iTunes’ hot new feature: do what you want with the stuff you’ve already paid for

Apple has finally removed the DRM from its entire iTunes Store music catalogue. Copy protection has been the one serious bugbear with iTunes: it’s easy to buy and organise music, but whenever you swap it between Macs or to a different iPod, you risk a snippy alert saying some tracks aren’t authorised to play on that device. Well, no more. Except for all the tracks you’ve already bought, of course, which will stay restricted unless you either burn them to CD and rip them back (as usual, DRM doesn’t protect anything, just makes it a hassle to do stuff with it that legitimate buyers are likely to want to do while trying to get their money’s worth out of it) or re-purchase them from Apple sans DRM (why isn’t this free?). Sigh.

Of course, although the iTunes Plus files will copy and play anywhere, they’re still not actually licensed for sharing with all and sundry, and they do have the purchaser’s Apple ID buried in them – so if your tracks turn up where they shouldn’t, Apple and the record companies will be able to suss who’s been spreading them around. It’s unlikely they’d try to sue you, since they couldn’t prove you deliberately shared the files – but then that’s what we thought about swapping games over P2P before Davenport Lyons got their claws out. No, really, they wouldn’t. Would they? No. Unless… No. Surely not. Would they?

Tagged as: Apple, Copyright, Internet, iPod, Law