On 5/31/07, Vihan Pandey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Are you referring to liberty or beer? If you are talking about beer, its a store, forget a free beer unless you are buying 3 of them :P. If you are talking about liberty - EMI and Apple could have kept the mp3's with DRM(like is being done with the other labels), but they have chosen not to do that. That is a good thing. Only it would be perfect if they released iTunes under a Free Software license as well.
1. Free as in DRM-free, not Free or free. 2. First impressions may be deceiving. There is a possibility that iTunes may report users having music bought by somebody (read the /. story), or that the media companies may track the music file being shared. There is no denying that removal of DRM means putting a stop to unnecessary restrictions. However, if you want really DRM free music that you can share, take a look at http://www.magnatune.com - you can listen to entire albums for free, pay any price you want if you download, as long as it is between $5 and $18, and share it with three friends. Of course, you will not get any major artist on Magnatune, but as they do not bind the artists with restrictive contracts, some of them may well become popular and be featured on other labels. There would be not much need to open-source iTunes if Apple would let others share their infrastructure. btw, have you also checked songbird? It is a good iTunes alternative for iPod owners and is based on Mozilla, only it is not linked with Teh Store. Just my 2 bits. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
