Besides, re-coding without the DRM violates the ITMS Terms of Service, a legal agreement between the user and Apple.
Again, wrong, wrong, wrong. The ToS says you can't disassemble the files to crack the DRM; it doesn't say anything about how you use CDs you burn with the files. Once you burn CDs, they're just like audio CDs you'd get from some other source; they're not the files you buy, after all, but new things the files permit you to make. The ToS don't say squat about what you can do with your own audio CDs that you rip into iTunes, and I believe the point is that once you burn a CD from iTMS purchases, it's considered a legal audio CD just like others you'd get elsewhere.
If Apple seriously didn't want people reencoding their music, they'd state very clearly the limitations on what one can do with the burned copies.
What doesn't apply? You are forbidden to re-encode the files to bypass the DRM and you can only play the DRMed files with authorization from Apple.
Mmm... huh? It doesn't say you can't reencode; it does forbid one from "circumventing the security technology," but that's clearly meant to mean hacking the copy protection, not simply using them in a way they specifically permit (burning CDs) and then using those CDs legally like any other audio CDs. Moreover, making non-protected CDs, with the implicit ability to reencode, is a specific ability Apple petitioned the labels pretty hard for, fully recognizant that a major selling point of the iTMS would be the broad user rights. And as far as playing only "with authorization from Apple," the very act of buying the music in the first place grants one authorization; one doesn't need to go to some bizarre lengths to take care of it.
Apple doesn't have to go out of business; it just has to close the ITMS, or change the terms significantly. This is a relatively new venture and there are no guarantees that it will continue to be successful or still be around in a few years. I'm not saying this is likely, but it is certainly possible, and highlights who owns "your" music.
Yeah, but frankly I think their arbitrarily closing the iTMS or significantly changing the terms is even less likely than their going out of business; hence, "the biggest worry is that they go out of business," as I said. No, there are no guarantees, but aside from the fact it's been a success and they're likely to keep it up just because of that, I really don't see them arbitrarily discontinuing service; what could they possibly gain from that? Even if the iTMS stopped selling well and they decided to drop it, they could and probably would continue to do authorizations for all the people who'd already bought music; it'd be relatively trivial to do so, particularly weighed against the enormous backlash guaranteed them if they did anything perceived as cutting back on people's ability to use music they'd already bought.
At any rate, my points in the original post still stand, since I was talking about what Trinity-Infinity can do with her purchases. She's happily bopping along, listening to her tunes, slinging them from one comp to another, loading up her iPod, and generally enjoying her tunes, and you're saying she can't do any of that because at some indeterminate point in the future Apple might change its mind about something. Even if Apple were to completely abandon the iTMS and its existing customer base, it couldn't rescind her ability to use the songs she's already bought as she's using them now.
None of that means the parent is wrong. She still can do all that stuff she talked about, so it's not crippled, at least not yet. Yeah, it's conceivable Apple will change things one day, but honestly, the sections you highlighted from the terms of use are mostly just typical CYA lingo, and at any rate don't describe the state of things today or, in all probability, any time in the near future.
The biggest worry is that if Apple goes out of business it'll stop authorizing and deauthorizing computers, but that probably won't become an issue; what comps would need to be authorized, after all - all the new Macs people would buy from a company going out of business? (This might be more of an issue for Windows iTMS users, of course, but I still doubt it'll be a serious issue any time soon).
I also imagine you've never had to deal with losing a hard disk full of all those precious songs and having to redownload and re-license them for your new machine because you can't just copy them over.
You're right, I haven't, and neither have you. If you want to "relicense" them for your new machine, you do just copy them over, and authorize the machine to play them, and there you go. You can have up to three machines authorized at any time, and you can deauthorize older computers whenever you like to accomodate authorizing new ones. And each authorized machine has full usage rights (can burn to CDs, can transfer to iPods, can stream to other computers on a local network); there's none of that mucking about with "primary" and "secondary" machines like there is with BuyMusic.com, with which I suspect you've confused the iTMS. The two are very different in what they'll allow you to do with music, and what you've written here applies to BM.com a lot more than the iTMS.
