 

[applebum]

And what happens in the future when none of this stuff matters to Apple anymore. We will be left with songs we can't use, convert or play on our new 'xyz' machine.

What happened to tape when CD's became popular? I had a bunch of tapes and wound up buying many of them again on CD. This is what happens when a new media takes over. Beyond that, you are simply being an alarmist. DRM will be broken every time. The difference is that when Apple stops doing ITMS, they won't put out new software that breaks the DRM breaking software.

Somehow we have been made to believe that $.99 a song is a bargain. What a crock.

Actually this is called demand. The fact that 70 MILLION songs have been downloaded would suggest that there are a whole lot of people that think that .99 is fair.

These are compressed songs with some loss and a whole album's worth (various artists) is going to cost almost the same price as a CD. Where is the bargain in all that.

Apparently this whole bunch of people feel that there are benefits to not buying a whole album when you only want 2 songs, not having to drive to the store, to not having another CD that just takes up room, etc. etc.

As usual the fat cats just keep getting richer trying find ways to strangle your hard earned money from you. Put a fair price on all music and leave it un-copy protected and MOST of the problems with all of this will disappear on there own.

Yeah um, no one strangled my hard earned cash from my warm alive hands. I gave it up willingly. I have determined that the songs I buy from ITMS have a fair price - for me. I have determined that the copy protection isn't a problem - for me. I will continue to buy as long as I feel this way. It's not like the ITMS has gotten rid of brick and mortar stores - if you feel that the ITMS sells music that is not fairly priced or is not a bargain, then keep going to the real stores and buy the actual cd. Each to his own.

 

[corvus]

broken already...

"iTunes 4.5: iTunes 4.5 uses a new authentication algorithm. However, not even 24 hours after I downloaded it, and that includes a little sleep and lots of uni time, I've broken it. Hah. Anyhow, libopendaap 0.2.0 and tunesbrowser 0.1.4 are now available."

go find the link yourselves...

This is just breaking the sharing, not the decoding.

However, it's still ethically wrong. People need to be paid for their work. These types of programs are for stealing from Apple.

 

[Steve M]

Please, Apple makes 35 cents per song.

They most certainly do not "make" 35 cents per song. Most of that goes into keeping the iTunes Music Store running. Remember, the iTunes Music Store exists primarily to sell iPods. The small profit Apple made last quarter was pretty much unexpected.

 

[kryten2000]

I think is fantastic that Apple is going after these programs. They do need to go away. Especially because of the fact that there is a built-in DRM-stripping tool right inside iTunes...just burn an audio cd...

But aren't you losing quality when doing this on an already quite lossy compression. Too bad you cant download tunes from the store in the new apple lossless codec