utilities/system updates
04/26/2004, 7:15am, EDT
Monday, April 26th
New iTunes DRM-remover emerges
FairTunes is a new application that strips the digital rights management (DRM) protection from songs purchased at the iTunes Music Store. Unlike PlayFair, a similar utility that Apple has twice had removed from the Web, FairTunes does not require an iPod and is packaged as a simple Cocoa application that converts the song into an uncompressed WAV of AIFF file, which can then be encoded or burned as the user desires. FairTunes is free.
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Via AIFF & Reencoding there will be a loss of quality. This is stupid. Just remove the DRM from an AAC and leave the encoding as is.
This program would let you use iTMS music on more than the three computers Apple deigns to let you use at one time, but other then that, there's nothing to see here...
I find all these efforts to get by Apple's DRM tiresome. If people have legitmate reasons for wanting the music in other formats, such as a different MP3 player then they should opt to buy the music from another source. If they want to listen to the music on more than three machines they should petition Apple to allow additional machines to be used, say for an additional fee per device for example.
If people want unemcumbered music they can buy (or borrow) the CD and rip it themselves, or download via the non-legal P2P boards.
Also, I have several albums on LP that I wanted on MP3 and just downloaded them via LimeWire. I own the original and didn't want to pay for them again. Sadly, the iTMS has yet to reach the UK, so I don't have the option of buying anything from it yet.
At the end of the day, you have a choice. You don't have to buy your music from Apple. So you don't have to bitch about the restrictions they put in place. If you do buy music from Apple you have agreed to abide by the licence. I find it hard to understand how many linux users and open source activists who defend the PlayFair program as 'freedom of speech' etc, cry blue murder when any company breaks 'their licence' the GPL, but actively encourage people to break DRM - because "it's bad".
This actually ticked me off that I couldn't use the song/book I paid for in my car cd player, after all, aren't we supposed to be able to burn songs we buy an unlimited # of times and the same playlist 10x...I guess audible's material is different...maybe there was fine print I didn't see, but if they want tot change the rules they should be posted....
I'm going to try this and see iif I can get "fair use" of what I paid for darnit.
misinformation post 6 immediately above, didn't have burning set to "Audio CD" it does automatically break up over multiple audio cds...good.
and, I just found someone who's post suggests you can dictate the cutoffs...
sorry, all my bad vibe for nothing, and now can't imagine why I'd need this software now... my "fair rights" as I understood them when I purchased it are there thru iTunes after all.