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QTFairUse6 Updated Hours After iTunes7 Release
Nrbelex writes "Mere hours after iTunes 7's release, QTFairUse6 has received an update which enables it to continue stripping iTunes songs of their 'FairPlay' DRM. Some features are experimental but at least it's proof that the concept still works."
When third-party vendors start adding essential features like this, and on a timely basis, I start thinking about subscribing/installing/whatever you have to do to iTunes
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
So an update to the iTunes software just means an update to the memory address offset to read the data from. Piece of cake.
Does anyone know how much the iTunes DRM scheme changed with the new release?
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
will the iTunes people and the Media Monopolies in general learn that they will NEVER win the DRM war and all they are doing is costing themselves money and customers?
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Only a matter of time till both Apple and MS initiate lawsuits on those that cracked their DRM. No doubt aided and abetted by the **AA. The silver lining is that if this gets to the SC, the DMCA *might* get struck down as unconstitutional.
[Insert pithy quote here]
In a DRM system, the consumer's machine needs to get both the encrypted content, and the key to decrypt this content. Otherwise, the consumer cannot listen to the audio he just purchased. As long as we listen to music with our analog ears, and watch video with our analog eyes, this will be the case.
As any cryptographer will tell you: if you have the cyphertext and the correct key, you can decrypt the content. Therefore, DRM systems are, by their very definition, nothing more than security by obscurity. It is a cryptographical pipe dream.
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That was quick. Almost too quick...
Have you read my journal today?
Later in the thread they refer to a "fast dumping" feature which does not use real-time capture. Not sure how that works; in any case the fast dumping doesn't work w/iTunes 7 yet,
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I beleive the dignified response a consumer should give to Apple and other makers of DRM is:
"Neener neener naw naw," coupled with happy-dancing around the computer desk.
Oh You POS
Honestly, the reason people do this, is because most DRM, like [un-]'FairPlay', prevents a lot of valid and legitimate use.
I have well over 200 CDs in my CD cases at home, many probably have copy protection on them, though I've never done anything special to get around it (well, one CD crashes my Windows computer no matter what I do, so I don't put it in there). I have copies of all of these on my HD. Not so I can share the music with others online, I've never shared one song, but because I don't want the cpu hogging garbage the CP puts on my computer, and because I don't want to listen to one CD at a time, and switch every time I want a new song, especially since this risks damaging the CDs. On top of that, I want to listen to it on whatever device I have, be it my notebook, my desktop, my sterio, or my portable audio player. In this last case, DRM can cause major headaches and hinderances. Kein danke.
It restores my faith in humanity that there are people who willingly and freely help us preserve up our legitimate interests, when companies would try to take it away from us for a few extra bucks.
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I hope Apple didn't spend too much time and effort on that, being that it only took a few hours for people to undo it. DRM is a pain. I don't particularily believe in downloading content I haven't paid for... but if I own something I should not be limited in how I want to use it. Kind of reminds me of Sony's shady DRM system on some of their CDs that you have to install their spyware to be able to use. And to think I'd purchased it and I still had all those restrictions on what I could do with it. I think that media companies don't seem to want to do themselves any favors with fans in all of this. At least it would appear so.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
They're capturing the unencrypted and unencoded audio stream? That means that they're transcoding if they store it as an AAC file, right?
I really do fear that the future will be riddled with incompatibilities from DRM.
I'm an "Apple Fanboy" but have limited my iTunes purchases to a few albums. CDs are still considerably more flexible regarding how and where I can use the music. Sure I own an iPod, but I also own a phone and PSP that can both play music. I also have a device that will play MP3s through my TV. None of those last three will play my FairPlay music. While I accept the limitations of the player, it's simply frustrating at times.
