Re: Apple Computer changes its name

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <1168530991.701016.99920@i56g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
 <bieling@terra.es> wrote:

> Paul Schlyter wrote:
> 
>> - the mp3 player's memory appearing just as a plain disk drive, with all
>>   your mp3 files readily accessible  (they're there on your iPod too, true,
>>   although with the 'hidden' bit set, and also obfuscated behind obscure
>>   file names).
> 
> The first thing you see inside an iPod's case is "don't steal music".
> 
> Apple sells music in the iTunes music store, and they try to make their
> providers happy (the copyright owners) by making it as hard as possible
> to steal music. The interface to transfer music in/out of the iPod is
> meant to be iTunes, just for this reason. iTunes takes care as much as
> possible of avoiding illegal copying of music between different ipods.

If so, why does the iTunes software easily allow you to *import* any
mp3 file into the iPod?


> All the ipods since the first one can be used as an storage device, and
> this has not been true for many of the other mp3 players. But making
> the music files visible won't help Apple very much in their position
> in-between the final user and their music providers. The users get a
> nice handy useful user interface, and the other party gets their much
> wanted piracy prevention measures. If I was a singer, I'd probably like
> that.

If you were stupid, you might appreciate that.  The "protection"
offered by iPod+Itunes is actually quite easy to circumvent: Itunes
already imports any mp3 file to your iPod.  Exporting mp3 files from
your iPod is a little more tricky: it involves navigating among hidden
subdirectories and figuring out which mp3 file is which among all
those obfuscated file names.  The easies way is probably to just copy
all those files onto your harddisk and then run a utility on all of
them which renames the files to some suitable content in their ID3
tags (which remain there intact).  So it's not really a protection,
it's a hassle.

Perhaps protected music files bought at the Itunes store is harder
to export from the iPod?  But I would _never_ buy music in such
digital formats.  What happens when your iPod stops working?  Yes
it will, sooner or later, and then all your music collection will
be gone.  No, instead I would buy the music on CD's, and then
transfer it from the CD to whatever other digital format I'd like.
Then I'll also have an archival copy: the CD record itself.


If you want to know what DRM really ought to be like, check out
this:    http://www.drm.org       :-)



Assuming that your customers are thieves is not a good business model.


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