You do know that we have more people in prison than any other country in the world?
As a percentage, maybe. But they're druggies, not political prisoners. Not that the War on (Some) Drugs isn't immensely stupid, but it's not an indication of political repression.
Believe it or not there ARE problems with US and European "democracy"
Yes there are. But we don't run over protestors with tanks or shoot dissidents and bill their families for the bullets. There is no moral equivalence whatsoever.
The front-end is written in Cocoa, which is indeed tied to OSX at the moment. Apple had looked at releasing a win32 port of Cocoa (code-named RedBox I think) but it never saw the light of day
Yes and no. For a while Apple/Next has maintained a pseudo-port of Cocoa for Windows called Yellow Box (Red Box was a hypothetical environment in which Mac OS X for x86 could run Windows apps). If you buy WebObjects for Windows, the developer tools run under the Yellow Box environment, but Apple doesn't support using it to create Windows apps.
Maybe it's me being optimistic, but it's hard to imagine SCO (or just about any other computer-related company, actually) surviving an encounter with IBM in court over IP issues.
Bingo. If SCO thought they had any chance whatsoever of a legitimite win in court, they'd go after RedHat or somebody without a near-infinite army of lawyers and patents. Their purpose was to get bought out, but they fatally miscalculated IBM's will to fight. In an IP battle against IBM, they will lose, and they will lose horribly. Even if by some miracle they actually have valid claims, they will still lose horribly.
Sure, they might have to upgrade iTunes in order to do it, but if the next version of MacOS X comes out with the upgraded version bundled, that won't let you run the old version
In which case you just have to remove the DRM from your purchased files before "upgrading". This isn't an issue at all if you're as paranoid as I am and immediately transcode songs to MP3 after buying them.
Well that's like saying "You can always play your WMA files to MiniDisc, all you need is a minijack-to-minijack cable"
The difference is that Apple actively supports methods to remove the DRM, while others would like to invoke the DMCA against "analog hole" copying.
Only Apple give you the ability to play the encrypted files. That gives them a lot of power.
And as it stands now, they also provide the means to remove that power. I don't like DRM one bit, I wish Apple didn't use it, and I bet Apple wishes they didn't have to use it. But in its current form, there is zero danger of losing control of files that you buy.
Giving up this control is bad even if it doesn't immediately inpact your usage.
I agree. But as it stands now, buying music from Apple doesn't require that you give up any control, because it's trivial to remove the DRM (using Apple-sanctioned methods, even). It's possible this could change in the future, and then so will my opinion of it.
About the only things I can't do now that I might have done before is put newly purchased songs on my iDisk for friends and relatives to download and listen to
You couldn't do that before either. At least not without either transcoding them to remove the DRM or giving your friends your account password. iTunes streaming never allowed you to play protected AACs without authorization, and there's certainly nothing stopping you from putting whatever files you want on your iDisk today.
Dude, the mp3-streaming thing was just about the only thing that separated Apple's DRM from the DRM schemes on previous pay-for-online-music services
Huh? Streaming is orthoganal to DRM. You can't stream protected files without authorizing the client machine, so it was never useful as a means of getting around the DRM.
the limitation already applies to music purchased from the iTMS. Making it apply to the rest of the library would be a simple matter.
No it wouldn't. The songs you buy from the iTMS are encrypted, regular MP3s aren't. It's not a function of the streaming that you can't play "protected" AACs without authorizing your machine, it's just QuickTime trying to play an encrypted song and not being able to without the decryption key.
tomorrow you could wake up and find that due to new terms from the music industry you can no longer make any copies of the music what so ever
First, iTunes streaming and limitations thereof have nothing to do with DRM. Second, while Apple could impose more restrictions on future music purchases, they can't retroactively add restrictions to music you've already bought. iTunes doesn't phone home when you play music, so you'll always be able to burn CDs or transcode to uncrippled formats to permanently eliminate the DRM. Unlike some of the subscription services, Apple does not have the capability to hold your files hostage. (And if a future "upgrade" does give them that capability, they won't see any more of my money.)
Perhaps the repairman is far more likely to utilize that same money for more productive uses than the previous owner...
Possibly, although there's pretty much no way to know that beforehand. And as I said, the same result can be achieved more efficiently by simply seizing my money and giving it to the repairman; breaking the window merely obscures that it's a welfare program.
but on the other hand, won't the window repairman then spend the money on those more productive uses anyways?