Regarding the new Apple Movie Store, let me get this right... we pay $9.99 (to $14.99) for a movie... that's of a lower quality than DVD and can't really be moved outside of your local network (it's not like you can take it over to a friends house without unauthorizing their computer and authorizing their computer under your username). Just trying to explain this to my fiance made her eyes glaze over. Her exact words: "sounds compleicated... why not just go to the movie store."
no, because people who don't have legitimate uses find easy ways around them.
The people who stick to legitimate uses are more likely to give up and say "forget it, I guess I won't use it for my legitimiate use because I can't", and not bother looking for a crack.
The only people that DRM hurts is the honest people who are not technically inclined.
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here is no legitimate reason to strip the DRM from iTunes Store purchases
Itunes music didn't work particularly well on my Sandisk MP3 player till I burned it to CD-R and then extracted it as MP3. It quickly got to be too much hassle, so I stopped using Itunes.
[Insert pithy quote here]
The majority of people don't have DRM-laden music at all, yet most people have hundreds or thousands of songs. Mostly downloaded. Sure, there are a few who thinks that DRM-laden music at $.99 a piece is a bargain but I can't see how the market have spoken in favour of DRM when 99% of the music on peoples hardrives don't have DRM.
So, I could download something from iTunes, and without hassle, put it on my non-apple MP3 player, have a copy on my work (windows) PC, my home (Windows) PC, my notebook (BSD), and use it on my Audiotron player (MP3 and WMA compatable) that pipes it through my sterio?
Somehow I doubt it, yet those are all legitimate uses.
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Is that by stripping the DRM, they're actually supporting the iTunes model and therefore the record labels because people will continue to buy from them instead of switching to the non DRM competition.
It's the same reason MS don't come down too hard on piracy of their OS and office suites. It actually supports their business.
Deleted
Simple answer. Also a simple reason.
How many people use iTunes? How many of them know about and use the circumvention tool? No matter how many it may be, the answer is invariably "not all of them". I.e. some cannot copy their songs for friends. And those friends will thus also buy the songs.
Copy protection does work. Not flawlessly, not against everyone, but at least SOME people will be kept from copying. Whether those people would have copied altogether and whether inconveniencing your paying customers is a viable business practice is a different question, though.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
ummm, 1 billion+ songs sold with DRM, and that's just from itunes. perhaps you have misinterpreted what the free market has said... [i am not advocating DRM, just commenting on the previous post]
iTunes works not because you can't copy the song or because of DRM. It works because of two simple reasons:
1. price
2. easy to use
Fairly simple. 99 cents is a sum that convinces people it's more convenient to click and pay than to fire up a filesharing system or phone 'round with their friends. It downloads quickly and it's guaranteed to work with your iPod, no need to wonder what format or how to transfer it, the software is built to fit.
That's what makes it popular and that's why people pay for it. I bet a sizable sum that most of them didn't even notice yet that it contains DRM. Simply because nobody bothered to try to copy it instead of simply clicking and paying the buck.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, I don't see how.
DRM means the vast majority of people purchasing from iTunes can't share their music on P2P. However, the vast majority of people purchasing from iTunes wouldn't P2P share their music anyway.
Meanwhile, it does nothing to stop people who download music. The music is still out there. Yes, even ripped from iTunes.
I can't even vaguely begin to guess what iTune's DRM is supposed to be accomplishing, what obstacles it is putting in the way.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The free market isn't really so free, is it? Where's my Drug-n-Hooker Mart? That's it, I'm making my own free market, with drugs, and hookers! In fact, forget the free market part. I'm moving to an island someplace and I'm taking all the drugs and hookers with me. All you squares can have fun with your drug-and-hooker-less so-called free market.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'm supporting the digital distibution model. I buy m4p tracks and convert them to m4a.
Record companies don't notice, they got their money and I'm not sharing the unprotected files.
Only person that should care is Apple, as I can now shift from ipod when the whim takes me. Currently I'm not in a huge rush, I'm perfectly happy with it by and large, but I hated the feeling of being trapped.
Actually, I can think of a couple perfectly legit reasons involving things that I want to do.
