only a bite from Apple for 99c?
Randall Stoss says that Apple isn't selling us the whole song (From a High-Tech System, Low-Fi Music, NYT, July 4, 2004):
Jun 22, 04: In Bill to Curb Online Piracy Is Challenged as Too Broad (NYT, June 24, 2004), RIAA chief exec Mitch Bainwol says that the INDUCE or IICA legislation "was meant to be narrowly tailored to address companies that build technology focused on illegal file sharing. He said he did not envision the legislation's enabling lawsuits against neutral technologies, like computer makers. 'This is not about going after the device makers,' Mr. Bainwol said, though he stopped short of guaranteeing that the recording industry would never use the measure to sue them."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has drafted a fake complaint under the INDUCE Act against Apple and some other companies to illustrate how the proposed legislation could be used to show that the iPod or Itunes could lure kids into infringing copyright via P2P.
However, as noted in a recent piece by Rob Kasumic, the RIAA may have implicitly endorsed the iPod and Apple's FairPlay DRM model by licensing music for sale by the iTMS: "The iPod impedes the copying of files from the iPod to other computers by "hiding" files and the DRM in the Protected AAC files limits access of any files copied to authorized computers associated with those files. The protection is not impenetrable, but it provides obstacles to foster compliance with the reasonable terms of service that were accepted by the user. One of the primary obstacles to redistribution of files is that the name and Apple ID of the person who purchased the music are embedded in each purchased song. This fingerprinting discourages redistribution of songs, since if a song finds its way onto a peer-to-peer system, the songs can be traced back to the person who purchased the song."
Other iTunes issue: Programmer James Speth released a hastily written piece of software called 401(ok) that restores Net-wide music streaming to iTunes [Wired]; Song Sharing by iTunes Users Stirs Piracy Concerns; and Jon Johansen has released FairKeys, a program for extracting your iTunes DRM FairPlay keys from Apple's servers.
see also: iPod Resource Link List
Ah, for simpler times, when we never had reason to look up the bit rate at which music is digitally sampled for CD's: 1,378 kilobits per second. The bit rate for iTunes, 128, is so low that when played side by side against the original, the difference is audible not only to audio enthusiasts, but also to mortals with ordinary hearing. Wes Phillips, contributing editor at Stereophile, says "128 is like an eight-track," and he describes the combination of iPod and iTunes as "buying a 21st-century device to live in the 1970's."
However, 128 (near cd quality) actually doesn't seem like a big deal when you consider that Sony's ATRAC3 compression system at the relatively low rate of 48Kbps, as Apple points out, is "nowhere near CD quality" (Apple hits back at Sony's 'misleading' Walkman marketing, MacCentral, Jim Dalrymple, July 07, 2004) while at the same time allowing Sony to claim that they can store 13,000 tracks in a 20gb walkman; whereas the 20gb iPod holds 5,000 songs.
Andrew Raff, Download this, says that at "128kbps, AAC sounds significantly better than 128 kbps MP3." In fact, its probably close to the 160 bit rate mp3 compression. Apple could just do us all a favor and introduce the lossless data compression.
Jul 1, 04: In Walt Mossberg's July 1 mailbox (WSJ) he discusses the iPod drm and ways around it:
see also: iTunes Europe: A Preliminary Analysis (June 2004) considers the legal foundation of iTunes Europe and the interplay of the service with European law. The report examines the implications of the expansion of iTunes on the future of digital media, technology, business strategies, and international law. [via ACM]A. To assuage the record companies, who feared the iPod would be used to pass illegally obtained songs from computer to computer, Apple rigged the device so it couldn't send songs to a computer, only receive songs from one. It can synchronize with only one Mac or Windows PC. If you try to plug an iPod into a second computer, to move the songs it contains to that machine, the iTunes program warns you that, instead, it will wipe out the iPod and replace its contents with whatever music is already on the second computer.
This is ridiculous, in my view, since you have the right to store and play back legally obtained music, even songs you buy from Apple's iTunes music store, on multiple Windows and Macintosh computers. And, logically, the iPod should be an easy way to keep all your music synchronized on all your computers.
Luckily, there are a bunch of low-cost third-party utility programs that can copy the contents of an iPod to multiple computers, and in some cases even automatically load the songs into the iTunes software. One example, for Windows, is CopyPod, which costs $5, at copypod.ouvaton.org. An example for Mac users is iPodRip, at $10, from www.thelittleappfactory.com. You can read about these and other iPod utilities at sites like www.ipodhacks.com, www.ipoding.com, or www.ipodlounge.com.
Jun 22, 04: In Bill to Curb Online Piracy Is Challenged as Too Broad (NYT, June 24, 2004), RIAA chief exec Mitch Bainwol says that the INDUCE or IICA legislation "was meant to be narrowly tailored to address companies that build technology focused on illegal file sharing. He said he did not envision the legislation's enabling lawsuits against neutral technologies, like computer makers. 'This is not about going after the device makers,' Mr. Bainwol said, though he stopped short of guaranteeing that the recording industry would never use the measure to sue them."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has drafted a fake complaint under the INDUCE Act against Apple and some other companies to illustrate how the proposed legislation could be used to show that the iPod or Itunes could lure kids into infringing copyright via P2P.
However, as noted in a recent piece by Rob Kasumic, the RIAA may have implicitly endorsed the iPod and Apple's FairPlay DRM model by licensing music for sale by the iTMS: "The iPod impedes the copying of files from the iPod to other computers by "hiding" files and the DRM in the Protected AAC files limits access of any files copied to authorized computers associated with those files. The protection is not impenetrable, but it provides obstacles to foster compliance with the reasonable terms of service that were accepted by the user. One of the primary obstacles to redistribution of files is that the name and Apple ID of the person who purchased the music are embedded in each purchased song. This fingerprinting discourages redistribution of songs, since if a song finds its way onto a peer-to-peer system, the songs can be traced back to the person who purchased the song."
Other iTunes issue: Programmer James Speth released a hastily written piece of software called 401(ok) that restores Net-wide music streaming to iTunes [Wired]; Song Sharing by iTunes Users Stirs Piracy Concerns; and Jon Johansen has released FairKeys, a program for extracting your iTunes DRM FairPlay keys from Apple's servers.
see also: iPod Resource Link List
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