Bought a new G5 - Now iTunes says I'm not authorized to play songs I bought

Bought a new G5 - Now iTunes says I'm not authorized to play songs I
bought

Is this a feature?

John

 

You need to hook up to the internet with iTunes on and authorize the
computer (Advanced > Authorize computer ...). I hope you remembered to
deauthorize your old computer before getting rid of it, and if you
didn't and you still have it, hook it back up and pull down to Advanced

iTunes limits one to a total of six computers authrozied under one
account.

jt

 

If you have the maximum number of systems allocated to play the music,
then deallocate one, and allocate the G5.

If you don't, then just add the G5 to the list of your covered systems.

RTM.

 

He only needs to deauthorize the old computer if he won't be using it to
play his songs anymore. If he wants to be able to play his purchased songs
on both computers, both of them must be authorized.

 

Don't thank Apple, Thank the RIAA. Apple is just trying to be a "good
citizen" in the music distribution world by pandering to the paranoia of
the RIAA.

 

Well, yeah. And with the MTBF of modern hard drives somewhere in the
medium six-digit numbers of hours, it should, too! ;-)

(For comparison, one year is 8760 hours.)

 

Well, no.

This might be a useful argument if there was no mechanism in place to
de-authorize dead drives and sold-off systems.

Doesn't anyone read documentation any more?

 

No I haven't read the documentation since I bought a Lisa in 1983.

No problem tho, because I only bought 3 iTunes songs (actually only 1,
the other 2 were from Pepsi bottle caps).

Thanks everyone for all the help.

Deauthorize - give me a break, the reason I bought a mac is because I
hate authority!

John

 

I went through a similar situation recently regarding a computer
outright crashing that resulted in a new motherboard. After I got back
up, I tried to get reauthorized and found that as I along the way kept
reauthorizing in various combos of motherboards, rom simms and HD's, I
burned through the limits. I had no idea what combos were what, and the
computer kept crashing before I could de-authorize.

I send an e-mail to music store customer support explaining in detail
what had happened, and requested their understanding and that they
deauthorize all in my account that I might restart things.

Their reply was that they do not normally reset authorizations like
that, but by the same token they are understanding of system failures
that prevent proper advanced deauthorization, and must be judged on a
case by case basis. With that, they said my situation allowed them to
reset my account and they cleared all authorized computers from my
account. At present, I only have this one computer active (and playing
as I type).

The identity process they use looks at id codes on all HD's,
motherboards and ROM simms, kind of like MS uses for XP identities. I
found something somewhere about deauthorzing a machine before adding
HD's, CD's, DVD's or RAM. Also, it said to deauthorize any machine
before selling it or taking it in for service. Best advice, if you need
to work on your machine under the hood, deauthorize it before unplugging
it.

jt

 

Welcome to the benefits of DRM. You understand of course this is all
for your benefit right?

Of course, you didn't actually buy the songs, you bought licenses to use
the songs in ways that are very limited, and very specific. You buy DRM
music, you take what rights the RIAA thinks you can be allowed to have.

On the other hand, you could have bought CDs, ripped the songs yourself,
and could have been free of the "benefits" of DRM. When you buy used
CDs, you pay even less per song than you did for your partial and
limited use license.

When you buy DRM music, you are accepting these limitations. If you
don't like the limitations, don't buy DRM music, it's that simple.

Lisa

 

He needs to authorize the new G5 to play the music he bought.

He can have up to five computers authorized to play the music. If he
already has five of his computers authorized, he needs to deauthorize
one, and add the G5 to the list.

http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/windows/authorization.html

He can burn the music to CD. He can burn an unchanged list 7 times,
make any change to the list, burn 7 more. If he burns MP3 to CD, there's
no effective restriction on what he does with the files after that point.

This isn't unreasonable at all, unless you're intending to go into
business pirating music for sale.

I haven't bought any music from iTunes, yet, with about 12GB of music
from CDs I own, but there's nothing horribly unfair about the terms of
iTunes usage.

It's not like they hide the conditions of sale, or restrict usage to a
single machine, or force you to subscribe so you can actually play the
music.

 

Yup. Just like when you buy a CD, DVD, or book.

The copyright restrictions on CDs are actually stricter than those on
songs you buy from ITMS. The difference is, Apple can enforce their DRM
more effectively -- the "limited use license" you agree to when you buy
a CD is considerably more stringent.

You are accepting the limitations of copyright when you buy a CD. If
you don't like those limitations, don't buy CDs.

There are ways around ITMS DRM, and there are ways around copyright.
Just because one is easier than the other doesn't mean either is more
legal -- and, in the case of DVDs, it's not appreciably easier to copy
them than it is to strip the DRM from a protected AAC.

----j7y

--
jere7my tho?rpe | "The land knows whom it sent out;
(440) 775-1522 | In the place of human beings
| Their ashes in urns
http://www.livejournal.com/~jere7my | Come back to each man's house."
--- Aeschylus, The Agamemnon

 

"Not yet" and "yes".

- Not until someone writes an AAC codec for openBSD that supports
FairPlay. (Don't hold your breath.)

- Sure, export the tune as an MP3 and have at it.

But then, you already knew that, didn't you?

 

Nope. When I buy a book, the book publisher has no say in what I can
do with it, over and above copyright law. In fact, the "EULA" issue
was decided a long time ago for books; doesn't matter what sort of
language the book publisher prints to try to restrict your use of the
book, it's not legal.

The copyright restrictions on CDs are exactly the same as those on songs you
buy from iTMS. The difference is the additional RIAA-imposed,
Apple-implemented, DMCA-enforced iTunes restrictions.

Right; both are pretty trivial given the right software, which is both
illegal and easily obtained. But it's legal to rip CDs (as determined
by the Rio case), while illegal to strip the DRM from a protected AAC.