1. I have been unable to listen to my music on my XP x64 installation. I've been using this as my primary PC for a while now, and I've been unable to play any of my M4Ps since iTunes won't even install (until today). I spent a long time looking for an older iTunes 6 installation, but to no avail. I'll see if I can get things working again tonight. If I could strip the DRM, I'd just open up any number of other players and listen in Media Player or Winamp.
2. I have a car MP3-CD player. I cannot convert my M4Ps to MP3 without wasting a bunch of CDs. iTunes doesn't let you create an MP3 CD with your protected songs. If iTunes allowed me to burn an MP3 CD with those protected songs, or if I stripped the DRM, I could make that MP3 CD and have my music with me in the car.
Yes, I know that if the DRM was easily removed the *AA would be all over them... I understand that this isn't all on Apple, and they have to at least try to keep their music locked down. And no, I'm not going to go spend $400+ just to listen to music I already bought.
DRM has no legitimacy period.
There is also no legitimate reason to inconvenience your paying customer and lock him into protection schemes at all. Whether it's some arbitrary number of copies he may hold or other limitations imposed on him. What happens to my music when I went through 5 computers (you know the MTBF is shrinking quickly in the current hardware, yes?), not every song is fast food like current pop music. I might still want to be able to listen to it in 10 years.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But on the other hand the free market has ALSO said they want badly the product apple is selling and are willing to put up with a lot of nonsense to get it. If "people" really wanted to send a clear message to the record companies about DRM they would simply not purchase or deal with DRM'd material.
uh huh. So, tell me, since I carry a Palm Treo with me, which is perfectly capable of playing MP3s (except for the DRM), how then do I play itunes files on my Treo? Why should I have to by a separate box to play my iTunes files?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Yeah sure. Wanting to listen to purchased music on Linux systems is wrong.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
I think Apple has procedures for deauthorizing a computer and adding a new one in its place. Unless you're going through computers like the Flash, it shouldn't be much of a hassle.
There is no legitimate reason to strip the DRM from iTunes Store purchases.
Some of us use MP3 players not produced by Apple, or OSes that Apple has refused to produce a player for.
Of course, some of us also don't buy damn crippled music from Apple, but claiming there is 'no legitimate reason' for stripping DRM is idiotic. It's format shifting, and there are plenty of legitimate reasons to do it. Hell, maybe we want to use it as a ringtone.
I find it sort of funny that it's magically okay to take a legally purchased song from a CD and copy and alter the data to get it on an iPod, but it's not okay to take a legally purchased song from Apple and copy and alter the data to get it on a different brand of portable music device.
I mean, it was one thing when the record industry was arguing that any copying was illegal. That stance was at least consistent. Now they're letting Apple sell music using software with features explicitly designed to copy CDs, but somehow it's 'wrong' to do a different format shift.
I guess slapping the logo 'DRM' on it makes it somehow morally different.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I won't argue; that is a very valid point. However, DRM is the wrong route.
The pirates are breaking the law - lawsuits are fine, government action is fine, but inhibiting non-theft useage is just wrong.
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Besides, even when something is illegal, it does not mean that something is not a right thing to do.
What about something as simple as wanting to play it in the audio software of my choice? Personally I like MixMeister Pro, it's DJ software, and gives me the kind of control I want in a music player (which iTunes is lacking).
iTunes DRM is purposeful incompatibility designed into the codec. Frankly, unless Apple opens this format for others to implement on non-Apple hardware/software, shortly they're going to start risking wandering into antitrust territory, as they become the vast majority player in the market. Other companies have been burned for purposely taking great lengths to make their dominant product incompatible with competetor's products in order to lock their customers in. This is no different other than that Apple is a broker and not a producer.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
There are a lot of arguments about how bad DRM is and why it is stupid and how it restricts one's fair use.
