Fairplay means your music wont play in ten years
 

I have not been able to find any documentation on how apple music store's Fairplay 3 computer limit works for copying But as I've been able to peice it together it seems to me that in about ten years none of my music will be playable.

I'm basing my statements on this apple knowledge base article
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93014
which says if you reformat your harddrive you will lose one of your 3 authentications.


In the next ten years or maybe sooner I expect I will encounter atleast 3 catatrophic system events (hard disk crashes, logic board failures, virus attack, stolen or destroyed computers, etc...). In these cases I will not be able to "deautheticate" the now dead computer. Thus I cant transfer one of my three concurrent authentications to my next computer.

It seems this not mean then that at some point I will have a backup disk full of acc files that none of my existing computers can play or transfer to whatever replaces ipods (e.g. cell phones, pda)?

Likewise what if, god forbid, apple goes out of bussniess or the music service gets sold to a company that goes out of bussiness? who will I deautheticate with so I can port my music to the next computer???


1) you someday switch to linux or Windows. sorry you cant authenticate your music anymore.
2) you somehow lose your apple password and cant fullfill the requirements for reinstating it because say your email adress on file is no longer valid, or you cant remember your security questions
3) you die, what happens to your music without a password?
4) you go bankrupt and cant get a VISA card so apple wont let you have a music store account.
5) in ten years no ipod like player works with acc.




I'm predicating this all on the assumption is that the way the 3 user authentication works is that there is a central server that the music player checks with to see if it can add an acc tune to the library. if the central server shows three existing users for a given tune the local itunes player wont add the new songs to the local library. you have to first have an existing computer deauthenticate before adding a new user.

can someone straighten me out here? or does this look really bad.

long term impact on the lifespan of your purchase
 

Clarification: Actually the Knowledge base article I cited above does not explicitly say that erasing your harddrive loses an authentication. it's just unclear and suggests that this may be true since they explicitly warn you to be sure to deauthenticate before reformatting.

they also say that apple is free to change the terms of the authetication policy at any time. Like for example, selling the authentication service to another company which charges fees (dont laugh recall the switcheroo on the bussniess models for mac.com and claris_works did the same thing).

in ten years you will want your music on something besides an ipod ( probably a central server in your wallet, visa card, piny ring, implant, or watch) which will be as much of a joke as a pocket calculator.

this device is probably not going to be made by apple. will you be able to authenticate it? maybe but probably not. after all when you bought a vinyl disk, the record company did not promise you would be able to play it on a cd player or an ipod. the difference is there was no DRM so you could find a third party (machine or software) to copy the music to the new media.

You wont be able to do this with ACC. its weak drm for near tem uses but strong drm in its long term impact on the lifespan of your purchase

You know that all digital data is tenuous at best. A recent Technology Review article points out that most of the digital data from even 20 years ago is completely unreadable by any existing computer or program. For example, apparently all of the data from the early ERT satellites is in that category. The article projects that even image formats will change enough that you will be unable to read your old digital camera images within a decade.

in the mean time, Apple is allowing you to burn CDs so that may be your best short term bet against becoming unreadable. But remember to use long life CDs or you may find them unreadable in a few years too.

What does all this mean? I really think for this stuff it is not worth worrying about.

acc work-around
 

Actually the easiest thing you can do ....

>>>>>>>>edited by Lerkfish: okeydokey we're going to have to put on the brakes right there.
Part of the rules of this here site, pilgrim, is to not discuss ways and means to circumvent copy protection.
We have posted these there rules over at the school marm's house for all you cowboys to peruse at your convenience, so I reiterate for you young'uns:

do NOT discuss how to circumvent copy protections...of ANYTHING here.

right.

(note to others in the thread, I'ma workin my way down, and will be editing as I go.)

You obviously have not actually done this.
 

Unless you have a major iTunes bug in your favor, you cannot convert the ACC files from the iTunes Music Store into any other format because they are protected.