 

I'm legally allowed to make a copy for my own use, I can live with that.

The DMCA (Disney Maintaining Copyright Act) makes it illegal to
circumvent copy protection. There is no copy protection on CDs, but
there is on songs from the iTunes store. The difference seems quite
obvious to me, but apparently it isn't obvious to all.

To state it simply: one is legal to copy for personal use, the other is
not, because doing so would mean violating the DMCA.

Lisa

 

While I have no argument with what you say, the fact remains that his
problems are due in part to having purchased music with strong DRM, and
that had he bought and ripped CDs instead, he wouldn't have to bother
with "authorizing" his computer or anything else like that. He is, of
course, free to make his own choice. I offer only information and
another viewpoint.

Lisa

 

Just as you are legally allowed to make copies of songs you buy in the
ITMS. You can burn them to CD, using Apple's own software, at which
point they _become_ tracks on CDs, subject to exactly the same
restrictions the CDs you buy in the store are subject to. That shows
that Apple's DRM is _as_ restrictive as copyright law; the fact that
Apple makes additional uses of the files explicitly legal, additional
uses that are not explicitly legal in copyright law, shows that Apple's
DRM is _less_ restrictive.

The ITMS makes it explicitly clear that you are allowed to copy the
songs you buy to four other computers; copyright law does not make this
explicitly clear when you buy a CD. I would consider that a loosening
of copyright law.

Again, it is absolutely legal to copy ITMS protected AACs for personal
use. You can listen to them on five different computers at once --
which is not legal for store-bought CDs, since you are only legally
entitled to one copy for backup purposes -- and you can burn them to CD
as many times as you like.

----j7y

--
jere7my tho?rpe | "The land knows whom it sent out;
(440) 775-1522 | In the place of human beings
| Their ashes in urns
http://www.livejournal.com/~jere7my | Come back to each man's house."
--- Aeschylus, The Agamemnon

 

But copyright law is quite restrictive. When you buy a book, you only
have certain rights to it; you cannot photocopy it, for instance. This
is different in specifics, but not in kind, from the restrictions on
ITMS tracks.

Those restrictions are explicitly _looser_ than copyright law. If you
buy a CD in the store, you may not make four copies of it and listen to
them in different locations, but you may do exactly that with ITMS
tracks. Your $0.99 explicitly grants you that license; your $15 for a
store CD does not:

---from copyright.gov---

Can I backup my computer software?

Yes, under certain conditions as provided by section 117 of the
Copyright Act. Although the precise term used under section 117 is
"archival" copy, not "backup" copy, these terms today are used
interchangeably. This privilege extends only to computer programs and
not to other types of works.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ [emphasis mine]

Under section 117, you or someone you authorize may make a copy of an
original computer program if:

* the new copy is being made for archival (i.e., backup) purposes
only;
* you are the legal owner of the copy; and
* any copy made for archival purposes is either destroyed, or
transferred with the original copy, once the original copy is sold,
given away, or otherwise transferred.

You are not permitted under section 117 to make a backup copy of other
material on a computer's hard drive, such as other copyrighted works
that have been downloaded (e.g., music, films).
^^^^^^^^^^^
---end quote---

This is explicitly more restrictive than the ITMS agreement.

Again, not true. You can burn your ITMS tracks to CD, at which point
the DRM is gone. Apple makes this explicitly clear in their EULA.

----j7y

--
jere7my tho?rpe | "The land knows whom it sent out;
(440) 775-1522 | In the place of human beings
| Their ashes in urns
http://www.livejournal.com/~jere7my | Come back to each man's house."
--- Aeschylus, The Agamemnon

 

Replying to myself here -- I should say that it is _only_ legal to back
up a CD _to your hard drive_, because it then falls under the heading of
archival software:

---from copyright.gov---

Can I backup my computer software?
Yes, under certain conditions as provided by section 117 of the
Copyright Act. Although the precise term used under section 117 is
"archival" copy, not "backup" copy, these terms today are used
interchangeably. This privilege extends only to computer programs and
not to other types of works.

Under section 117, you or someone you authorize may make a copy of an
original computer program if:

* the new copy is being made for archival (i.e., backup) purposes
only;
* you are the legal owner of the copy; and
* any copy made for archival purposes is either destroyed, or
transferred with the original copy, once the original copy is sold,
given away, or otherwise transferred.

You are not permitted under section 117 to make a backup copy of other
material on a computer's hard drive, such as other copyrighted works
that have been downloaded (e.g., music, films).

---

The Rio decision says:

The Appeals Court reasoned that what occurs when a song is downloaded
from a PC to the Rio is not the reproduction of a digital "musical
recording," as required by the AHRA, but the reproduction of a computer
hard-drive. Conceiving of a hard-drive as an indivisible whole, the
Court reasoned that since a typical hard-drive contains many programs
and databases unrelated to the reproduction of "sound," it could not be
considered a "musical recording."

---

So it is indeed illegal to copy CDs you buy in the store to other CDs --
but it is _not_ illegal to do that with ITMS tracks. The ITMS EULA is
explicitly _broader_ than copyright law -- you are granted the right to
do more with those tracks than you are when you buy a CD in the store.

----j7y

--
jere7my tho?rpe | "The land knows whom it sent out;
(440) 775-1522 | In the place of human beings
| Their ashes in urns
http://www.livejournal.com/~jere7my | Come back to each man's house."
--- Aeschylus, The Agamemnon

 

Looks like your can burn a CD as audio, MP3 or data CD. Which works, as
far as burning an MP3 CD from a playlist of AAC tunes. None of them
bought from iTunes, so I don't know if they'd force burning to only
audio CD format.

An intermediate step (burning the CD, then copy to destination), but
still only one conversion.

Mine from either iPod or TiBook while I'm working.