The arguments lack one perspective, that the purchase of music from iTunes, et. al., comes with certain conditions. There is no fundamental right to purchase anything free of conditions, so when music companies and online retailers decide that they will offer music that is ensconced in DRM, that is a business and marketing decision that they make, assuming that people will forgo some freedoms in order to have the convienience.
The sort of "active" protest over DRM that is represented by tools to strip the DRM merely confirms that the market for the music exists and offers no reason for the music companies to move away from DRM. A better protest would be to boycott the entire DRM scheme altogether and only seek music from outlets that provide it free of DRM.
Will you still be able to get all of the CCR and Radiohead from other, non-DRM outlets? No, but if you want to make a point with a corporation, you need to do it by removing yourself from the market. The problem that I see is that many people want to have it both ways; they want all of the convience of an iTunes or Rhapsody, or similar, none of the DRM and want all of this without any real sacrifice.
A major problem today is the erroneous sense of entitlement that pervades so much. Too many people think that they are entitled to market for products that suits their needs and are willing to resort to unethical, if not blatantly criminal, activity to create that market. The truth is that the online music market will only change when providers are losing money because their markets have shrunk and they must retool the offering. AS long as people buy the DRM'ed music, that won't happen.
I think it's a symptom of technology, personally. We love technology as good little consumer whores. Well, just so happens, so do the greedy bastards at record labels. Just as much as we like to use technology, in increasingly grave amounts to make our lives easier, faster, dumber, cheaper, smoother, so do they. Unfortunatly, it's become far too easy for them to screw with our lives as far as consumption of entertainment goes.
Perhaps it's time for them to be taught that their product is simply not as valuable as they think it is and try to sue us into thinking it is as well.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
I read that headline and thought that Trolltech had adjusted the QT license in response to the new iTunes.
Besides, even when something is illegal, it does not mean that something is not a right thing to do.
amen brother, lets go to boston and throw a bunch of AAC's in the harbor!!
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
There are teo and only two choices when you want content from the major providers. Protected content (aka DRM) or advertising. There is no third choice when the production budget for a movie like Cars is $90 million dollars.
Hell, maybe we want to use it as a ringtone.
Why don't you pay the five dollars to download your ringtone?
Note: Yes it was a joke.
That procedure requires the computer still be running. Suffer a crash that requires an OS reinstall or replacement and you're down one machine, forever. Better to preemptively strip the DRM from what you buy and not have to worry about it. It's a symptom of our corporate whore government that doing so is technically a criminal act in the United States.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
As I see it (in my own cynical way) DRM is not really about copy protection, it is for profit protection. Many people absolutely love itunes, the interface is highly intuitive and it is a nice, easy, hassle free way to buy music. The caveat is of course you have to buy one of Apple's players to use it, and of course when your player dies, or when new content comes out your player can't handle you have to use - another apple branded player!!
It boils down to the fact that once you have bought into Apple's DRM you are stuck having to either stick with apple branded players for the rest of your life, or resort to something like hymn or QTFairPlay to listen to your music, and end up breaking laws. Plus of course most people won't bother with the hassle of decrypting music and just buy another ipod anyway. Either way the upshot is, the industry wins the customer loses.
Apple does not care one way or another about how the RIAA/MPAA view DRM as long as they can get content. Apple wants to keep DRM so you have to buy iPods. If you could easily strip iTunes DRM and put it on any player then Apple's bread and butter high margin hardware business has to deal with much more competition (their margins on media sales are garbage). Right now if you like iTunes - you either only listen/view on your Mac/PC or iPod. Apple owns the DAP market and has a small though not completely insignificant workstation and laptop market percentage.
2. Use a CD-RW.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Sorry, but QTFairUse6 does NOT break DRM in the same way that Hymn, et. al. do it. Hymn breaks DRM by getting the keys and decrypting the files itself. What QTFairUse does is... use iTunes to break it (relying on the fact that you have ciphertext, a key, and a black box (iTunes) that can take those two inputs and produce unencrypted audio).
