I live in America and I have a Robomower. Of course, my kids arne't unsupervised and my dog is smart enough to get out of the way. BTW, my lawn looks great;).
Nonetheless the right to reproduce a work is included in fair use laws, which state that you may make unlimited copies for personal use, provided that when you sell the original, you destroy or transfer all copies.
Woah there, care to point to where fair use allows you to make "unlimited copies for personal use?" I'm reading Title 17, Chapter 1 and I don't see that.
Microsoft has also tweaked Word, Excel and Powerpoint, though the most obvious change is a new, blue colour scheme.
Wow, upgrade immediately for useless email DRM and a new blue color scheme! Seriously, Office is pretty much a fully mature product. How long will it be before people realize that upgrading to the new $300 office suit will not enhance their productivity? My company upgraded to Office XP from Office 2000 last year. All I noticed were new annoying "helpful" features I had to turn off. I couldn't tell you one new feature that was added during the change.
So are you saying that the "Print Screen" button is disabled when you use the software? What about the hundreds of 3rd party screen capture programs out there, are they all disabled too?
Spam is a huge problem and the only way it is going to be effectively controlled is to change the open nature of email. Putting controls onto who can do what to the email is the next step. You don't always want emails to be forwarded especially if the email is signed from you. The same goes for company internal emails it is fine them being sent internally but most often they are not for third party use.
The new DRM features have absolutely nothing to do with spam. How is spam related to your forwarded emails?
If you don't want your e-mails viewed by 3rd parties you put a disclaimer on them that "The information contained in this e-mail is only for the intended recipient for the purposes of doing business yada yada yada..." This opens the 3rd party up to potential litigation if the email is abused, and is the same thing you would do with mailing hardcopies. If you truly don't want the information shared you should encrypt it or just don't share it! If you snail mail a letter to someone they can photocopy it and send it out to whoever they want, why do you think that with e-mail you can somehow restrict what people can do with information that is now in their possession? This DRM crap is just Microsoft pedaling useless snake oil.
You are legally allowed to do anything that is not expressly prohibited by law. True?
Yes, but in this case you are constrained not only by the law but by the ToS.
You are not allowed to bypass the DRM. Bypassing the DRM is illegal under title 17. That's okay, though, because you don't have to bypass the DRM. Instead, everything you want to do is possible with the DRM in place.
When a shift key becomes a tool of circumvention I have no idea what else could be. When you rip to a CD and re-encode you are doing it with the specific intent of bypassing the DRM. I honestly don't know if it is bypassing the DRM or not in our current ridiculous DMCA-laden society.
That's like saying it's okay to receive stolen goods as long as you don't traffic in them. And it's untrue.
No, it's not like saying that at all, since copyright infringement and theft are two totally different things. For example, theft is a crime, while copyright infringement is a civil tort.
No, your point was to spread utterly unjustified FUD about iTunes. I don't know why, but that's what you were doing.
No, that is NOT my intent. My intent is to have a discussion with other technologically mined people about this issue, feel free not to participate.
Well, when I analyze legal documents I tend to assume that anything not expressly allowed is forbidden. You seem to be taking the position that anything not expressly forbidden is allowed. Personally, I'd prefer Apple revise the ToS to clear this up.
Nope. That's not correct. You can't waive rights without signing a contract, or at least clicking a button acknowledging that you're agreeing to the terms of a contract. No such thing takes place when you buy a song from iTunes.
When you click "Buy" in the iTMS you are agreeing to the Terms of Service. Check out the 1st line: " THIS IS A LEGAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND APPLE COMPUTER, INC. ("APPLE") STATING THE TERMS THAT GOVERN YOUR USE OF THE ITUNES MUSIC STORE SERVICE." It certainly appears that Apple believes this to be a binding legal contract.
There is absolutely no basis in law for this interpretation. Look at it this way: let's say you buy a CD, then make a copy for use in your car. Along the way, your original CD gets scratched or stolen or something. Are you permitted to make a copy of your copy for use in your home? Yes, of course you are.
