geraint smith;160156 Wrote: > Even if Apple could, by some fiendish means, (like the one Radish > suggests - Nightmare!) retrospectively slap DRM on stuff that's already > been ripped to ALAC, they'd be mad to try it. How could they possibly > know what had been legally, and what illegally, coded into it? Think of > the lawsuits!
Media companies believe that Fair Use is an outmoded, illegal concept and will probably mount a legal challenge against it. This could be just the thing to get this rolling - to deem *all* ripped content illegal and use a new version of a ripping program to automatically, retroactively and irreversably DRM all ripped files. If this was ever challenged in court, they would then have their legal fight to prove that Fair Use is illegal, and would probably win with their massive legal funds, judges and politicians they have in their pockets. This isn't so far fetched at all. They're itching to get the Fair Use debate in the courts. Once it's declared illegal, they can charge for every copy you require, whether it's a physical CD or digital file. In fact, this has already happened. MusicGiants used to have a sneaky feature that would search out MP3s on your hard drive and charge you for a lossless WMA DRM-laden download version of it, whether you asked it to or not. That "feature" was removed without much fanfare. But if Apple introduces something like this into iTunes it'll give them the attention they want on this issue. In the interim, to ensure hardware revenue, they could be sneaky and make sure that any ripped content is automatically/irreversably DRMed "for your protection" and can thus only be played back on an iPod. -- Mark Lanctot ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Lanctot's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2071 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=30325 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