If you examine the source code, you'll see why it hasn't been ported to Mac - it isn't portable. It relies on the fact that for a brief period of time, there will be a frame of decrypted AAC data. It first attaches to the iTunes process, then it attaches a breakpoint inside of iTunes. You play your audio, and when iTunes finishes decrypting a frame of m4p, it hits the breakpoint. Then QTFairUse, acting as a debugger, grabs a copy of the AAC memory buffer, and writes it to a file, which is (surprise) unencrypted. (This was how the first iTunes hack was done, too).
What QTFairUse6/MyFairTunes does is make it entirely automated by faking out a debugger. If you knew where to set the breakpoint, and where in memory to find the unencrypted data, you could basically do the same thing with your bog-standard VisualStudio debugger (albeit more slowly).
The iTMS 6 format wasn't broken, just an alternate attack vector was found. And it might be more difficult in OS X, since a process can prevent itself from being debugged by setting permissions to do so.
That's why QTFairUse is version specific - it needs to know where to find the memory buffer, and where to set the breakpoint.
Thanks, that explains it.
To say the DRM has no legitimacy is just plain stupid. Reminds me of the similarly moronic 'All music should be free' line around in the Napster days. Apple was the first company to give us a decent model of legal music downloads. I'm happy that Apple instituted something that prevents(or at least slows down) music from appearing on P2P networks. People have a right to be paid for their work. I understand that people want to put their music on whatever they want and they should be able to. But technically iTunes isn't selling you that. You are allowed to authorize 5 computers, burn it 5 times (or something like that), and put it any iPod you want. They tell you that. None of that is hard to read fine print. If you don't like it don't buy it from them. DRM, or something like it, is a necessity in preventing the average person from being able to share their whole library with the world. Anyone here could get around it. Many outside of slashdot cyberwalls can't. At least not without effort or help. DRM isnt perfect and apple should improve it. But eliminating it completely just isnt the answer.
www.unofficiall.com
Actually, this is relevant.
I signed up for Vongo a couple of weeks ago. Downloaded a movie or two. Being a geek with toys, I figured, "ok, I'll download a movie and play it on my PSP".
No dice. WMV with DRM (PlaysForSure? Riiight...), and my PSP isn't a suported player.
So, hunting around, I came across 'FairUse4WM' - which failed to work.
I called up Vongo and canecelled my account. The very nice girl asked me the reason, and I responded, "Your service uses DRM, and I'm just not cool with that." When she asked me to expand, I said, "Well, I wanted to play a movie on my PSP, and there was no way to do it. I'm not saying 'Get it to work on a PSP', I'm saying, 'get it to work on anything I might own that can play digital video'"
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What does a movie have to do with the discussion at hand? We're talking about music here, and it costs far less than $90 million to record an album. I've heard estimates of $100k-200k for overpriced big-label records, and I'm sure independent labels and artists can do it much cheaper with today's technology.
Strangely enough, however, those $90-250 million movies only cost $10-20 on a DVD. Yet music CDs, which cost three orders of magnitude less to make, cost just as much money to buy. Something's fishy there.
Isn't that pretty much the case, though?
Apple sells 10s of millions of iPods per quarter, but the number of units of iTunes music sold is, if I recall correctly, an order of magnitude lower than that.
We've got lots of razors, but aren't going back to the till for so many blades, especially ones that only fit in our personal shaver and can't be shared with our closest friends [some of whom are quite hairy...]
Use iTunes to make an audio CD, then rip that CD to whatever form of digitized audio you want. You'll also have created a backup in the process. If you don't want any quality loss, rip to PCM or lossless format. If you're willing to sacrifice a decrease in quality similar to when you rip standard CDs, then rip to MP3.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Can someone please explain why this is necessary? Can't you still just play the song with itunes and record from the wav source with a tool like Audacity?
Maybe I'm missing something.
No, I think the free market has said in this case, "Weak DRM is ok as long as we can nullify it when we feel like it."