Maybe, but that's not the point. The transaction in which I hire the repairman and he fixes my window is inefficient. Work is expended not to create wealth, but simply to restore the wealth that existed before in the form of my intact window. It would be better for all concerned if the government simply confiscated my money and handed it to the repairman; at least that way time wouldn't be wasted arranging for and performing the work.
People are more likely to seek medical attention for less serious conditions when they don't have to pay for it.
And more likely to undergo unnecessary tests and treatments (which doctors have a vested interest in recommending), and use name-brand drugs instead of cheaper generics, and in general completely disregard costs. This is basic economics; I'm glad you understand it and I wish more people did.
That's a decent chunk of CPU horsepower to be able to encrypt these things for each user on the fly.
Another possibility is that iTunes itself is doing the encryption. Since iTunes uses SSL, this isn't easy to determine.
where does the "3 computer" auth limit come from? Is it "artificial" in the sense that the app does it voluntarily, or is it required -- Apple's servers contain a second (part of the?) key that's required for decoding?
The latter. You receive the key when you authorize another machine for an account. After the initial authorization, all files associated with that account can be decoded without contacting Apple again.
You can burn down my house, that will be good for the economy, but it certainly won't be good for me.
No, it won't be good for either you or the economy. This is the broken window fallacy which says that somebody going around throwing rocks through windows helps the economy by increasing the business of window repairmen. The flaw is that it ignores that the money spent on repairs would otherwise have been put to more productive uses.
If Apple gets enough pressure from the RIAA, Apple can make it so that you are no longer able to burn those songs to CDs
They could conceivably update the software so that songs I buy in the future would have more restrictions. They can't do a thing to the songs I already bought and transcoded to an uncrippled format. I'd still have the music I bought, they wouldn't get any more of my business, and life would go on.
The data in an.m4p file is not encrypted at all. It's just standard, unencrypted AAC inside an MPEG-4 container.
My limited research indicates that the data is encrypted. This is based on taking an m4p file that a friend bought, buying the same track myself, and looking at both in a hex editor. What is presumably the audio data (the several megabytes following the "mdat" key) is completely different between the files.
it will be a matter of weeks before a shareware maker comes up with a program that takes your aac files...tricks iTunes into writing them to a cd Image and then allowing you to rip to mp3 from the cdImage.
Somebody already mentioned Audio Hijack, but iMovie can also do this. Just import a protected AAC file into a new project and export the audio as MP3.
Rental works in many other industries, why not here?
Because people quite reasonably consider music to be a product, not a service. It's a far easier decision to pay $1 for permanent ownership of a song (ok, there's DRM, but it's deliberately weak) than to try to figure out how long I'll want to have access to a song and whether I'll use the service enough to make it worthwile.
You can't decode them unless someone cracks the DRM.
Or until you transcode them to MP3 or uncrippled AAC. Yeah, I know about the quality loss, but I can't tell the difference between my original 128k AACs and transcoded 192k MP3s.
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They'll be covered by "fair use"
Actually it's specifically covered under 17 USC 117. "Copying" to RAM is clearly an "essential step".
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As a percentage, maybe. But they're druggies, not political prisoners. Not that the War on (Some) Drugs isn't immensely stupid, but it's not an indication of political repression.
Yes there are. But we don't run over protestors with tanks or shoot dissidents and bill their families for the bullets. There is no moral equivalence whatsoever.
Yes and no. For a while Apple/Next has maintained a pseudo-port of Cocoa for Windows called Yellow Box (Red Box was a hypothetical environment in which Mac OS X for x86 could run Windows apps). If you buy WebObjects for Windows, the developer tools run under the Yellow Box environment, but Apple doesn't support using it to create Windows apps.
Bingo. If SCO thought they had any chance whatsoever of a legitimite win in court, they'd go after RedHat or somebody without a near-infinite army of lawyers and patents. Their purpose was to get bought out, but they fatally miscalculated IBM's will to fight. In an IP battle against IBM, they will lose, and they will lose horribly. Even if by some miracle they actually have valid claims, they will still lose horribly.
I am saying this to you, Darl McBride: you are a liar, you are a fake, and you are the biggest douche ever.
In which case you just have to remove the DRM from your purchased files before "upgrading". This isn't an issue at all if you're as paranoid as I am and immediately transcode songs to MP3 after buying them.
Well that's like saying "You can always play your WMA files to MiniDisc, all you need is a minijack-to-minijack cable"
The difference is that Apple actively supports methods to remove the DRM, while others would like to invoke the DMCA against "analog hole" copying.