If you're worried about losing a hard disk full of songs, do the same thing with it you'd do with any vulnerable disk full of valuable data, and back it up. Apple explicitly encourages you to do this, and makes it easy to boot; you can even make DVD archives right from within iTunes if you like.
Apple's Kool-Aid? Just what we need to wash down all that freshly baked, anti-Apple FUD you're trying to feed people...
Some jukeboxes charge 50 cents to play a song once, while others charge half that; if it costs a quarter to listen to a song just one time, is it really outrageous to pay four times that to own it forever?
Two PCI cards won't work I think because they both try to be the primary video card.
Not so, at least on the Mac. It's been possible to have multiple video cards to fit in the same type of slot for as long as there have been Macs with multiple expansion slots (even before PCI, one could take a NuBus-based Macintosh and put multiple NuBus video cards in it). One could theoretically take a Mac with six PCI slots (a Power Mac 9500 or 9600, for example) and put a dual-head card in each slot, and drive twelve monitors from a single machine; I've no idea why anyone would, of course, but it's possible.
Off-topic for this thread but not the whole discussion: why does the story finish with "... and not just for gamers"? That implies multiple monitors are particularly attractive for gamers, but the overwhelming majority of games don't use them (there are exceptions, of course)...
I can go to the video game store and buy used games cheaper.
Used home console games, yes. Not used coin-op arcade games. Yeah, I know, these aren't full games, but just the ROM images - but then, you're not paying the $25 to $2000 or whatever you might pay for the actual physical machine, either.
The same day Apple announced and rolled out the iTunes Music Store, it said it planned to offer it to Windows users before the end of the year.
If you read of a "planned January release," you might be thinking of when the iTMS opens up to other parts of the world (right now it's US-only). When Apple can actually let people outside the US buy tunes from them depends on how quickly/smoothly the legal and rights issues concerning the music go, rather than on any technological issues, so I don't think they have a definite timetable for it yet (though obviously the sooner the better), but estimates I've seen do generally tend to put it around early next year.
Nobody wants iTunes and the iTMS available for Windows more than Apple does. Unfortunately, it's not simply a matter of porting and releasing the software; Apple has to renegotiate with the record labels to allow it to sell music to Windows users. Part of the reason Apple was able to coax such relatively lenient terms out of the labels in its agreements was that it would be selling only to Mac users at first; the labels viewed it as an experiment that could be expanded to the greater audience if it were successful, and if it weren't, it wouldn't be too great a loss since it just affected the Mac's tiny sliver of the market. The initial set of terms therefore permits Apple to sell only to Mac users; since the iTMS opened Apple has been negotiating with the labels to get rights to sell tunes to Windows folks.
In CD players, the disc plays normally. When put into a Macintosh (news - web sites) or Windows PC, the disc installs software to keep the music secure, and an interactive menu pops up with several links, including one to copy some or all of the Windows Media tracks to your hard drive.
So, the article specifically mentions putting this thing in a Mac, yet we all know the state of WMA on the Mac is pretty sucktacular right now. Will this thing be rippable on a Mac or not?
I'm merely curious, mind you; I don't muck around with WMA anyway, and I'd never even heard of this artist before (and the fact I'm learning of him only because of coverage of the fact his new CD is copy-protected hardly makes me want to run out and listen to his work), and of course I'd already decided to boycott the RIAA labels anyway, so I'm not about to get this album; I would like to know, though, what it means in general with regards to ripping future music releases on the Mac (I'm sure many will wonder the same thing about Linux and other platforms, though unfortunately I'm sure the outlook is presumably even dimmer than one might surmise it to be for the Mac)...
You're right; it is indeed about trademarks, not copyright or patents, and I wasn't clearly thinking about that in all my previous posts in this thread. I did read the article, but I didn't make all the distinctions I should have.
That said, I think it still stands. The Dewey Decimal System refers to a hierarchical filing system for books in libraries, and was apparently devised without any intent of anything pertaining to it being proprietary, and as such I think it's a damn shame an individual organization owns it and can extract royalties (and damages, in cases of "infringement") for use of the name. It's simply ridiculous that anything of such basic utility to the general public, and consisting of simply a name and a practice associated with it, be beholden to some private company even after 130 years. Yes, I'm aware the company actually goes through many thousands of books each year to assign DD numbers to them and otherwise invests a lot in maintaining the DD system, and as such needs some source of compensation for its efforts, but surely there can be some better way of doing things than this, can't there?