I wonder what would happen to iTMS's popularity if Apple did away with burning CDs/ripping DRMless MP3s, and made their DRM airtight in iTunes 8. THe **IA's would be exuberant. And sales would plummet.
As an ITMS customer, the only reason I buy from iTMS is because I know I can convert all my purchases to DRMless MP3--and I do, every one. If Apple makes (breaks) it such that I can't do that anymore, I just won't buy from iTMS anymore.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Even if you have the artists' permission in writing or by email.
iTunes is an end-consumer content delivery platform. Its not meant for people who want to do anything beyond just playing the piece.
I podcast so the contents is useless to me.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
So you're saying DRM is important because it keeps honest people honest.
Yeah, I buy that. I'm going to go sell a product that keeps left-handed people left-handed.
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Hey, fucker. I don't own an iPod. I like to listen to music and watch video on my Dell Axim (w/ 2G SD card). Does that mean I'm not allowed to use iTunes?
Yeah. Thought so. How about thinking for a second before speaking.
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Nah. I think you're the moron for adhering to anything that restricts fair and honest use of something you've paid for. Me? TOS or not, if I'm gonna use iTunes (which I started doing since QTFairUse6 came out), I'm going to do it freely.
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If I'm hearing your correctly, you actually like the idea of purchasing a song that is already in a lossy format (less quality that the original CD), and you then reconvert that in a lossy manner to mp3? You're paying for songs and degrading the quality twice, and you like this?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
On the other hand, did Apple ever promise you'd be able to? I mean, you knew what you were getting into before you bought the music, right? It's all documented, and you agreed to the EULA before you clicked the "buy" button.
So Apple is selling the exact product they promised to you-- and you're griping that the product isn't something entirely different. At least, that's what Apple's point of view is like.
Comment of the year
Well, if you were using BitTorrent you were also uploading to others, not all of whom necessarily have paid for that episode. That's pretty clearly against the fundamental tenet of copyright law - you don't have the right to distribute that episode (this applies even if you do have the right to download it). So, cutting off your internet access was pretty reasonable in that case.
P.S. Don't take this as an indication that I personally approve of copyright laws. Sneakernet FTW!
In other words: It hurts honest people, but because it prevents casual "piracy", it is deemed a success. Nobody ever expected DRM to stop "piracy" completely. DRM is also a success in that it can cause consumers to buy the same content multiple times, so that they can use it on all their devices.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Believe it or not, I can barely hear the difference.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Yes, you're hearing me correctly (I expect your hearing is very good). I do love music, but I don't consider myself an audiophile and such "degradations in quality" are imperceptible to my ear. Saves me money in audio equipment and headphones, too.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Hmmm, looks like someone was not paying attention too well to the keynote yesterday. With itunes 7, you can now sync your ipod with all authorized computers, meaning, itunes will now grab all the songs off of the ipod and copy them over to the computer, across multiple machines. Again, the caveat is that each machine (mac or pc) needs to be running itunes 7, and needs to be authorized with an apple account...
I didn't miss the "without hassle" part. I made the obviously incorrect assumption that since you post to /., you're competent and proficient in such things. Maybe you can have your mommy do it for you.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The GPL uses copyright law to prevent greed. DRM uses copyright law to force greed. See the difference?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
...no need to burn iTunes purchased music to a CD and then rip to MP3. (if you're using OS X, that is.)
Audio Hijack intercepts the audio stream, stores it, and then gives you the option to safe it in diverse formats, including MP3 or a lossless format.
It also does the same thing with any streaming audio source, as well. Real, WMA, et al.
US$16.00. Worth every cent, in my opinion.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Yeah, and just Google for how many songs are downloaded each month on p2p. That 1 billion+ looks like chump change in comparison. Compare any 12 month period of iTunes (and other DRM-encrusted downloads) to the same 12 moths of p2p downloads. The game is not even close. The *majority* of the technically savvy market have said no to DRM and it is evident every day by the millions of downloads on p2p. Sadly it is the non-technically savvy that get the short end of the stick and get stuck with DRM limitations.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
This sounds like a job for a VMWare appliance. A cut down windows install that launches iTunes, and QTFairUse6.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
> Kein danke.
