iTunes DRM Moaners
Digital rights is one of the areas where I agree with the writers of Boing Boing. They can take their global-warming and AIDS junk science and alarmism, their anti-gun and anti-individual stances and their smug egoism and shove it right up their Socialist asses (you know, in a “camp/kitsch” sort of way). But they’re usually fairly sane in their posts on the rights (or lack thereof) that consumers have with regards to their digital data. They rightfully slammed Sony for installing malware on people’s computers, and they’re right on top of the government regarding their latest privacy intrusions.
But what’s with the coverage of iTunes DRM protests? For as long as I’ve been using iTunes, the software has featured export of DRM’d songs into the unrestricted CDDA format, which can then be turned into MP3 or Ogg Vorbis, or Wav, or anything your heart desires. The only way iTunes DRM bites you is if you keep your music in the DRM’d AAC format. And if you care about your digital data, why would you do that?
Next to the issues about poor sound quality (high compression level), and high price ($0.99 for a crappy sounding song is a ripoff), the easily avoided DRM issue is insignificant. Okay, so maybe you write an article bitching about how you have to perform the extra step of exporting to CDDA all the songs you buy on iTunes, but a full-on protest with costumes?
You didn’t have to abandon your CDs to switch to MP3s (in fact, the more CDs you owned, the better your MP3 experience was, since you could rip those CDs to seed your MP3 collection), but if you want to go from Apple’s iTunes to a competing device, ever, you have to be prepared to abandon your whole investment.
That is not true. iTunes plays MP3s, a non-DRM’d format. iPods play MP3s. iTunes can convert DRM’d AAC songs into CDDA which can be converted to any format your heart desires, including Free formats. Apple is a company that has many areas where it can be criticized for its DRM, it’s closed-formats, its lock-in effect, so why pick the iTunes red herring? That’s not a rhetorical question… I really want to know. Why not complain about how Apple’s Mail application locks your data into a proprietary format? Heck, take any of the complaints outlined by Mark Pilgrim in Juggling Oranges and run with it. Even Pilgrim, a strong supporter of Free formats and full access to personal data admits that iTunes doesn’t really keep you from moving your songs elsewhere.
Why do I avoid DRM? Because the entire point of DRM is to make migration impossible, to reduce the fidelity of your conversion to 0. Apple’s iTunes DRM is actually the oddball here, since it is technically possible to migrate the songs you buy from the iTunes Music Store.
My guess would be that iTunes, being available on Windows, has a much higher recognition rate than any of Apple’s other products, so they chose it based on recognizability, rather than the actual status of DRM in the application. That is, pardon the pun, LAME.
