They are currently violating what we here in the US call Freedom of Speech. Have you heard of Digital Rights Management or DRM for short? What you don't know is that we no longer have control of the music we pay for! Let me go back in time for a moment,
I remember turning on my radio back when it was free, and have an endless variety of music filling up any room I was in. I would then go out and buy that tape and it was mine I could play it until I was ill or until the tape broke.
Then the CD emerged, I knew then and know now that no good has come of it. Because you see we don't actually "own" our cd's, Apple and Microsoft do.
Like did you know that if you buy a cd and try to god forbid rip the tracks to play on your (insert mp3 player here) you just might get a nasty error that tells you that you don't have the "rights" to these tracks. OK so you find a workaround and plead with your computer that you do own them. Then the problem lies in which software you do use which is the second conundrum. If you use Windows Media Player then you probably can't put these new MP3's on your shiny new Ipod...
However you say never mind the dang cd's I get my music online at Itunes! Or Microsoft’s Urge. Which ever when you stop using their service then the ability to play your music stops and I mean right then, Game over.
With Apple being able to play purchases from the iTunes Store, you must authorize your computer using your iTunes Store with an account and password. Microsoft says to copy a packaged CD onto a CD-ROM or portable device, the consumer must have a license that includes the right to do so.
So I have conducted my own test. I put a cd I had purchased in a physical store, on my computer. Itunes popped up, I imported the disk no problem. I then used Windows Media player which I have the old version 8 to rip the tracks. So then I went and used my player of choice Creative Labs Media source player and I tried to play a song.
First Microsoft had changed the format to a wma, which is a format most mp3 players don’t recognize unless they have their own software installed. Then I couldn't find the songs that were ripped by Itunes, for some reason. I then had to open up the Itunes player to have them play because Itunes had changed the format also to AAC.
So that might be a problem if you try to copy these songs to a new cd, or better yet on your (insert mp3 player here) For now you have to convert them back to a standard MP3.
Ok now you need a 3rd party software to do this little chore. I recommend again Creative Labs Media Player software.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m assuming most of will know how to do this, but a majority will not, and that is what Apple and Microsoft are banking on.
Computer Tech Support and User
Ask-Compgeek.com
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