A free application purports to convert music purchased from Apple's iTunes music store into plain old unprotected MP3s that can be played on any number of computers or MP3 players.
DVD Next Copy iTurns Free works by tricking iTunes into thinking it's a CD burner. However, rather than being burned to CD, themusic files are saved as MP3s.
After you install the Windows-only software, a new option called "DVD neXt COPY FREE" should appear in the list of CD burners in iTunes' preferences menu. With that selected, you can apparently "burn" many CD's worth of music directly onto your hard drive in the MP3 format.
A $30 registered version should remove DRM from songs purchased from stores that use (or used – see below) Windows Media DRM, lets you save files as Ogg Vorbis files and can be used even if iTunes is not installed.
So, is this legal?
On the surface, DVD Next Copy's iTurns software might appear to violate the anti-circumvention clause of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which makes it a felony to remove copyright protection from music files.
However, DVD Next Copy claims to be on solid legal footing becauseCD burning is part of iTunes and Windows Media DRM. By hijacking theaudio on the way to the CD burner and saving it as an unprotected soundfile, the company says it's merely using a feature that Apple andMicrosoft built into their DRM – even though that feature wasspecifically designed to be used with CDs.
Normally, you can't even use CD-RW discs to convert DRMed music from iTunes orWindows Media Player using the "burn and rip" technique some recommend. This means you need a separate CD-R for each 15 or so songs you want to convert to an unprotected format. If nothing else, iTurns shouldallow people to convert songs purchased from dead or dying DRMed musicstores (see Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Yahoo and so on) without wasting a bunch of CD-Rs. I haven't tested this yet but Freeware Genius says "it worked brilliantly."
(Note that the registered version will not work with subscription WMA
files because Windows Media Player cannot normally burn those to CD.)
See Also:
- Microsoft Backtracks On MSN Music DRM Abandonment
- Wal-Mart's DRM Nightmare Just Won't End
- Yahoo: We'll Reimburse Users for Terminated Music
- Screwed for Sure
- 10 Years Later, Misunderstood DMCA is the Law That Saved the Web
(Thanks, John; via LifeHacker, FreewareGenius)