I'm not sure where you are getting this from , care to point me to the relevant section of US Code rather than use bad analogies? BTW, AFAIK if you lose your original media (or it's stolen) you no longer have any right to use your copies.
The CDs you burn from iTMS purchases are essentially ignored by Apple, AFAICT.
That's true but it doesn't mean that you are legally allowed to rip them. I don't care if you'll be prosecuted or not, I care if it's legal. It seems that one of the primary reasons to use iTMS rather than Kazaa is to get your music legally and ethically in a convenient electronic format. However, I will not put up with the DRM. If I am allowed to bypass the DRM than fantastic, I have no beef with iTMS. If not, and I have to break the law to bypass the DRM, than I feel that it is unacceptable to me. BTW, AFAIK it is legal to download music from Kazaa, it is only illegal to share. Same as the guy on the street handing out free copied CDs. He gets in trouble for distributing copyrighted music, you are in the clear.
It makes perfect sense - the music is already protected by copyright anyway, and subject to the same limitations on commercially mass-produced CDs you'd buy in a store.
My point was that the iTMS burned CDs may be subjected to additional limitations other than copyright law. The songs you purchase are covered by the Terms of Service, which prohibit bypassing the DRM. Are the derivative CDs likewise covered? I don't know.
It doesn't need to be "expressly permitted". It's implicitly permitted by fair use. Since there is no legal barrier, and of course there is no technical barrier, you can do this without a problem.
Not necessarily. I agree that you have a fair use right to encode any CD you legally purchase from the store to any format that you want. In this case you are not licensing anything, you are purchasing a product and can do whatever you want with it within the bounds of US copyright law. However, when you use the iTMS you specifically waive several rights, you pretty much only have whatever rights Apple assigns you. Apple specifically allows you to burn CDs with your purchases, which is great. However, those CDs are a derivative of your purchased product and so I don't think that you have the same rights as a CD purchased from a store. Indeed, the music on the CD may still be covered by the Terms of Service you agreed to when downloading the original song. While you MAY have the right to rip these CDs as much as you like, it seems far from clear from a legal standpoint. This is a major stumbling block for me and I would like Apple to address it.
Please point to where it is expressly permitted for you to do this. All the other points you mentioned are spelled out quite clearly in the Terms of Service but this is not AFAIK.
Well, "less clear" is a far cry from your earlier claim that it was definitely prohibited.
My point was that Apple clearly spells out certain rights and re-encoding is not among them. This indicates to me that it is not a specificaly granted right.
This portion of the TOS seems to indicate that it is in fact permitted:
You shall be entitled to export, burn or copy Products solely for personal, noncommercial use.
Although I suppose it depends on what "export" means.
Yes, I agree that that MAY let you re-encode, but I think it is very ambiguous. These other parts (from another thread here) seem to indicate to me that you do not have the right to bypass the DRM by re-encoding.
Use of Products. You acknowledge that Products contain security technology that limits your usage of Products to the following Usage Rules.
I.e. these songs are protected by DRM.
You agree that you will not attempt to, or encourage or assist any other person to, circumvent or modify any security technology or software that is part of the Service or used to administer the Usage Rules.
I.e. you can't circumvent the DRM.
The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products.
I.e. don't take out the DRM.
The very fact that we are having this discussion proves that your rights to re-encode and bypass DRM are anything but clear.
For starters, continuing to ship iMovie with the ability to import protected AACs and export as any unprotected format you want.
I wasn't aware of this, but it's good to know.
My take is that Apple has no desire to use DRM and did the absolute minimum necessary to get the labels to cooperate.
I agree, yet the fact remains that the files are crippled by DRM. Until I am confident that I have the right to eliminate the DRM and do as I wish with my purchases I will not be using ITMS, on Windows, OS X, or otherwise.
This is obviously a CYA; doing just about anything "may" be infringing.
No, Apple makes it quite clear that you are allowed to burn CDs and listen on 3 Apple authorized computers. It is significantly less clear if you are allowed to re-encode the files, especially since the primary purpose of this activity would be to bypass the DRM.
