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Bruce Willis Considering Legal Action Against Apple Over iTunes Collection
First time accepted submitter oobayly writes "It appears that Bruce 'Die Hard' Willis isn't too impressed that he can't include his iTunes collection in his estate when he dies. According to the article: 'Bruce Willis, the Hollywood actor, is said to be considering legal action against Apple so he can leave his iTunes music collection to his three daughters.' Such a high profile individual complaining about the ability to own your digital music can only be a good thing, right?"
iTunes music is DRM free. He doesn't need to sue to leave it to his daughters.
iTunes TV shows and movies, however, are locked up with DRM and can't be transferred.
Not having DRM and being licensed for you to do anything you want with it are entirely separate concepts.
The link is right there in TA:
http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/terms.html
However, having quickly scanned through it, I don't immediately see where it states the licenses are non-transferable (it does state that APP licenses are non-transferable, but this is a separate section to the music).
My other UID is three digits.
Yes. The same Steve Jobs that said he wanted music in iTunes DRM free and then managed to make it happen. That one.
Apple is doing it wrong. On their homepage, at http://www.apple.com/itunes/ there's a link "Buy Music Now." It doesn't say "buy a personal license" or "license music", It says "buy"
http://www.apple.com/fr/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
Also, iTunes has been DRM-free since 2009.
Actually, Bruce Willis has done no such thing. According to his wife, the story is made up.
If a story sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Well you're lying. Having worked tech support for Apple, specifically doing iPod/iPhone and iTunes support, I can assure you that an iPod is designed to not allow you to transfer music off of it. You can use itunes to transfer purchases back to your computer, but only things you have purchased from itunes and only to the computer your ipod/iphone is synced to. In order to transfer music back you need a 3rd party program and what you get is music files with not song info attached so you have to hope that gracenote can find what song it is or you're stuck manually entering all the data on it. The songs file name isn't even correct. I somehow doubt that your 7 year old is able to manage the neccessary steps to do more that the basic sync of purchased music, which is really not neccessary because of the iCloud implementation.
Disagreeing with you does not make me a troll.
That was written in 2007; DRM was removed in 2009. Also, now with iTunes/iCloud you can re-download any previously DRM'd tracks, so even old stuff can be (legally) DRM-free. There are no more restrictions of any kind on music; it's now up to you to stay within the law. I believe Apple agreed to the whole iTunes LP thing (to sell more full albums), so that consumers could get DRM-free music.
Copy it to your Droid and hit play; there are no restrictions or DRM. Also, you can re-download anything you bought since 2003 DRM-free under "Purchased" on the right side, in the store. Apple super-promotes these features; I'm surprised more people don't know about it. As for syncing, Droid people will have to make their own software (I'm sure something exists); that's not Apple's responsibility. The iTunes library (playlists, ratings, etc) is saved as SQLite (iTunes Library.itl) and XML (iTunes Music Library.xml) in the iTunes folder.
Furthermore, Apple isn't abusing it's power since it's their store and they can do whatever they want. Fortunately, they fight for consumers.
Well you're lying. Having worked tech support for Apple, specifically doing iPod/iPhone and iTunes support, I can assure you that an iPod is designed to not allow you to transfer music off of it. You can use itunes to transfer purchases back to your computer, but only things you have purchased from itunes and only to the computer your ipod/iphone is synced to. In order to transfer music back you need a 3rd party program and what you get is music files with not song info attached so you have to hope that gracenote can find what song it is or you're stuck manually entering all the data on it. The songs file name isn't even correct. I somehow doubt that your 7 year old is able to manage the neccessary steps to do more that the basic sync of purchased music, which is really not neccessary because of the iCloud implementation.
You sync your music back to iTunes and then take it out of the file system. It's UNIX. Having worked at NeXT and Apple in Engineering and Professional Services if you cannot manage to get music back off your iPod then you deserve not to work in the Support Team. Hell, the music information is held in PLIST files. They are straight XML files. If you cannot figure out how to get all the superfluous information that iTunes gathered for you please stop working with audio/video files.
See comment below -- even DRM free, it is very time consuming and unfriendly to move MY OWN PURCHASED MUSIC from iTunes to a non-Apple device.
1) Sync the music to your computer.
2) Copy files to another device.
or
1) Use iTunes Cloud
2) Tell it to sync to another device.
What is the difficult part that I am missing?
You do realize that Apple selling DRM free music was a business decision because Amazon was selling DRM free music and had cut into iTunes' sales, right?
Apple had asked the industry to sell DRM free music before Amazon started offering it.
The labels allowed Amazon to sell DRM free first, hoping to break the market dominance that Apple had.
When that failed, they gave up and allowed Apple to sell DRM free music like they wanted to do all along.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nope, actually the message is this story is made up.
#DeleteChrome
The music IS DRM free on a computer. You can download all of your purchased music to 5 devices with Apple. If one of those 5 machines is a PC/Mac then the files will be on the hard drive in a DRM free format even organized properly. Copy that to another device or two (or thousand). The music is NOT easy (though quite possible) to get off of a device such as an iPod or iPhone but even there it is not encrypted, it is just inconveniently organized.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/03/bruce-willis-itunes-music-library/
"Update: Like many of our peers, we also fell for this good old British tabloid rumor at first. We have updated the story now that Willis’ wife has denied that this story was true."
Slashdot may want to retract, or update the story.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
There is no such thing as "Apple's AAC format". AAC is an industry standard format that is licensable. Every single smart phone and most dumb phones support it. AAC was around before the iPod. Apple isn't even one of the creators of the format.