I can find web pages about Apple MacIntosh and I can find pages about growing Apple MacIntoshes, but it's hard to separate the pages about computers from those about cookery.
Well, actually, I don't think it should be a problem in this case - the fruit is spelled McIntosh (no "a," both "M" and "I" capitalized). Of course you might still get pages about the computer intermingled with ones about raincoats (and none of this will be of much use to someone with the kind of free-and-easy, nonconformist approach to spelling frequently exhibited on Slashdot;) )...
I think the point is that anything invented 130 years ago by someone who died 72 years ago damn well ought to be in the public domain by now, and the fact that it's not is a shining example of why drastic overhaul of so much IP law is desperately needed.
I don't know that he did steal their trademark (and why would he? Does it make any sense to sell computers using the service marks of a record company, and a troubled one at that?). Jobs had once worked at an apple orchard, and when he and Steve Wozniak were trying to come up with a name for their new outfit, Apple came up as a name because of that experience. It wasn't a name they were completely excited about at first, in fact; reportedly, they put the name aside, trying to think of a better one, but said that if they didn't come up with a better name by the end of the day, they'd just go with Apple.
Right. As I understand it, the first three machines in the very first generation of Power Mac (the first Macs based on PowerPC chips instead of Motorola's 68xxx chips) were the Power Mac 6100, 7100, and 8100; the middle one was codenamed "Carl Sagan," with the other two being the "Cold Fusion" and "Piltdown Man" - so the three were named after a scientific fraud, another scientific fraud, and... Carl Sagan. A rather nasty insult was implied (no, I have no idea what Apple engineers or whoever else chose codenames had against Sagan, but there it was). It was publicly revealed, and Sagan was not amused, so he sued over the unauthorized use of his name. Apple('s people) changed the code name to "BHA," which appeared to settle everything ("oh, just some random initials"), until Sagan found out they apparently stood for "butt-head astronomer," and I believe he sued again, with the case eventually getting thrown out. The code name eventually got changed, though, to "LAW" (for "lawyers are wimps").
I like both Sagan and Apple, but I think the whole episode reflects a bit poorly on both, though it's kind of funny, too - kind of like the current Apple vs. Apple, actually.
Actually, it's worse than that - it's the [i]industry association of multiple multi-billion dollar companies[/i] vs. the 12 year old girl who lives in a city housing project.
Mine (in Tallahassee, Florida) has carried them since the second gen (5, 10, and 20 GB models, when they were still platform-specific). I may drop by today and see what they have right now (specifically, whether they have any 30 GBs marked down)...
Then it's a good thing you didn't encounter any in that post. The parent was arguing the machine was competitively priced with computers generally, not solely with other Macs. If you disagree, you can argue about it, but don't pretend to be filling in missing blanks in the parent's argument and then hold him/her to be some kind of lapdog simply because he/she has a different view from you about what a competitive cost is.
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Again, wrong, wrong, wrong. The ToS says you can't disassemble the files to crack the DRM; it doesn't say anything about how you use CDs you burn with the files. Once you burn CDs, they're just like audio CDs you'd get from some other source; they're not the files you buy, after all, but new things the files permit you to make. The ToS don't say squat about what you can do with your own audio CDs that you rip into iTunes, and I believe the point is that once you burn a CD from iTMS purchases, it's considered a legal audio CD just like others you'd get elsewhere.
If Apple seriously didn't want people reencoding their music, they'd state very clearly the limitations on what one can do with the burned copies.
Mmm... huh? It doesn't say you can't reencode; it does forbid one from "circumventing the security technology," but that's clearly meant to mean hacking the copy protection, not simply using them in a way they specifically permit (burning CDs) and then using those CDs legally like any other audio CDs. Moreover, making non-protected CDs, with the implicit ability to reencode, is a specific ability Apple petitioned the labels pretty hard for, fully recognizant that a major selling point of the iTMS would be the broad user rights. And as far as playing only "with authorization from Apple," the very act of buying the music in the first place grants one authorization; one doesn't need to go to some bizarre lengths to take care of it.