Apple's actions make it quite clear they don't care if you re-encode
How do Apple's actions make this clear? Just because they look the other way doesn't mean that they condone this, nor does it make it "legal."
This is going to announce the availability of iTunes for WINDOWS
But as of today, you are allowed to play your songs only on "three Apple-authorized computers at any time" (for the Terms of Service), which is what I was discussing. Besides, I run Linux at home, so the recent announcement doesn't change things for me much.
Use of Products. You acknowledge that Products contain security technology that limits your usage of Products to the following Usage Rules.
I.e. these songs are protected by DRM.
You agree that you will not attempt to, or encourage or assist any other person to, circumvent or modify any security technology or software that is part of the Service or used to administer the Usage Rules.
I.e. you can't circumvent the DRM.
The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products.
I.e. don't take out the DRM.
Granted, IANAL so my "legalese-to-english" conversion may not be 100% correct, but that's certainly how it reads to me.
I disagree with you - I'm not a lawyer, but I think that if a citizen is afforded specific rights by the U.S. constituion, no contract in this country can take away any of those.
You seem to be a bit confused, fair use rights are not in the Constitution, they are in Title 17 of the US Code (Chapter 1, Sect. 107 I believe). Also, contracts most certainly can limit your rights, that's one of the things that they are expressely designed to do. For example, an NDA prohibits you from speaking about certain information, even if this is protected under Free Speech. Contracts can't make you do anything illegal and there are certain rights you can't give up (such as the right to sue) but fair use is not protected in this manner. IANALBIPOOS.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Face it: Having to expand your files to 12x their original size is a result of standard CD players not being able to read compressed audio, not a result of anything that Apple has done. If you download a pirated MP3 file off of Kazaa, you're still going to need to burn it to CD to play it on a standard CD player. Your criticisms apply that it's Apple's fault, where it's not.
It is Apple's fault for using DRM crippled files. I was mostly referring to playing the files on other non-Apple computers, not standard CD players. Having to burn a CD to listen to a downloaded, digital music file on your Windows computer is inconvienient and most certainly is Apple's fault.
Why would the encoding be lossy? It should be no different than any other mp3 I have encoded - it's just that the file is starting from a compresses state, being expanded, and then compressed again. As long as the file is originally encoded at 128 kbps or higher, I'm happy.
AAC is a lossy codec. When you expand this onto a CD you don't magically get the extra quality back. If you expand a 128 kbps AAC to a CD, then rip and encode to 128 kbps mp3 or ogg (both of which are lossy codecs as well) you will definetily lose quality. I hear that encoding back to un-DRMed AAC format loses the least quality.
Well, for starters, there is no law stating that I can't reencode music into any format that I choose if I have legally purchased this music. It's called Fair Use. So, even if Apple's agreement prohibits it, so what. That makes their agreement legally void then, and I'd like to see them try to enforce it.
Did you miss the first line of the ITMS Terms of Service, " THIS IS A LEGAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND APPLE COMPUTER, INC. ("APPLE") STATING THE TERMS THAT GOVERN YOUR USE OF THE ITUNES MUSIC STORE SERVICE." If you wish to use the Service you must agree to these terms, including waiving your fair use rights, which is all perfectly legal. This is a legal contract between you and Apple and they can enforce it if they choose. Just because they probably won't prosecute doesn't mean you aren't breaking the law, just as it is statistically unlikely that you will be sued by the RIAA for using Kazaa.
You can burn a CD with their app from the music you bought. Then, you can easily rip the CD to any format you wish, including MP3 or OGG.
Re-encoding will be lossy,and the files aren't that high quality to begin with. Besides, re-coding without the DRM violates the ITMS Terms of Service, a legal agreement between the user and Apple. If you're going to violate a legal agreement to get non-DRMed files, why don't you just use Kazaa in the first place and save a lot of effort?
It's not crippled the way I see it. I can burn as many copies as I want to CDs, play it on my laptop, my husband's G4, and my iPod. I own the song for as long as the file exists, as I paid to own those bits.
