DVD Jon breaks free of iTunes DRM

I like there iPhone screenshots.

http://www.doubletwist.com/dt/Download/SorrySteve.dt

I think you guys are missing the big picture.

This application is meant for you to go "I have all these songs from all these different places (CD's, iTunes, other digital downloads) and I want them all to work on this one device. Take care of this problem for me with the click of a button."

Simple, just don't buy music downloads that contain DRM, there are plenty of options available now. iTunes+, Amazon, eMusic. Hell even just buy the CD and rip it.

This rates a big meh from me too.

For a Mac program that also makes DRM free copies of your legally purchased iTunes music using the analog hole, see DRM Dumpster. ( http://www.burningthumb.com/drmdumpster.html )

It's basically a modern day example of high speed dubbing.

This has existed for years. The program TuneBite on windows also does this both for Windows media Audio/Video and iTunes Audio/Video. TuneBite also plays the songs 2-4 times as fast when it's recording so you can do a lot of songs in an hour. It's nothing new. I have known about the rerecording technique since way back when napster was not legal. I used to use Goldwave on Windows to record files while they played streaming over the internet or playing from a DRM'ed source, using the soundcard itself to "break" per say, the encryption.

Um, in either MP3 or AAC -- your only two iTunes Store options -- you've already lost the quality. Going from digital to analog to digital through this method shouldn't particularly cause any further quality loss than the standard trick of burning the DRMed tracks to a CD and then reripping them, which falls into Mike's "all digital" solution. And it takes significantly less time and doesn't waste CDs, which will outlast the cockroaches come armageddon.

1. This software doesn't "break" any DRM any more than burning to a CD and ripping does.

2. There is nothing new or unusual about this in a technical sense.

3. To recap, all this does is take the process of burning/ripping, remove the need for physical media (speeding things up in the process since you don't have to wait for actual burning) and put a nice GUI on it. Of course it plays it in "fast forward"; have you ever ripped a CD at 1x speed?

How many days does apple have to put together a new version of FairPlay before the studios can choose to pull their content?

There are packages available from the hymn forum (google it!) which will deencrypt these files without loss of quality, though they are also currently windows only.

As far as legality goes, provided you only do this for personal use, this would be a grey area akin to making cassettes. Apple's adoption of DRM free tracks on the Itunes store make their arguments against DRM removal extremely weak.