>>>>>>>>edited by Lerkfish.......okeydoke, this part of your post stays, the rest of it requesting how to circumvent copy protection goes...

i believe that the subject line is probably correct.

protected AAC files are dependent on Apple continuing to support Fairplay authorization, and i certainly wouldn't bet money they'll still be doing so 10 years down the line.

that said, all data is screwed 100 years out. formats have differring probable shelf lives.

- commercial CD's are an excellent long term solution.

- burning CD's is less good long term.

- you can indeed convert protected AAC to MP3, but there is a non-trivial loss in quality. and once in MP3 format, you'll have to be good about backing up to still have your data 10 years out.

for more info on Fairplay, and lots of silliness, check out the following threads:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showth...threadid=12469

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showth...threadid=11456

Of course, you can just put your music on as many iPods as you like...

There's your long-term storage solution - just keep buying iPods :)

Not that this was actually Apple's indirect plan or anything...

;)

>>>>>>>edited by Lerkfish: sorry, same reasons: don't discuss circumvention in specific step by step...

You can always preserve your authentications by de-authenticating now, doing a backup of the files that you de-authenticated, and then re-authenticating on your computer. Now your back-up files should have all three authentications available for use on a restore.

Formatting your hard drive DOES NOT cause you to lose an authentication, IF you have the same machine to re-authenticate with, which will just use the same one. An archive and install of the system requires a reauthentication, and this weekend I reformatted my drive, and when I reauthenticated, I still had two left (like I always have).

Changing the logic board without de-authenticating first WILL lose you an authentication.

ATTENTION! VERBOTEN!
 

Gentlemen and gentlewomen:

once again, I reiterate and repeat and all other manner of being redundant:

DO NOT discuss details of how to circumvent copy protection schemes of ANYTHING. Not only can you find that somewhere else on the net foolhardy enough to host such a thing, but it certainly forces the moderators into editing posts or deleting threads, which we are loathe to do because that means we have to type unfun things and make reference to your lineage and suggest you mate with goats or other equally nasty reprisals, and I for one am running out of goats.

So.....unless you want this thread locked and the other non-proscribed chatter to be lost, PLEASE REFRAIN and I don't mean that part of the Brittany Spears song where the music changes, from posting circumvention instructs.

thank you and please take a mint.

Re: ATTENTION! VERBOTEN!
 

How did you manage to listen to a Brittany Spears song long enough to notice that the music changed?

it's NOT really verboten!
 

lerkfish,

while obviously site admins can do whatever they please...

the deleted comments are NOT circumventing copy protection.

they are NOT violating DMCA or any other law.

Fairplay is designed to PERMIT the roundabout conversion of protected AAC to MP3. it would have been quite simple for Apple to restrict this conversion. they chose not to.

the new Buy.com music service will not permit this conversion, but Fairplay will.

again, this conversion is PERMITTED by Fairplay.

disucssing ways to fake authorizations, fake authorization tags, or modify .MP4 files would not be permissable discussion.

i am with you in not allowing illegal conduct on this fine and valuable website. but i believe you are mischaracterizing/misunderstanding the posts you deleted.

of course, as stated before, as a site admin you have the right to do anything you please :-)

---

Fairplay permits the conversion, but discourages it, through rather clever methods:

- the conversion is multi-step.
- the conversion loses metadata tags.
- the conversion results in quality degradation.

Re: Re: ATTENTION! VERBOTEN!
 

rimshot! good one!

Re: it's NOT really verboten!
 

feel free to discuss this with me via PM, however, its not "as I please" but according to the conventions we have posted ad infinitum. I'm doing my job here, and I thought with rather forceful aplomb and contrary comedic flair, to boot.

I left in comments about the TOPIC of conversion, I only deleted actual step by step instructions on how to do it. If you cannot operate under those strictures, I suggest typing with your left hand, instead, so your right hand won't know what you're typing.

Re: Re: it's NOT really verboten!
 

no complaints about the aplomb or comedic flair.