WRONG. You get to listen the music you "purchased" for as long as Apple lets you. Every time you upgrade to a new computer you will have to re-authenticate your purchases with Apple servers. While it is possible to burn to a CD and re-encode, it is lossy and forbidden by the Terms of Service. Also, if Apple ever gets out of the music selling biz you could lose all rights to "your" music. I suggest you read the ITMS Terms of Service a bit more closely:
c. You agree that your purchase of Products constitutes your acceptance of and agreement to use such Products solely in accordance with the Usage Rules, and that any other use of the Products may constitute a copyright infringement.
The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products. The Usage Rules shall govern your rights with respect to the Products, in addition to any other terms or rules that may have been established between you and another party. Apple reserves the right to modify the Usage Rules at any time.
d. You acknowledge that some aspects of the Service, Products, and administering of the Usage Rules entails the ongoing involvement of Apple. Accordingly, in the event that Apple changes any part of the Service or discontinues the Service, which Apple may do at its election, you acknowledge that you may no longer be able to use Products to the same extent as prior to such change or discontinuation, and that Apple shall have no liability to you in such case.
I know I've cursed not having an apple product around to listen to my music on a stupid redbook audio CD created with iTunes.
Apparently you missed the part of the OP's post about "play your music on any non-apple product without first expanding your files to 12x their original size." Having to burn a CD just to listen to a ~5 MB digital file on non-Apple approved hardware is hardly convenient.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't tested this, but does evolution work in Cygwin? Might be worth a try.
I live in America and I have a Robomower. Of course, my kids arne't unsupervised and my dog is smart enough to get out of the way. BTW, my lawn looks great ;).
Woah there, care to point to where fair use allows you to make "unlimited copies for personal use?" I'm reading Title 17, Chapter 1 and I don't see that.
Microsoft has also tweaked Word, Excel and Powerpoint, though the most obvious change is a new, blue colour scheme.
Wow, upgrade immediately for useless email DRM and a new blue color scheme! Seriously, Office is pretty much a fully mature product. How long will it be before people realize that upgrading to the new $300 office suit will not enhance their productivity? My company upgraded to Office XP from Office 2000 last year. All I noticed were new annoying "helpful" features I had to turn off. I couldn't tell you one new feature that was added during the change.
So are you saying that the "Print Screen" button is disabled when you use the software? What about the hundreds of 3rd party screen capture programs out there, are they all disabled too?
The new DRM features have absolutely nothing to do with spam. How is spam related to your forwarded emails?
If you don't want your e-mails viewed by 3rd parties you put a disclaimer on them that "The information contained in this e-mail is only for the intended recipient for the purposes of doing business yada yada yada..." This opens the 3rd party up to potential litigation if the email is abused, and is the same thing you would do with mailing hardcopies. If you truly don't want the information shared you should encrypt it or just don't share it! If you snail mail a letter to someone they can photocopy it and send it out to whoever they want, why do you think that with e-mail you can somehow restrict what people can do with information that is now in their possession? This DRM crap is just Microsoft pedaling useless snake oil.
This article is just more proof that Linux is now in the "then they fight you" stage.
Yes, but in this case you are constrained not only by the law but by the ToS.
You are not allowed to bypass the DRM. Bypassing the DRM is illegal under title 17. That's okay, though, because you don't have to bypass the DRM. Instead, everything you want to do is possible with the DRM in place.
When a shift key becomes a tool of circumvention I have no idea what else could be. When you rip to a CD and re-encode you are doing it with the specific intent of bypassing the DRM. I honestly don't know if it is bypassing the DRM or not in our current ridiculous DMCA-laden society.
That's like saying it's okay to receive stolen goods as long as you don't traffic in them. And it's untrue.
No, it's not like saying that at all, since copyright infringement and theft are two totally different things. For example, theft is a crime, while copyright infringement is a civil tort.
No, your point was to spread utterly unjustified FUD about iTunes. I don't know why, but that's what you were doing.
