It's something that has plagued iPod users for years, and another chapter of the tale is being written as we speak. Everyone remembers, years ago, when the RIAA and the MPAA went after all the peer-to-pear sites such as Kazaa and Napster. It wasn't long before those sites shutdown, and in came the legal music download program, iTunes.
Since that day in 2003 people were able to buy their music easily, and legally, with few limitations. For 99 cents, you could buy a song that could be put onto five computers and unlimited iPods. This was a great deal (and still is). Everyone with an iPod was dragged into the store, and as of February 23rd the iTunes Music Store has sold over a billion songs.
As I said the songs could be put onto only 5 computers. FairPlay, the digital rights management system that is imbedded into all songs bought from iTunes, is the backbone of the rules regarding music distribution. There are some loopholes in the management system however, you can burn the music to any number of CDs, and when that is done, the FairPlay encoding is lost. With this concept, you could easily copy the songs to a CD and then back onto the computer, with a slight loss of quality. Now all this seems great, right? Wrong.
Although Apple might be relaxed when it comes to what is done with its music, many associations, such as the RIAA, aren't. The RIAA, as I mentioned before, is an advocate of DRM, but a very strict DRM that benefits only the artists and makes it difficult to make even one copy of the music people buy. For example, the RIAA has sued small children for downloading illegal music, so young they didn't know it was wrong. What's worse, is that some artists are not against peer-to-peer services, thinking that it will help advertise their music; hoping someone will love a song so much that they would go out and buy the album.
RIAA's next move is the boldest since this all began. A few weeks ago the RIAA mentioned, in a statement, that they believe ripping your own music, to an iPod is not fair use. That means, the music I bought has to stay on my computer or CD. I find that incredibly wrong, and an invasion of something or another.
It seems that the story is turning darker as we move forward in technology. I know that they can't stop us from using our music the way we please, but it's still disgruntling to know that they want to stop us. All I know is that they are never touching my music.