---

the DMCA certainly legally shuts off many types of discussion. ethical concerns stop us from publicizing warez distribution methods, even if discussing such isn't actually against the law.

my point is that the step by step method deleted above is permitted conduct within Apple's Fairplay's copy protection scheme.

and therefore, discussing it in detail in these forums should be as permitted as discussing in detail whether or not erasing your hard drive destroys an authorization.

if it's permitted conduct, then discussing it should be kosher as well.

that's my 2 cents. i love the site, and i love the site admins.

(and, of course, i will respect the site admins wishes, even if i think they are quite incorrect on the merits.)

I've posted the contents of what I deleted in the moderators only thread, if any other site admins wish to discuss/disagree they can. If you allowed private messages, I would have included you in on that as well.
I did PM the author of the posts I deleted, and explained this site's position....as I have done here now, too many times.

you can, however, send me a an email to discuss it further, if you like, but let's not clutter up the thread any longer.

This is borderline enough that I don't think Lerk went out of his way to spoil anybody's day.

It's pretty consistent with what we've said (and done) in the past. Whether we've been wrong or not.


My guess on this whole matter: the structure and mechanism of the Fair Play process will also have evolved over the course of a decade, and the license well might, too. It's really pretty tough to predict what will work then.

I know I've had plenty of cassette tapes from the 80's that needed to visit Mr. Trashcan in the 90's.

iTunes: How to Create Your Own Audio CDs.

Your CD player doesn't know anything about fairplay.

true. but iTunes won't let you make CD's from protected AAC files if you can't authorize the computer. so if you haven't already made the CD's when Apple stops doing authorizations, you're out of luck.

and if you make the CD's right now, CD-R's are somewhat dubious to last 10 years.

It is a fine line, and unfortunately, due to DMCA, it's one we must tread lightly. All it really would take is one little letter from someone to shut me down -- I have no budget for legal battles, so I tend to be ultra conservative.

What Apple knowingly allows is:

- You can play purchased songs on three authorized machines.
- You can copy songs to an iPod
- You can burn songs to a standard AIFF-format CD

Anything beyond this is, to my knowledge, not endorsed nor supported by Apple.

Now, anyone with even a little bit of iTunes, MP3, AIFF, and burning experience can deduce the next steps if you want to create a safe, permanent backup of your purchased music. However, thanks to DMCA (at least, my understanding of it), even the mere discussion of such a thing is technically illegal.

I've read the bits that Lerk nipped, and though some might be considered borderline, I'd rather err on the side of keeping the site online. Yes, there are other forums where such things are discussed all the time. I realize we may offend some readers sometimes, and I apologize in advance, but I'm much more interested in the longevity of the site than in the readability of any given thread.

Sorry if anyone is offended, but please, write your Congressional representatives to complain -- with DMCA, the only choices I have are delete it, or "ignore it and hope nobody notices." Option two is a bit scary to me, so we gravitate to option one in most cases. We're only trying to keep within the letter of the law to the best of our abilities...

-rob.

well, not really. otherwise sites like Think Secret would be long gone.

if there really was any problem with this kind of discussion, Apple Legal would send you a letter asking you to take down the discussion. you'd take it down, and that would be the end of the story.

no legal battles. no lawsuits or prosecutions. no shutting down of the site. no financial liability to you.

again, think about what's happened (or more to the point, not happened) to rumor sites that have repeatedly published proprietary Apple information.

well... here's the relevant passage in the DMCA:

"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

Fairplay permits you to remove Fairplay measures by going to AIFF. as soon as you do that, the technological measures are gone. and once they are gone, so is any DMCA authority.

what you then do with that AIFF is no longer controlled by DMCA. you can do anything with that AIFF that would be legal to do with an AIFF you had ripped from a CD you owned. and it is permitted to discuss what can be done legally with an AIFF file.

if Fairplay didn't permit you to go to AIFF, and we were discussing how to get around that, then that discussion would indeed be verboten.

now, i know we're not lawyers here, but even if i'm wrong (and i'm damn sure i'm not), the worst case scenario is a letter from Apple Legal telling you to take down the discussion, not to take down the site.

