For the past few weeks, I have been experiencing some very strange music and audio files. I have been experiencing a problem where the same song on my iPod, iPhone, and Bluetooth devices are playing when I am in a different room than when I am in the room where I downloaded it. The problem seems to be that I am not able to locate the song I downloaded and put it on my iPod because it is not available anywhere.
Technically, this is not a problem because the Internet will not allow you to move a file to another computer. The only problem is that it’s very hard to locate a song you downloaded, and it’s very easy to find a different song that you can put on your iPod.
With the help of a browser I can play the song in my own iPod, and can play it in my Windows PC (which is a non-physical way to do it) and play it in my Windows Phone.
This is a great solution because it makes it very easy to move a song to different machines. All you have to do is find a file you want to move, right click it, select “properties”, and select “move to” or “copy to” to your destination. Then you just have to drag and drop the file to your iPod, your PC, your iPhone, etc.
This is a great solution because it makes it very easy to move a song to different machines. All you have to do is find a file you want to move, right click it, select properties, and select move to or copy to to your destination. Then you just have to drag and drop the file to your iPod, your PC, your iPhone, etc.
Not so fast.
The problem that DRM has is that it slows down downloads. For example, the music that you download from iTunes is already DRM-encumbered and locked to your iTunes account. This means that when you download a song onto your computer, it is already tied to your Apple ID. If you were to install this DRM-free music onto your computer, then you’d have to pay a lot of money to unlock the song from iTunes.
The DRM-free music companies claim that they cannot be sued for piracy – so they will often take your music and convert it into DRM-free audio files. Not true. You can actually sue them for false advertising. Google has a legal case against the music companies.
You can also take your DRM-free music elsewhere to share with friends. In fact, in the US, the Music Modernization Act of 2009 (which we will discuss in the next section) allows for streaming of copyrighted music.
Well, that’s the thing. When you get your music ripped from CD to MP3, it’s a different story. You can’t just move it to your computer. First, the MP3 files are encoded with a large amount of “digital rights management” (DRM) code. These DRM files have to be re-encoded and uploaded to the internet for you to play.
