Of course you cut the part of my response out of the quote where I explained exactly how to remove the DRM from an iTunes music files.
Luckily Steve Jobs isn’t a big fan of DRM either. As a business man though he realized that it was necessary in order to get the big record labels to get on board in the beginning. Now he’s doing his best to get new contracts that allow non-DRM downloads.
Of course early adopters have gotten taken for a bit of a ride as everything gets figured out, but that’s always the case with new uses of technology.
DRM is doomed anyway. If you can play a file you can copy it.
If you can live with a next to unnoticable loss of quality you can always play, record, and resample the files.
The standard windows soundrecorder does an ok job.
I’ve been feeling overly cynical today. I’m probably going to regret the tone of my posts from today, but right now it feels good. I still need to reply to the Cheryl Crow thread while I’m on a roll.
The screwing of the general music consumer is more than just a consequence of early adoption. It’s not like Beta or VHS where one group of early adopters is going to lose out. It’s a result of the ingrained behavior of the industry towards the music consumer. They’re even fsking with audio CDs. I purchased an audio CD that crashed my computer. I’ll bet there are audio CDs being sold right now that won’t play on some future equipment because of their intentional anti-copying techniques put on the CD. That kind of problem is not anything to do with early adoption. It has everything to do with an industry that would rather fsk the people who buy their products.
I have a home studio quality audio module that can be used for studio recording or music playback. One feature is that it can make a digital recording of any audio signal that can be played through it. It does it all in the digital realm. No loss of quality. What you end up with is a perfect PCM version (uncompressed audio) of the music that was played through it. Then compress the file using FLAC or some other lossless compressor and you have a perfect copy of what was played. If the original copy was a lossy file the result will be a bigger file. But the sound you get will be exactly as the original was. No resampling done. No analog loopback. All digital.
Lots of the home studio computer based recording devices can do that loop through recording. Any audio that goes in can be recorded with no digital to analog to digital process. The bits all stay digital and there is no resampling.
The equipment doesn’t have to be expensive. Stuff under $150 can do it. And you get better quality audio playback than you’ll get with a Sound Blaster or gamer oriented sound card.
If it’s an important feature you’ll want to ask and make sure the device can do that. Most home studio oriented devices can.
Point being is that it is getting more common to be able to record whatever can be played on the computer. It’s like the analog hole, only fully digital.