---

i'm really not trying to be a pest here. i just think that there's a bit more freedom to discuss than seems to be thought.

that said, i love the site. i don't want to see anything happen to it.

and i certainly am not volunteering to host or maintain the site, so these decisions are not mine to make at the end of the day.

but i do think there's a quite bit more freedom available without any threat to the site or to you.

Fairplay really is a fair copy protection scheme. discussing its architecture and options is not the same as trying to circumvent it.

and i can't think of a better place to discuss its architecture and options than here.

best,
-petey

in the interests of full disclosure
 

while i think the deleted comments in this thread are most solidly on legal ground, i started a separate thread a while ago.

that thread is skating on much thinner ice regarding the DMCA.

see if you can tell the difference.

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showth...threadid=12533

(and even that thread would result in nothing more than a cease and desist letter if Apple Legal noticed it, and decided it ran afoul of their ground rules.)

Well, you know, right or wrong, like it or not, we do have our standards here. We've tried to be pretty consistent in the application of them. This stuff is in many ways very vague, and we perhaps tend to err on the side of caution. But one of the things one learns in dealing with computers (and people) is to prevent the worst case scenarios from even knocking on the door.

One of our standards has been if we see something (in our own limited minds) in the grey area approaching piracy (of any variety), we try to stop it.

I guess if that's unacceptable, then you gotta look elsewhere. There's no shortage of other sites. Some even have whole areas devoted to Panther. We're not going to do that either, until it's publicly released.

It's the way we are. Sorry.

By the way, thanks for pointing out that other thread. Now we know to watch that one too. ;)

I totally agree with the way the admins have dealt with this issue. Just cos something may or may not technically be illegal, and just because cases in the past have been dealt with amicably, there's still no reason to step into the grey areas when (as Griffman has repeatedly stated) this site has ZERO legal warchest.

I tend to think of it as being like a pub that doesn't let people in if they're wearing football colours. Doesn't mean the pub thinks that everyone wearing football colours is a hooligan, and similarly it doesn't stop you going to the pub - all you do is take off the shirt.

Again, there's nothing illegal about wearing a football shirt, but it is true that football colours can increase the risk of unruly behaviour and breakages in the pub.

Now let's imagine that the pub has NO insurance. It's possible that there has NEVER been a case of football-related violence in the area, but if you're a cautious publican, you'll err on the side of caution and choose to keep the pub open with a couple of restricions than face even the possibility of having to shut down as you can't afford the repairs.

Finally, there's no "freedom of expression" issue here as the publican isn't trying to suppress football colours world wide. He's just trying to keep it clean in his establishment.

Same thing here. The rules here aren't "No illegal chat about copy protection", they're "Don't talk about how to circumvent it". Whether it's legal or not doesn't come into it. As stated on numerous occasions, there are many, many other places on the web that discuss this, just as there are many other (for example) warez forums on the web.

That doesn't mean I should expect this forum to tolerate a discussion on the merits or otherwise of warez. It's offtopic firstly, but also the discussion COULD turn dodgy ("have a look at THIS site" type discussions).

Similarly, as soon as you start discussing how copy protection works (a "legit" and on-topic chat for this forum), you immediately raise the risk of someone saying something that COULD be on the wrong side of the US's draconian DMCA.

I'm not a lawyer, but a few friends are, and they'll tell you that being legal is still no protection from a court. If the mythical letter DID arrive at Griffman's door saying "Take the site down or go to court", even if the offending article was LEGAL, it would still take cash to fight in court, and that's cashola that Griffman keeps telling us isn't there.

--

I don't mean to rant, and I probably seem more upset about this than I really am, but I just reckon that a few people reading this (and I really DON'T have anyone specific in mind) may get the wrong end of the stick and think the admins are being a bit overbearing.

Just thought I'd add my two cents.

