Every single day more people get educated

by Volker Weber

From BlackBerryForums.com :

I have a Blackberry 8800 with a 128mb media card, and I want to play music that I have paid for via itunes.

Sorry. You can only play music you have not paid for via iTunes.

Repeat after me: DRM is bad for the customer.

Tags:

Comments

Volker, has the old trick (burn to cd and rip to mp3) which you mentioned here stopped working?

Even if it still works, it's a cumbersome workaround.

My Music, my disgression.
I.e. I decide how, where and with what tools I'd like to listen to it.

Best regards,
Martin

Martin Forisch, 2007-02-18 23:40

you can use Tunebite, which provides easy and legal "conversion" of protected mp4 to free mp3.
www.tunebite.de

Olaf Boerner, 2007-02-19 00:00

DRM is the only Reason why I do NOT own this iPod thing....

Viktor, DRM is not necessarily connected to the iPod device. You can perfectly handle a library of MP3's only with it. You don't even need iTunes software to synchronize it with your desktop, there are third party tools available to do that as well.

@Ragnar: Could you post links to these tools or maybe even recommend one - preferably one that runs on Vista?

OK, maybe I sometimes ask for a lot or am dreaming :-)

I have played with both ephPod and MusicMatch (both in older versions though). They both seemed to work fine, but for me they provided little to no additional value over iTunes, except for escaping from the Apple lock-in. Since I needed iTunes for updating the firmware anyway, I used that. Using past tense, since for a while the already once replaced hard disk in my iPod is failing on me and even vowe's magic tricks couldn't help fixing it.

HTH,

Ragnar

P.S.: Concerning Vista compatibility, I can't say anything, since I have not yet had any direct contact with Vista.

gtkpod on cygwin on Vista

I'd recommend googling for QTFairUse

Ralf, I think your links are more helpful if you would want to develop your own application to feed the iPod. From what I meant and what I read from Hennings question was that we're talking about ready-to-use alternatives for iTunes.
Frank, QTFairUse seems to be a step earlier in the process for the people pointed to. I am not too sure about the legal situation of purposefully breaking a DRM protection. And from what I understand from Wikipedia's explanation of how it works you still need iTunes to play the file (which probably helps for the legal part).

Sorry, didn't get it? If it's just about syncing a local mp3 library with the iPod, gtkpod is a "ready-to-use alternative"...

A perfect translation for anyone confused by the industry spin...

Stephen hood, 2007-02-19 16:02

Hm, ok, updating firmware might be a reason to use itunes.

Otherwise I'd be satisfied with a little peace of software that syncs mp3 from my HD ("ripped" from CDs I already own), runs on vista and doesn't force me to install quicktime as well. gtkpod on cygwin on vista seems to be a strange workaround ... maybe I decide to manage the ipod from Linux ...

Ralf, sorry, I confused the libgpod with gtkpod. Of course, you're right, it is a ready-to-install solution as long as you hace gtk2 available on your system. AFAIK, that should be the case for current linux distributions.

Here is a special on Lifehacker about iPod sans iTunes.

Post a comment











Shall I remember this for you?




Use your full name and a working email address. Unless you want your comment to be removed. No kidding.



Recent comments

Volker Weber on OpenOffice.org 3.0 ships at 00:06
Bruce Elgort on OpenOffice.org 3.0 ships at 23:42
Roy Heidemann on Absolute Pure theme for Nokia E71 at 23:36
Volker Weber on Absolute Pure theme for Nokia E71 at 22:19
Bernd Baltz on Absolute Pure theme for Nokia E71 at 16:10
Samuel Orsenne on Working Lego V8, 32 valve engine at 13:39
Bill Buchan on Working Lego V8, 32 valve engine at 12:17
Kevan Emmott on Confirmed: new Apple notebooks next Tuesday at 10am PDT at 20:57
Sudeep Reddy Sama on N70 drops off the network in dual mode at 20:09
Volker Weber on Confirmed: new Apple notebooks next Tuesday at 10am PDT at 17:37
Paul Mooney on Confirmed: new Apple notebooks next Tuesday at 10am PDT at 17:26
Kevin Pettitt on Confirmed: new Apple notebooks next Tuesday at 10am PDT at 16:36
Victor Toal on Bluehouse does not support my browser at 16:33
Vince Schuurman on Confirmed: new Apple notebooks next Tuesday at 10am PDT at 15:32
michel platoche on Confirmed: new Apple notebooks next Tuesday at 10am PDT at 14:21
Ben Poole on Confirmed: new Apple notebooks next Tuesday at 10am PDT at 13:11
Volker Weber on Confirmed: new Apple notebooks next Tuesday at 10am PDT at 12:34
Ben Poole on Confirmed: new Apple notebooks next Tuesday at 10am PDT at 12:27
Paul Mooney on Confirmed: new Apple notebooks next Tuesday at 10am PDT at 12:12
Gregory Engels on Lotus Vista? at 09:00
Bruce Elgort on Confirmed: new Apple notebooks next Tuesday at 10am PDT at 03:24
Volker Weber on Nokia E71 is currently winning at 23:31
Alejandro Aguilar on Nokia E71 is currently winning at 23:29
Vince Schuurman on Confirmed: new Apple notebooks next Tuesday at 10am PDT at 23:11
Bob Balaban on Urban Myth: Microsoft is good at marketing at 22:01

Ceci n'est pas un blog

vowe.net is a personal website published by Volker Weber a.k.a. vowe. I am an author, consultant and systems architect based in Darmstadt, Germany.

rss Click here to subscribe

Hello

About me
Contact
Publications
Certificates
Frequently asked questions

Twitter Updates

More >

Poll

Can you bring a camera phone to work?

Getting poll results. Please wait...

Local time is 01:33

visitors.gif
81 visitors online

News

Other sources of news, imported into my own format to make them more accessible:

Heise Online
Schlagzeilen
Weather

Archives

As most of my articles roll off the front page rather quickly, I am making an archive of previous posts available here. You can also use the handy search box at the top of the page if you are looking for something particular.

Last 30 days
More archives

Got the T-shirt?

Got the T-shirt?
Are you buying from the US?

Systems Architecture

This site runs on an Apache web server on top of the Linux operating system. The content is managed with MovableType which is implemented in Perl. Last but not least the HTML code your browser sees is put together with PHP.

© 1992-2008 Volker Weber.
All Rights Reserved.

Impressum