*coughLimeWirecough*

;)

Eh, I'm done with file sharing. Not for legal issues, but because I find them more trouble than they're worth. Slow connections, partial albums, corrupted files, bad sound quality all add up to more time wasted than money saved.

I'm a collector so I end up buying CDs. When I get around to buying CDs.

Something I'm surprised no one has brought up is JHymn. Its a free program that strips iTunes files of their DRM without any loss in quality or tag information (as you get when you burn to a CD or record it through your audio card). I did it to our entire purchased music library (about 200 songs out of a total of 6000) so that we could listen to our iTunes music off of our TiVo. It works great.

I'm only just now opening this thread (apparently)... Because had I opened it earlier, I would have written what I'm about to write to you now.

http://www.allofmp3.com

Yes, it's a Russian site. Far, far, far less expensive than anywhere else I've seen... no spyware that I've been able to catch... and, well, you can download your music in a variety of formats. The range is from mainstream to "pretty eclectic". I might have to check out eMusic to find some of the less mainstream stuff I can't seem to dig up there.

Hmm...does it work on any file with DRM, or only iTunes files? 'cause unprotecting iTunes files doesn't do us a whole lot of good, unless we're planning on giving music to other people. We've got iPods. But unprotecting files from Napster or Music Now would be nice.

Limewire is a poorly written Java application which will ruin your file structure on ones hard drive, possible causing loss of all ones data. not to mention possibly corrupting the file system of ones portable music player.

Along those same lines, Jhymn could corrupt the file also. Anytime you strip data off one runs that risk.

Which is what a responsible backup policy is for.

Still curious if there's anything that'll strip the protection from Napster et. al.

It looks like you can use Virtuosa (http://www.virtuosa.com/) for that. From their forums:


ubergeek, The nice thing about JHymn is that it makes a backup of the file it is converting before it does anything to it so that if the file does become corrupted, you can just revert to the backup.


AllOfMP3.com is just as illegal as using Limewire. None of the profits they make go to the record company. The nice thing about it though is that it allows you to download the file in like 40 different formats, and they charge you per MB rather than per song.

So, in other words, it is still stealing.