To haul this back on topic, I hope that:

"Human common sense means that the DMCA won't be on the statue books in ten years"

It's a piece of thought policing that really isn't the way to go.

But as I've been told before, political soapboxing is ALSO offlimits, so I'll go back to work now ;)

Petey, I am not afraid of Apple Legal. This thread has nothing to do with Apple. Apple won't care if this information is posted.

Rightly or wrongly, I'm deathly afraid of the RIAA. They wield power, and they've shown they have no fear to use it. And their letter wouldn't just seek to have the information removed, they would more than likely want to sue for damages. They would probably (based on prior behavior) go after the poster of the information, the website owner (me), the ISP, and anyone else they think they might get a dollar out of.

That's not to say that I think they're actively scanning and reading every board on the web. Rather, it's just that I'd prefer to stay away from topics that grab their attention. So occasionally, we delete things. As the others have pointed out, there are lots of sites that don't seem to worry as much as I do, and you're more than welcome to post such discussions there. Here, however, we keep the focus on troubleshooting and enhancing OS X, and try to limit the topics that delve into piracy of software or music ... that's just the way it is...

-rob.

LOL! That was a great analogy. It is hard to imagine there never being any "football" related violence, being from the US and everything... =P

griffman makes an good point. The RIAA is on a jihad. There's much that can be done. And, I would love to know how the mechanism works in detail. I'm _sure_ there are sites out there which do go into great depths on how to *circumvent* Fairplay. They're just below the radar, unlike this site.

You know, I've just had occasion to read this thread from top to bottom. I guess I've lived outside the States for too long - 25 years - but I can't help being amazed with what Americans will now put up with in terms of censorship and, especially, self-censorship. I realize these are the rules we are playing by now, but it is very sad to see.

You mean censorship by the RIAA (which would include their rightful concern about copyright violations--that not being censorship, imo), or do you mean moderators wanting to try to respect the limits of the law of the land? That's not censorship either. It's a fine line we walk with some of these issues, but I don't think a spirit of repressing opinions (i.e. censorship) is what's going on here.

I see jhansen's point, I think, and if it's what I think it is then it shouldn't be taken as offensive (feel free to contradict).

It's a sad day when a country passes legislation that doesn't ACTUALLY limit freedom of speech, but makes people afraid of voicing opinions that may be considered in contravention of legislation even when they aren't.

Without wanting to get too political, this is a classic "thoughtcrime" self censorship issue. You guys (the admins) know that what is being discussed isn't illegal, but that it might attract undue attention from trigger-happy lawyers from the RIAA who are out to make their name and their fortune.

As such, you're forced into a situation of censorship (minor admittedly) despite the law not technically demanding that you censor.

So the result? Basically the RIAA have forced you to censor your board without actually putting any censorship legislation on the statute books.

Frankly I find that quite scary. As GM Tarkin says in Star Wars, "Fear will keep the systems in line. Fear of this [DMCA]"

:-)

--

edit:

By the way, I do agree with the rights of musicians to protect their music, and I also agree that the moderators here have the right to enforce whatever policies they see fit. I also agree that the policies and enforcement on this board are both exemplary, and should be applauded.

However, the kind of heavy-handedness that the media industries are showing in certain areas is akin to publishers threatening to "clamp down" on anyone discussing how to modify a photocopier's platen cover to allow for hardback books to be comfortably placed underneath.

As Phil said, repressing opinions (i.e. censorship) is not at all what's going on here.

Just consider that if you tell me beforehand that you don´t have great insurance (as Griffman explained time and again in the forums) and you lend me your *new car* for a drive (macosxhints forums), you would expect me to have a valid driving license, obey the Traffic Laws of *any* country we are in, and to avoid any wild, borderline, or extreme acrobatics while driving your car (in order to minimize risks).

