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Apple Archive

How to Beat iTunes Copy Restricions Legally

- 2004.05.03

We got a new version of iTunes, version 4.5, last week. With the new version comes a new limitation on burning songs downloaded from the iTunes Music Store. Instead of being able to burn ten CDs of one playlist, now you can only burn seven.

There is a positive to the new version as well - now you can have five computers authorized to play licensed songs, instead of three as previously.

Thinking about it. If you need 8 or 9 copies of the same playlist, you could just open up Toast and make a duplicate of the CD you burned. That's easy enough.

It's the fact that Apple is limiting this at all that bothers me. My LPs, CDs, and cassette tapes don't have any limits on the amount of times I can copy them. I can make as many copies as I want of the Iron Maiden LP I'm currently listening to because there are no restrictions in the recording itself that prevents me from doing so.

And it's not just Apple doing it. Apple's limitations are lenient compared to most other music downloading services! We all know the recording industry is behind this, but why bother to implement such restrictions when there are simple ways to circumvent the "built in" protection?

We've got to keep the music industry happy, so it's got to be there, even though it does practically nothing.

I'm not sure why anyone would want more than two or three copies of one album anyway - perhaps one in the living room, one in the bedroom, and one for the car. But it's the principle that something would be embedded to prevent people from copying it "too many times." (And you definitely want to burn at least one copy as a backup in case your hard drive crashed.)

Then there's the whole authorization issue to deal with. Once you've reached your limit, you've got to deauthorize one computer before you can authorize another. Five computers is the limit. If you should happen to be an extremely loyal Apple customer and buy a new machine every time Apple releases something new, you might pass your five machine limit pretty quickly. And after that? Your files are useless if you don't remember to deauthorize your old computers.

The fact is that iTunes is still quite clumsy when compared with what could be out there. How about something that just works with no authorization issues to deal with or useless restrictions on how many CDs you can burn?

Not that the music industry would go for it at all, especially because iTunes is quite successful as it is. But why? It's simple. iTunes is currently the least complicated and least restrictive of the major music download sites.

But what if you want your music restriction-free? What can you do then?

Well, there's still the good old-fashioned record store, and typically vinyl LPs are a few dollars cheaper than their CD counterparts (yes, they still make LPs out of the albums by just about any recent band you can think of, from The Darkness to [I hate to say it] Britney Spears).

If you want to save a bit of money on music and have no forcefully imposed restrictions on how often you copy your tunes, an LP might be for you.

You've also got to face the fact that while the iTunes Music Store has a good selection of music, but they don't have everything. It's amazing what interesting albums you can find at used record stores, thrift shops, and garage sales. Many of these older albums, whether LP or cassette, aren't available from the iTunes Music Store - and sometimes they're not even available on CD.

If you want your music on the computer, just record the songs from the LP or tape and save them as MP3 files and use iTunes to rip songs from CDs you own. Since they'll be unrestricted files, you can then do what you like with them while resting assured that you've still paid for your music.

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