Yeah, but frankly I think their arbitrarily closing the iTMS or significantly changing the terms is even less likely than their going out of business; hence, "the biggest worry is that they go out of business," as I said. No, there are no guarantees, but aside from the fact it's been a success and they're likely to keep it up just because of that, I really don't see them arbitrarily discontinuing service; what could they possibly gain from that? Even if the iTMS stopped selling well and they decided to drop it, they could and probably would continue to do authorizations for all the people who'd already bought music; it'd be relatively trivial to do so, particularly weighed against the enormous backlash guaranteed them if they did anything perceived as cutting back on people's ability to use music they'd already bought.At any rate, my points in the original post still stand, since I was talking about what Trinity-Infinity can do with her purchases. She's happily bopping along, listening to her tunes, slinging them from one comp to another, loading up her iPod, and generally enjoying her tunes, and you're saying she can't do any of that because at some indeterminate point in the future Apple might change its mind about something. Even if Apple were to completely abandon the iTMS and its existing customer base, it couldn't rescind her ability to use the songs she's already bought as she's using them now.
The ones to whom it would be addressed are the ones least likely to know what the abbreviation would mean.
The biggest worry is that if Apple goes out of business it'll stop authorizing and deauthorizing computers, but that probably won't become an issue; what comps would need to be authorized, after all - all the new Macs people would buy from a company going out of business? (This might be more of an issue for Windows iTMS users, of course, but I still doubt it'll be a serious issue any time soon).
You're right, I haven't, and neither have you. If you want to "relicense" them for your new machine, you do just copy them over, and authorize the machine to play them, and there you go. You can have up to three machines authorized at any time, and you can deauthorize older computers whenever you like to accomodate authorizing new ones. And each authorized machine has full usage rights (can burn to CDs, can transfer to iPods, can stream to other computers on a local network); there's none of that mucking about with "primary" and "secondary" machines like there is with BuyMusic.com, with which I suspect you've confused the iTMS. The two are very different in what they'll allow you to do with music, and what you've written here applies to BM.com a lot more than the iTMS.
If you're worried about losing a hard disk full of songs, do the same thing with it you'd do with any vulnerable disk full of valuable data, and back it up. Apple explicitly encourages you to do this, and makes it easy to boot; you can even make DVD archives right from within iTunes if you like.
Apple's Kool-Aid? Just what we need to wash down all that freshly baked, anti-Apple FUD you're trying to feed people...
Some jukeboxes charge 50 cents to play a song once, while others charge half that; if it costs a quarter to listen to a song just one time, is it really outrageous to pay four times that to own it forever?
Not so, at least on the Mac. It's been possible to have multiple video cards to fit in the same type of slot for as long as there have been Macs with multiple expansion slots (even before PCI, one could take a NuBus-based Macintosh and put multiple NuBus video cards in it). One could theoretically take a Mac with six PCI slots (a Power Mac 9500 or 9600, for example) and put a dual-head card in each slot, and drive twelve monitors from a single machine; I've no idea why anyone would, of course, but it's possible.
Off-topic for this thread but not the whole discussion: why does the story finish with "... and not just for gamers"? That implies multiple monitors are particularly attractive for gamers, but the overwhelming majority of games don't use them (there are exceptions, of course)...
Used home console games, yes. Not used coin-op arcade games. Yeah, I know, these aren't full games, but just the ROM images - but then, you're not paying the $25 to $2000 or whatever you might pay for the actual physical machine, either.
If you read of a "planned January release," you might be thinking of when the iTMS opens up to other parts of the world (right now it's US-only). When Apple can actually let people outside the US buy tunes from them depends on how quickly/smoothly the legal and rights issues concerning the music go, rather than on any technological issues, so I don't think they have a definite timetable for it yet (though obviously the sooner the better), but estimates I've seen do generally tend to put it around early next year.