Otherwise, it could happen that you end up with lots of unnecessary problems coming your way.

hmmm... i wasn't thinking about the RIAA. your concerns make more sense to me now. the RIAA truly are on an evil jihad, and the DMCA is their highjacked fuel-loaded airplane.

that said, the basic point that prompted me to babble on was that the deleted posts were not about how to pirate music. they were clearly about how to preserve legally bought music, and as such, should be legit.

it still seems to me that questions of how to deal with legally bought music inside OS X should be safe for this site. but as i say, i do understand your concerns more clearly.

and i hope i haven't been too much of a pest on this issue.

EFF: Digital Copyright Law Hurts Consumers, Scientists, and Competition
 

The EFF has recently published a paper titled:

Unintended Consequences:
Seven Years under the DMCA

http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/DMCA_unintended_v4.pdf

A hint on the main site related to this thread (and a lot more) is quoted there as an example:The paper shows how the DMCA, while ineffective to stop "piracy" has a lot of unintended side-effects, here's part of the press release from EFF:
Hopefully the tide will turn so we can get rid of such nefarious legislation sponsored by fat-cat industries failing to adapt to the digital age.

I don't doubt that that's what the article says, but if it does it's a stupid article penned by stupid authors. Twenty years ago was 1986 and digital media storage formats (and file formats) were sufficiently established at least on personal-sized computers that all of it should be readable today with only mild inconveniences. I certainly have access to all of mine (I used 1st-generation Macs and have boxes of my old floppies). Data from minicomputers and mainframes might be a little more problematic but essentially if the data were of sufficient use to people, there would be legacy-compatible readers available. And indeed, someone told me just the other day that you can buy punch-card readers that will interface with a PC's serial port. It's been longer than 20 years since the punch card was the storage device du jour.

All my current digital data (including the files I've saved from 1986) will probably be fully available to a computer user in 2069, even if the only surviving copy is on my 2006-vintage 2.5" ATA drive in HFS+ format.

The "eeek, all the old computer info is irretrievable to modern systems" stuff is extrapolated from looking at the early material from the dawn of computing, before standards were much in place — the days of propietary operating systems, proprietary storage-medium formats, and proprietary (and generally individually-coded by the end-user) applications that generated it. Yeah, a lot of that stuff would be damn difficult to retrieve. But those conditions didn't persist into even semi-modern times. Data from Joe Johnson's home-soldered made-from-IC-chips computer-science project, saved on magnetic reel-to-reel tape connected via modem and stored via a routine Joe wrote, etc etc, may be irretrievable, but by the late 70s most geeks were using Ataris Commodores Apples TRS-80s IBMs and other highly standardized devices, and yes we can get the data off of them (or off of their storage devices) without any huge difficulty.

I think the thing to remember here is that all data is tenous, not just digital. Many people still have LPs from the forties and even earlier, but most do not. How many of us have LPs from the eighties? Even paper books go out of print and are lost, one by one over time.

Digital data, because it is so easily copied, gives us a chance to dramatically extend its life span. The trick is knowing when to upgrade the format and media it's stored on, and actually doing it. All we can do with Fairplay is hope that Apple will provide a means for us to transfer it to the next format when the time comes. I like to think they will, after all, it will be in their interest as well as ours. ;)

Vol de Nuit,

Thanks for posting the link to a thoroughly researched and highly objective study of the harmful effects of DMCA and DRM! :) I believe this is an issue that concerns all users of digital content today -- including virtually every member of this Forum.

With best regards,
ArcticStones
.

The first thing i do when i buy an album is burn it to CD then delete the acc files. Then i import it back onto my mac as MP3 and can put the music on my PSP. I don't have an iPod and I find it annoying doing this but its the only way that i can get music on my PSP. Other music download sites like napster allow you to download wma (which will normally play on PSP with latest software update) but these are protected and don't play either.:(

Migration to another format is the only way out, and throughout history, it is the only way that has ever worked. So Fairplay won't play in 10 years. Maybe they're counting on the common experience of people who bought a cassette, LP, or CD and 10 years later they aren't listening to 90% of them any more. If you bought an LP in 1976, you probably migrated it to cassette to you can play it on your high-tech Walkman in 1983. In 1999 you migrated your cassettes and LPs to CDs using your computer so you could listen to them in the CD player of your car. In 2004 you migrated everything to your iPod. Now you are buying songs for your iPod. Don't expect it to be some kind of exception to tradition. In the examples above, music needed to be converted for some other device before 10 years had passed. Be prepared to do the same for your iTunes, because if history is any guide, you will probably want to do it long before Apple cuts off FairPlay.