No, that is NOT my intent. My intent is to have a discussion with other technologically mined people about this issue, feel free not to participate.
Well, when I analyze legal documents I tend to assume that anything not expressly allowed is forbidden. You seem to be taking the position that anything not expressly forbidden is allowed. Personally, I'd prefer Apple revise the ToS to clear this up.
When you click "Buy" in the iTMS you are agreeing to the Terms of Service. Check out the 1st line: " THIS IS A LEGAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND APPLE COMPUTER, INC. ("APPLE") STATING THE TERMS THAT GOVERN YOUR USE OF THE ITUNES MUSIC STORE SERVICE." It certainly appears that Apple believes this to be a binding legal contract.
There is absolutely no basis in law for this interpretation. Look at it this way: let's say you buy a CD, then make a copy for use in your car. Along the way, your original CD gets scratched or stolen or something. Are you permitted to make a copy of your copy for use in your home? Yes, of course you are.
I'm not sure where you are getting this from , care to point me to the relevant section of US Code rather than use bad analogies? BTW, AFAIK if you lose your original media (or it's stolen) you no longer have any right to use your copies.
That's true but it doesn't mean that you are legally allowed to rip them. I don't care if you'll be prosecuted or not, I care if it's legal. It seems that one of the primary reasons to use iTMS rather than Kazaa is to get your music legally and ethically in a convenient electronic format. However, I will not put up with the DRM. If I am allowed to bypass the DRM than fantastic, I have no beef with iTMS. If not, and I have to break the law to bypass the DRM, than I feel that it is unacceptable to me. BTW, AFAIK it is legal to download music from Kazaa, it is only illegal to share. Same as the guy on the street handing out free copied CDs. He gets in trouble for distributing copyrighted music, you are in the clear.
It makes perfect sense - the music is already protected by copyright anyway, and subject to the same limitations on commercially mass-produced CDs you'd buy in a store.
My point was that the iTMS burned CDs may be subjected to additional limitations other than copyright law. The songs you purchase are covered by the Terms of Service, which prohibit bypassing the DRM. Are the derivative CDs likewise covered? I don't know.
Not necessarily. I agree that you have a fair use right to encode any CD you legally purchase from the store to any format that you want. In this case you are not licensing anything, you are purchasing a product and can do whatever you want with it within the bounds of US copyright law. However, when you use the iTMS you specifically waive several rights, you pretty much only have whatever rights Apple assigns you. Apple specifically allows you to burn CDs with your purchases, which is great. However, those CDs are a derivative of your purchased product and so I don't think that you have the same rights as a CD purchased from a store. Indeed, the music on the CD may still be covered by the Terms of Service you agreed to when downloading the original song. While you MAY have the right to rip these CDs as much as you like, it seems far from clear from a legal standpoint. This is a major stumbling block for me and I would like Apple to address it.
Please point to where it is expressly permitted for you to do this. All the other points you mentioned are spelled out quite clearly in the Terms of Service but this is not AFAIK.
Why is this a given? Do you have any actual data on just what the profit margins are for online music distribution?
My point was that Apple clearly spells out certain rights and re-encoding is not among them. This indicates to me that it is not a specificaly granted right.
This portion of the TOS seems to indicate that it is in fact permitted:
You shall be entitled to export, burn or copy Products solely for personal, noncommercial use.
Although I suppose it depends on what "export" means.
Yes, I agree that that MAY let you re-encode, but I think it is very ambiguous. These other parts (from another thread here) seem to indicate to me that you do not have the right to bypass the DRM by re-encoding.
The very fact that we are having this discussion proves that your rights to re-encode and bypass DRM are anything but clear.For starters, continuing to ship iMovie with the ability to import protected AACs and export as any unprotected format you want.
I wasn't aware of this, but it's good to know.
My take is that Apple has no desire to use DRM and did the absolute minimum necessary to get the labels to cooperate.
I agree, yet the fact remains that the files are crippled by DRM. Until I am confident that I have the right to eliminate the DRM and do as I wish with my purchases I will not be using ITMS, on Windows, OS X, or otherwise.
