DRM ?

[Frank Jr.]

A few years ago I down loaded a bunch of music from Bellsouth for 99 cent a song that I sent to my mp3 player. I can play these songs on the player but when I transfer these files to my pc I get the drm issues. I am not trying to steal anything but dang I am tired of this bs. I called the so called new at&t and asked about the music and they just play dumb. Any advice?

 

[Steve Mehs]

Burn them to a CD as an audio CD (not a Data CD), and rerip them into MP3 or whatever format you desire.

 

[Frank Jr.]

Thanks Steve. I will have to pick some of those up. All the ones I have are full. Thanks again.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Frank -try tunebite. It works at getting rid of DRM from itunes stuff.

LOL swype thought that itunes was prunes when I typed it. Quite appropriate.

 

[TheForce]

Frank- It's the Law! Digital Millennium Copyright Act which allows the content copyright holder to control not just the copies but where you may play the digital copy you purchased. If you defeat the DRM, you are effectively now a pirate! Hey, I'm just busting your chops because I know you took an oath to uphold and enforce the law, not just the laws you believe in. I'm no copyright lawyer, for sure, but I do believe that using the analog hole does skirt around the DMCA, legally. Then you can make as many copies as you want in the analog world; just don't give them out beyond your household.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Some laws are meant to be ignored. You bought it, find a way to be able to use it.

 

[Frank Jr.]

I don't think that I am trying to ignor any laws or regulations on this. I payed for the music. I am not really trying to re copy it. Back before at&t took over bellsouth down hear I could purchase music from bellsouth and copy it to my computer and from there put the music on pretty much any device or medium I wanted. Back then I was using a laptop with an 80 gig hard drive, to save space I stored the music on the mp3 player. All I had to do is plug in my mp3 player to my computer and play it through my computer speakers. I could even go back to the bellsouth home page and reload the music I purchased because it was stored on their system. The way that worked, I could purchase the music through bellsouth and would pay for it when I paid my phone bill. At the time I thought it was a good deal. Convenient to say the least. I still have copies of my bills reflecting my purchases. Now when I plug in the mp3 player to my pc a good bit of the music is blocked. I can still listen to the music through the player with head phones but that's it. The old bellsouth site is dead. IF I go to the new at&t home page that music option is gone. If I could still listen to the music in question from my rather expensive computer speakers using the mp3 I would be fine with that. I did back then burn a lot of that music to disk but I guess I still have about 100 bucks worth I can't move and play because of some newer DRM restrictions that were not in place at the time of purchase. Respectfully, If my wanting to play the music in the fashion I did in the past is wrong, please explain that to me. Down loading the content inquestion to an audio disc is wrong as well?

 

[diogen]

You are trying to rationally solve a problem that by definition doesn't have such a solution.
Everyone has its own view on it. With arguments going back to the Sony vs. Universal case. With drastically different conclusions.

First, the boilerplate: I'm not a lawyer blah, blah, blah...
Second, don't listen to those trying to be holier that the pope.
You will not only lose your audio, but also run out of money by the time they are done bullsh!tting...

Just find a way to circumvent it (have no practical advice here), save DRM-less
and then torrent another $100-worth amount of audio for the headaches incurred.

I'm not kiddin'...

Diogen.

 

[Frank Jr.]

Frank- It's the Law! Digital Millennium Copyright Act which allows the content copyright holder to control not just the copies but where you may play the digital copy you purchased. If you defeat the DRM, you are effectively now a pirate! Hey, I'm just busting your chops because I know you took an oath to uphold and enforce the law, not just the laws you believe in. I'm no copyright lawyer, for sure, but I do believe that using the analog hole does skirt around the DMCA, legally. Then you can make as many copies as you want in the analog world; just don't give them out beyond your household.

Don I hear you. There is however many laws that are ignored. In SC there are some really archaic laws that are still on the books that are simply just ignored and have not been repealed. One that comes to mind is a statute that states having back pockets on pants while antending a public event is against the law. Try enforcing that one.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I seriously would not lose any sleep about finding a way to use the music you bought for your own private purposes.

 

[TheForce]

Don I hear you. There is however many laws that are ignored.

Yep there are! And we as adults reserve the right to choose which ones we will obey and which ones we will ignore. If the authorities or plaintiffs decide to make an example of us, then we can make our case in court and pay the consequence if found guilty or just pay the costs and walk away if innocent.

I wasn't making any case for what is right or wrong, just that there are laws that forbid personal copying of digital content. I haven't seen any case decisions that state fair use rules on digital copying, only analog content copies. The one case ruling that favored the individual I am familiar with is the case for jail breaking an iphone as the court ruled that jail breaking is not a violation of DMCA because the DMCA was not designed to protect business model, just illegal copying.

The skirt around for this is the analog hole which was described here. But use of digital decryption software and using that to make copies is not allowed under DMCA. As for the advice of this thread, I stand with Steve Mehs solution as the legal way to resolve your problem. Use the analog hole and play that anyway you wish within the fair use guidelines.

Personally, I believe the DMCA should be completely overturned and repealed. All content should be regulated by the basic US copyright act, digital same as analog.

 

[Steve Mehs]

All in all who really cares? I’ve pirated music for years, from the first time I heard of Napster until a few years ago. After some serious listening I discovered how annoying pirated music was. Different volume levels on songs, varying quality. I could play 7 songs in a row at 192kbps and they’d all have different levels of quality. Not to mention misspelled, misformatted and plain ole misinformation in the ID3 data and very little album artwork. I could spend hours and hours and days getting all this right or spend the 99 cents and but the music from iTunes. So I said screw it and I did just that and then guess what? Then iTunes Plus DRM free music came out and I got ‘rewarded’ for being a good boy and purchasing music by having to spend another 30 cents a song to upgrade to DRM free so I could actually play it on another media player besides Apples CRAPTASIC iTunes, the WORST EVER media player to be created. Winamp beats the hell out the pure garbage Apple pumps out. At the time I was an iDiot and through iTunes was the only way to go for purchasing music. You have no idea at how disgusted I am at myself for buying music from Apple and Lord Jobs. I’m seriously thinking about repurchasing all of my iTunes music from Amazon so I could remove Apple from my life completely and be a better person for it.

I could careless about the DCMA or whatever it’s called, and if I had a chance to I’d piss on the paper it was written on, I have no respect for it, but just ignoring it the better solution. Pirating is so much easier anyways. With buying digital media legally there’s all these antipiracy hurtles you have to jump through, pirating just makes things easier, because in the end, no matter what the RIAA, MPAA or software companies attempt to do the bad guys always win. Piracy is unstoppable and just gets easier and easier. In the end my decision of purchasing music had nothing to do with morals, or legality or any of that nonsense I just wanted consistently good quality music with the correct metadata, so I ended up buying it.

 

[Foxbat]

Steve,
Did you try the "Create MP3 Version" option in the pop-up menu in iTunes? I use this to move my iTunes music to other non-Apple devices (mostly USB thumb drives for my SYNC-equiped car) and never had an issue with the music not playing due to DRM.

 

[Steve Mehs]

I discovered that after the fact, never tried it though, but I was always worried about loss of quality. I am by no means an audiophile but IMO the format and bitrate of iTunes purchased music is perfect for me, and I don't want to convert it losing quality in the process. Never really played around with iTunes much other than buying music and using it to make and import my own ringtones (Another thing Apple doesn't want you to do) when I had the iPhone.