What software to have you guys used? Freeware or did you purchase?

 

Apple DRM's the music you license (note: not buy) from them. It's supposed to play only on the computer on which you bought it and a few others. To get un-DRMed .mp3 files you either have to use software to crack it like hymn or fairplay or you have to burn an audio CD (which it will only let you do 5 times for each song) and then rip that CD into mp3 files. Welcome to the digital handcuffs.

 

There is software out there that will do it. The freeware stuff has limitations though (like only converting 20 seconds of a song). Before I buy one, I just wanted to know if there's one that anyobe recommends.

 

If you're talking about songs purchased from iTunes, you either have to burn them and rip them (a destructive conversion, sound quality will suffer) or crack them, which may be illegal under the DMCA. However, if it's apple-format stuff you've ripped yourself, you can simply click "Convert to MP3" in iTunes.

Note that even if you crack purchased iTunes music, it's still traceable to you because of imbedded identification codes in the file. So, if you do crack iTunes songs for fair use, make sure they don't get out on the internet, or you may be receiving some attention from the dickheads at the RIAA.

 

I just want to put them on a CD so I can listen to them in the car. So it's never going outside of my use.

 

You could always just download whatever you need from limewire.com and burn your own mp3 cds.

 

You could also just shoplift the cd's, too, but I don't think that's what he's intending.

 

The courts have ruled again and again that if you've bought the music in one form you're legal copying/downloading it in another. The tech. companies don't want to make it easy, but once you've bought it you can do what you want with it so long as you're not screening it for profit.

 

Well, that's what is *supposed* to be "fair use"... but it isn't the music industry's definition of it.

No way, however, am I going to go out on limewire and grab wholesale music, even if I *do* own the disc, because I don't feel like having to respond to the RIAA lawsuit. I spend a fair amount of time in court for my job, I don't need my own litigation from an irrational juggernaut of a dinosaur which refuses to change its business model from the 1950's and has resorted to suing 11 year olds and grandmothers as a profit center.

Yeah, the RIAA and MPAA both need to die in a fire.