[mdlug] DRM

[Ingles, Raymond]

> From: bob dion

> DRM is already effecting peoples fair use rights. My brother purchased a 
> couple songs from iTunes, he can Not copy them to his MP3 player. Not 
> that the format was different, but a Big DRM message came up and said 
> this was illegal.

 The nice thing about Linux is that you can do almost any conversion with
a bit of work. I like movie soundtracks, and as a promotion for "Superman
Returns" they offered the entire soundtrack for streaming download. Of
course, they tried to arrange things so you couldn't save it.

 A little bit of "View Source" and I found the actual file, and dowloaded
it. ASF, eh? A quick script w/Mplayer, a little chopping with Audacity,
and I had the three clips I wanted out of it.

 I've also whipped up scripts to convert movies and DVDs to .avi files for
my Treo 650. (Don't use that much, but it's fun to play with.)

 About the only conversion that had me stumped was converting mp3s *to*
wmas for my nephew's phone. Looks like you gotta have Windows for that one.
Fortunately I've picked hardware that's easier to work with.

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                            (313) 227-2317

     Microsoft Windows - The art of incompetence.
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