.
Styrafome, those are fascinating points and a convincing list of historical examples! I do not, however, believe that analogue formats are entirely comparable to digital. The migration that you predict is sure to come, but technology and format per se may not be the prime force.

I think the crux of the matter will be a very different one: Quality!

Playback equipment continues to improve. I believe there will soon come a time when the majority of users will consider many present-day audio files to be woefully inadequate.

Yet the whole issue of quality seems to be camouflaged, especially on the portable equipment front. Have you ever noticed that producers refrain from talking much about the audio ratings of their equipment?

Look at the technical specification of Apple’s iPod, for one. The closest (and only) thing that I can find is this: Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz. That tells you hardly anything!!
Whatever happened to all the other specs that were once used to rate the hi-fi accuracy of speakers and playback equipment?

What surprises me about the iTunes Music Store, is that Apple is getting away with selling third-rate quality at such a relatively high price. If users were given the option of downloading loss-less audio files, or at least 320 kbps AAC, that would be fine and we could talk about hi-fi. Since they fail to do so, I don’t actually believe iTMS is a good deal at all.

To me it seems a paradox that the prime sources of high-quality audio files are illegal P2P. The legal sources, the online stores such as iTMS, are simply not competing.

Or do I have all this wrong?


With best regards,
ArcticStones
.

Many of the tech specs became irrelevant once everybody realized that digital media has no wow, flutter, etc.

But you have a really good point. Converting iTunes to something else is going to lower its quality.

The point that makes all the business models work, though, is that most people really don't care. I haven't gotten rid of my LPs and cassettes, but you know what, they sound like crap. Especially the cassettes. The LPs, well, I never had the best turntable, so after listening to scratchy music for 15 minutes and having it end because it's the end of the side and I have to flip it over, iTunes AAC don't seem too bad. Apple knows all this. Steve Jobs went on stage and used the word "audiophile" while describing the iPod Hi-Fi. Because he knows most people really don't care about quality or haven't heard what audiophile really means. They just want it to be loud. With more bass. Or cowbell.

Amen to this. My philosophy over the years has been to listen to components and speakers and buy the (best I could afford) OR (best for which the next model up produced no noticeable difference) whichever came first. Perhaps not surprisingly, the no noticeable difference criterion often ruled.

I really think that is the most sensible criterion. But I do notice a world of difference between 320 kbps and lower resolutions. And I think it is strange that there isn’t a larger choir of protests demanding better quality from download stores.

After all, the customer pays for it; so the customer should have some option in regards to the quality of the tracks they download. All it would cost Apple is a bit more bandwidth.

My apologies if I threw the discussion off on a tangent... :o

The points about effects of DMCA / DRM that are harmful and unintended (or to which the RIAA is simply indefferent) are fascinating, and some of them little discussed.

It was also an enlightening historical lesson to read the three-year-old Forum discussion.


With best regards,
ArcticStones

"But I do notice a world of difference between 320 kbps and lower resolutions. And I think it is strange that there isn’t a larger choir of protests demanding better quality from download stores."

I cholk that up to the average customer's ignorance. My mother, for instance, thinks that the Apple Store's 128Kb AAC is of the highest quality, despite what I've told her. Her logic: CDs are the digital and they are better than anything previous. DVDs are digital and they too are better than anything previous. ITMS is digital and came after CDs and DVDs so they much be better than anything previous. Incorrect, but certainly not "left field" for the the masses who use computers everyady but have yet to understand how they work.