Nobody wants iTunes and the iTMS available for Windows more than Apple does. Unfortunately, it's not simply a matter of porting and releasing the software; Apple has to renegotiate with the record labels to allow it to sell music to Windows users. Part of the reason Apple was able to coax such relatively lenient terms out of the labels in its agreements was that it would be selling only to Mac users at first; the labels viewed it as an experiment that could be expanded to the greater audience if it were successful, and if it weren't, it wouldn't be too great a loss since it just affected the Mac's tiny sliver of the market. The initial set of terms therefore permits Apple to sell only to Mac users; since the iTMS opened Apple has been negotiating with the labels to get rights to sell tunes to Windows folks.
Hey, where'd you get the date? All I'd heard was "before the end of the year"...
So, the article specifically mentions putting this thing in a Mac, yet we all know the state of WMA on the Mac is pretty sucktacular right now. Will this thing be rippable on a Mac or not?
I'm merely curious, mind you; I don't muck around with WMA anyway, and I'd never even heard of this artist before (and the fact I'm learning of him only because of coverage of the fact his new CD is copy-protected hardly makes me want to run out and listen to his work), and of course I'd already decided to boycott the RIAA labels anyway, so I'm not about to get this album; I would like to know, though, what it means in general with regards to ripping future music releases on the Mac (I'm sure many will wonder the same thing about Linux and other platforms, though unfortunately I'm sure the outlook is presumably even dimmer than one might surmise it to be for the Mac)...
That said, I think it still stands. The Dewey Decimal System refers to a hierarchical filing system for books in libraries, and was apparently devised without any intent of anything pertaining to it being proprietary, and as such I think it's a damn shame an individual organization owns it and can extract royalties (and damages, in cases of "infringement") for use of the name. It's simply ridiculous that anything of such basic utility to the general public, and consisting of simply a name and a practice associated with it, be beholden to some private company even after 130 years. Yes, I'm aware the company actually goes through many thousands of books each year to assign DD numbers to them and otherwise invests a lot in maintaining the DD system, and as such needs some source of compensation for its efforts, but surely there can be some better way of doing things than this, can't there?
Well, actually, I don't think it should be a problem in this case - the fruit is spelled McIntosh (no "a," both "M" and "I" capitalized). Of course you might still get pages about the computer intermingled with ones about raincoats (and none of this will be of much use to someone with the kind of free-and-easy, nonconformist approach to spelling frequently exhibited on Slashdot ;) )...
That someone actually modded this flaming troll "Insightful" is just pathetic. What the hell was this mod thinking??
I think the point is that anything invented 130 years ago by someone who died 72 years ago damn well ought to be in the public domain by now, and the fact that it's not is a shining example of why drastic overhaul of so much IP law is desperately needed.
I don't know that he did steal their trademark (and why would he? Does it make any sense to sell computers using the service marks of a record company, and a troubled one at that?). Jobs had once worked at an apple orchard, and when he and Steve Wozniak were trying to come up with a name for their new outfit, Apple came up as a name because of that experience. It wasn't a name they were completely excited about at first, in fact; reportedly, they put the name aside, trying to think of a better one, but said that if they didn't come up with a better name by the end of the day, they'd just go with Apple.
I like both Sagan and Apple, but I think the whole episode reflects a bit poorly on both, though it's kind of funny, too - kind of like the current Apple vs. Apple, actually.
An honest, actual question: has this actually happened to you? Have you ever called a call center and gotten someone who didn't speak your language?
No, seriously - I'm particularly interested in any factual information here, particularly regarding #15, whether it supports or debunks the assertion.
Anyway, time to set up a fund for her and her mom, and maybe even get serious on a threat to boycott the RIAA companies, for once...
Actually, it's worse than that - it's the [i]industry association of multiple multi-billion dollar companies[/i] vs. the 12 year old girl who lives in a city housing project.
Mine (in Tallahassee, Florida) has carried them since the second gen (5, 10, and 20 GB models, when they were still platform-specific). I may drop by today and see what they have right now (specifically, whether they have any 30 GBs marked down)...
Please forgive the nitpicks, but I believe you mean GB, not MB (and the original iPod cost $399 then, not $500).
Good points all the same.
Then it's a good thing you didn't encounter any in that post. The parent was arguing the machine was competitively priced with computers generally, not solely with other Macs. If you disagree, you can argue about it, but don't pretend to be filling in missing blanks in the parent's argument and then hold him/her to be some kind of lapdog simply because he/she has a different view from you about what a competitive cost is.