Only Apple give you the ability to play the encrypted files. That gives them a lot of power.
And as it stands now, they also provide the means to remove that power. I don't like DRM one bit, I wish Apple didn't use it, and I bet Apple wishes they didn't have to use it. But in its current form, there is zero danger of losing control of files that you buy.
I agree. But as it stands now, buying music from Apple doesn't require that you give up any control, because it's trivial to remove the DRM (using Apple-sanctioned methods, even). It's possible this could change in the future, and then so will my opinion of it.
You couldn't do that before either. At least not without either transcoding them to remove the DRM or giving your friends your account password. iTunes streaming never allowed you to play protected AACs without authorization, and there's certainly nothing stopping you from putting whatever files you want on your iDisk today.
Huh? Streaming is orthoganal to DRM. You can't stream protected files without authorizing the client machine, so it was never useful as a means of getting around the DRM.
Except for the hundred or so other ways that you can transfer files in OS X.
No it wouldn't. The songs you buy from the iTMS are encrypted, regular MP3s aren't. It's not a function of the streaming that you can't play "protected" AACs without authorizing your machine, it's just QuickTime trying to play an encrypted song and not being able to without the decryption key.
First, iTunes streaming and limitations thereof have nothing to do with DRM. Second, while Apple could impose more restrictions on future music purchases, they can't retroactively add restrictions to music you've already bought. iTunes doesn't phone home when you play music, so you'll always be able to burn CDs or transcode to uncrippled formats to permanently eliminate the DRM. Unlike some of the subscription services, Apple does not have the capability to hold your files hostage. (And if a future "upgrade" does give them that capability, they won't see any more of my money.)
Possibly, although there's pretty much no way to know that beforehand. And as I said, the same result can be achieved more efficiently by simply seizing my money and giving it to the repairman; breaking the window merely obscures that it's a welfare program.
Maybe, but that's not the point. The transaction in which I hire the repairman and he fixes my window is inefficient. Work is expended not to create wealth, but simply to restore the wealth that existed before in the form of my intact window. It would be better for all concerned if the government simply confiscated my money and handed it to the repairman; at least that way time wouldn't be wasted arranging for and performing the work.
And more likely to undergo unnecessary tests and treatments (which doctors have a vested interest in recommending), and use name-brand drugs instead of cheaper generics, and in general completely disregard costs. This is basic economics; I'm glad you understand it and I wish more people did.
Sorry about that, I missed the context of your post. We're on the same page then.
Another possibility is that iTunes itself is doing the encryption. Since iTunes uses SSL, this isn't easy to determine.
where does the "3 computer" auth limit come from? Is it "artificial" in the sense that the app does it voluntarily, or is it required -- Apple's servers contain a second (part of the?) key that's required for decoding?
The latter. You receive the key when you authorize another machine for an account. After the initial authorization, all files associated with that account can be decoded without contacting Apple again.
No, it won't be good for either you or the economy. This is the broken window fallacy which says that somebody going around throwing rocks through windows helps the economy by increasing the business of window repairmen. The flaw is that it ignores that the money spent on repairs would otherwise have been put to more productive uses.
They could conceivably update the software so that songs I buy in the future would have more restrictions. They can't do a thing to the songs I already bought and transcoded to an uncrippled format. I'd still have the music I bought, they wouldn't get any more of my business, and life would go on.
Apple fully intends for you to be able to make unlimited lossless copies to CD; they advertise it as a primary selling point.
My limited research indicates that the data is encrypted. This is based on taking an m4p file that a friend bought, buying the same track myself, and looking at both in a hex editor. What is presumably the audio data (the several megabytes following the "mdat" key) is completely different between the files.
Somebody already mentioned Audio Hijack, but iMovie can also do this. Just import a protected AAC file into a new project and export the audio as MP3.
Because people quite reasonably consider music to be a product, not a service. It's a far easier decision to pay $1 for permanent ownership of a song (ok, there's DRM, but it's deliberately weak) than to try to figure out how long I'll want to have access to a song and whether I'll use the service enough to make it worthwile.
Or until you transcode them to MP3 or uncrippled AAC. Yeah, I know about the quality loss, but I can't tell the difference between my original 128k AACs and transcoded 192k MP3s.
Actually it's specifically covered under 17 USC 117. "Copying" to RAM is clearly an "essential step".