No, Apple makes it quite clear that you are allowed to burn CDs and listen on 3 Apple authorized computers. It is significantly less clear if you are allowed to re-encode the files, especially since the primary purpose of this activity would be to bypass the DRM.
Apple's actions make it quite clear they don't care if you re-encode
How do Apple's actions make this clear? Just because they look the other way doesn't mean that they condone this, nor does it make it "legal."
But as of today, you are allowed to play your songs only on "three Apple-authorized computers at any time" (for the Terms of Service), which is what I was discussing. Besides, I run Linux at home, so the recent announcement doesn't change things for me much.
Use of Products. You acknowledge that Products contain security technology that limits your usage of Products to the following Usage Rules.
I.e. these songs are protected by DRM.
You agree that you will not attempt to, or encourage or assist any other person to, circumvent or modify any security technology or software that is part of the Service or used to administer the Usage Rules.
I.e. you can't circumvent the DRM.
The security technology is an inseparable part of the Products.
I.e. don't take out the DRM.
Granted, IANAL so my "legalese-to-english" conversion may not be 100% correct, but that's certainly how it reads to me.
You seem to be a bit confused, fair use rights are not in the Constitution, they are in Title 17 of the US Code (Chapter 1, Sect. 107 I believe). Also, contracts most certainly can limit your rights, that's one of the things that they are expressely designed to do. For example, an NDA prohibits you from speaking about certain information, even if this is protected under Free Speech. Contracts can't make you do anything illegal and there are certain rights you can't give up (such as the right to sue) but fair use is not protected in this manner. IANALBIPOOS.
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.
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.
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.
It is Apple's fault for using DRM crippled files. I was mostly referring to playing the files on other non-Apple computers, not standard CD players. Having to burn a CD to listen to a downloaded, digital music file on your Windows computer is inconvienient and most certainly is Apple's fault.
AAC is a lossy codec. When you expand this onto a CD you don't magically get the extra quality back. If you expand a 128 kbps AAC to a CD, then rip and encode to 128 kbps mp3 or ogg (both of which are lossy codecs as well) you will definetily lose quality. I hear that encoding back to un-DRMed AAC format loses the least quality.
Well, for starters, there is no law stating that I can't reencode music into any format that I choose if I have legally purchased this music. It's called Fair Use. So, even if Apple's agreement prohibits it, so what. That makes their agreement legally void then, and I'd like to see them try to enforce it.
Did you miss the first line of the ITMS Terms of Service, " THIS IS A LEGAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND APPLE COMPUTER, INC. ("APPLE") STATING THE TERMS THAT GOVERN YOUR USE OF THE ITUNES MUSIC STORE SERVICE." If you wish to use the Service you must agree to these terms, including waiving your fair use rights, which is all perfectly legal. This is a legal contract between you and Apple and they can enforce it if they choose. Just because they probably won't prosecute doesn't mean you aren't breaking the law, just as it is statistically unlikely that you will be sued by the RIAA for using Kazaa.
Re-encoding will be lossy,and the files aren't that high quality to begin with. Besides, re-coding without the DRM violates the ITMS Terms of Service, a legal agreement between the user and Apple. If you're going to violate a legal agreement to get non-DRMed files, why don't you just use Kazaa in the first place and save a lot of effort?
WRONG. You get to listen the music you "purchased" for as long as Apple lets you. Every time you upgrade to a new computer you will have to re-authenticate your purchases with Apple servers. While it is possible to burn to a CD and re-encode, it is lossy and forbidden by the Terms of Service. Also, if Apple ever gets out of the music selling biz you could lose all rights to "your" music. I suggest you read the ITMS Terms of Service a bit more closely:
(Emphasis added by me.)
Apparently you missed the part of the OP's post about "play your music on any non-apple product without first expanding your files to 12x their original size." Having to burn a CD just to listen to a ~5 MB digital file on non-Apple approved hardware is hardly convenient.