{\nitpick Actually this means Not a thank you!. You likely wanted to say Nein, Danke! (No, thanks!).}
"Yours to Keep"
How ironic!
Quality would be the same, too.
why won't iTunes let you copy music from the iPod to the computer? - It's insane!
It's not insane, but it is a bit annoying. Luckily, the music on an iPod is unencrypted, and simply arranged openly as files on its file system. Mount the device, read the files, simple as that. Or use one of any number of simple utilities that do that for you. Job jobbed.
DRM isn't really about directly screwing the consumers. It's no surprise that most iTunes customers aren't inconvenienced that much. But, you should be pissed that you are pawns in a game to screw the artists.
You are being gently but persistently rounded up into a group that works best if you buy iPods, use iTunes, and most importantly, buy content from the big distributors that sell via iTunes. If this were ever to not become the case, then the artists might actually get anough clout to get a decent contract.
No one is doing anything to outright prevent you from straying form the group, but it's happening. You have less choices of players due to DRM (there are ways around, but it's easiest if you stay in the group). You have less choices of download stores because of DRM (try using the Windows friendly services with your iPod). Also, anyone that makes software that makes it easy to stray from the group is punished as a violator of the DMCA, due to the need to remove the DRM.
Sure there are alternatives, but they are really just one big alternative group being hearded together with WMA based DRM.
Your apathy towards DRM isn't all that different than an apathy toward a company that uses child labor to bring you good prices. Only in this case, you're helping forge the chains that bind the artists of the world. In the clothing industry, your argument would amount to "XYZ company gives us the styles we want at the prices we want. Why all this talk about Malaysian children working 16 hours a day?"
BTW, iPods would still be the wonderful devices you claim they are without DRM. DRM adds nothing. So why should we put up with any amount of DRM on our devices?
Nope. DRM just forces those non-technically inclined dishonest people to go to a technically inclined dishonest person who has already cracked the DRM and buy the media at 1/10th the face value. In the process it also creates new criminal enterprises and funds existing organized crime. Who do you think is selling those CDs full of ripped MP3s on the street corners in Brooklyn? The Girl Scouts?
As for buying the same song multiple times, that is just stupid. Why would we accept that new technology actually works worse than the old stuff unless we were given no choice and that lack of choice was being maintained by force of law? Digital cell phones sound worse than the old analog ones, but allow the phone companies to run 100 calls on the hardware that used to support 10. Modern digital music (MP3s and other compressed formats) sounds worse than good old-fashioned CD music, while often allowing the companies to control us through DRM. Satellite radio and TV lose signal more than tradition radio and TV technologies, while making what a VCR made easy in the '80s difficult again. Modern music is sold as a $1 iPod song, a $2.99 downloadable song on my cell phone and a $1.99 ring tone (yes, on the same phone I have to buy it as a song and as a ringtone!!!), and through the wonders of DRM and the DMCA, I have little to no choice.
All this damage occured so that we can prevent digital file sharing that was never proven to cause losses to anyone to begin with. We enacted these horrible laws and invented this horrible technology on the unfounded fear that somebody might lose some money.
What if Apple promised me that after 3 and a half years of useage, if I didn't write them a letter with the word "Steve" on it and send it to a special address in the Congo, they'd get to take my house?
You see, when they say "We'll let you download and play music". People have an expectation of what that means. The courts have also spelled out some of what that means. Both of those boil down a reasonable expectation that "I can play it on any of my devices that are designed to play digital music". Apple can't simple erase that with a EULA, it's guaranteed by the constitution in the same law that guarantees copyright protection to the record labels.
The only reason Apple gets away with DRM is that there is another law that although it doesn't change my rights to fair use, it effectively prevents my exercising that right -- the DMCA. Apple only agrees to DRM because they wouldn't get the contracts to sell the music if they didn't. Apple would be more than happy to widen the envelope of compatible music and not have to maintain a DRM system.
BTW, nearly all EULAs in the computer world state that the software is not guaranteed to do anything useful and the vendor has no responsibility to make it work or to compensate you if the software causes any problems. If your copy of Mac OSX or Windows doesn't work, I'm sure you won't stand for "But you are getting exactly what we promised you. Read the EULA."
If you think the 2-minute snippets of news you get from PBS (or any other TV news service) are more informative than a multiple-page article in almost any major print publication, that's just nuts. Despite disclaimers to the contrary, public broadcasters are just as much in the "business" of drawing eyeballs as commercial stations, with the concomitant bias towards cheap sound-bites, pandering to the bread-and-circuses crowd, and pop-psych "analysis." They may not be drawing money from traditional advertisers, but their revenue stream is at least partly based on market share; how many people are listening during the next funding drive and if big sponsors think getting their name attached to a show is likely to help their public image.
At no time has television news (of any kind-public or private) appeared interested in or able to expend the time necessary to give background information and in-depth coverage of complex issues. This is especially true when it comes to situations where there's some horrific video to show. You'll find the PBS cameras pan the carnage just as lovingly as the cameras of "commercial" organizations, with the same cliched phrases and the same trite wrap-up.
While not every printed news source does better (USA Today is like a printed version of TV news) far and away the majority regularly bring a depth and breadth to news that television news just doesn't match. In my opinion, this is likely to continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.
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You make valid points. And you are inferring what I never said nor implied.
I said exactly DICK about any of the topics you mentioned. Artists getting screwed by the record companies. Mate, that's been happening since the days of Edison max cylinders. If musicians are getting themselves screwed by a record company, here in the 21st Century, fuck 'em! It's their own fault. Change companies when the contract is up and learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of every sodding musician who got screwed by a record company.
Why the hell would I want to use a Windows music service? iTunes PWN3D the digital music industry the day it became the iTunes Music Store.
Some of us, get our music legally from sources other than iTunes. We still put those files on our iPods, along with the files we buy from the iTunes store. And in my own case, every file I buy from ITMS gets run through Audio Hijack Pro and converted to an MP3 file. No hassle at all.
To reitierate: The vast majority of iPod users and repeat buyers DO NOT CARE! They don't give a fat rat's ass about DRM or anything else you mentioned.
They want an easy to use service. ITMS is that easy to use service.
You are not the target audience for ITMS.
You have never been the target audience for ITMS.
You will never be target audience for ITMS.
Get over yourself and welcome you new, Jonathan Ive designed, overlord!
Or use that POS, OEM plastic player from China that plays WMA and Ogg, like the other few thousand people that use them.
Sorry about how your Concern Beam is no match for my unbreechable Barrier of Cynical Reality.
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What I'm saying is. Tough cheese.
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Secondly, obviously you've never seen programs like Frontline, the McLaughlin Group, or Now, or seen the surveys about how well-informed people who take in different sorts of media are. Take, for example, this survey, which found that viewers of PBS and/or listeners of NPR are less than half as likely as readers of print media to have misconceptions about the Iraq war (and less than a quarter as likely as FoxNews viewers). Newspapers and magazines are usually corporate media, and as Goebbels said, a great propaganda news organization should give viewers less and less of a sense of what is going on the more they engage it. I can't tell you how many times I've seen absolute lies spawned or repeated by supposedly progressive and reliable newspapers such as the NY Times and the Washington Post (to which I subscribe). Occasionally, a retraction is later issued, but by then the damage is done. I also can't tell you how many times those newspapers have been complicit in burying or not following up on important stories.
Public broadcasting is only as good as the government will allow it and fund it to be, so it isn't perfect--but it's a damn sight better than any corporate media, print or otherwise, in the US.
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