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Comment by gigawatt | Hacker News Reader

I buy music almost exclusively through Amazon now solely because of the DRM nonsense iTunes puts on its files. I have several albums that, when I try to play them on my media computer through iTunes home sharing, gives me the "This album is not authorized to play on this computer. Please deactivate one of your authorized computers to add it to this one." Problem is, that 2 of the authorized computers are in the scrap heap now, and the other ones I still use.

Whatever convenience buying music directly through my iPhone would offer is more than canceled out by this inconvenience. I'll admit that I'm not the kind of music consumer that buys single mp3s though — full album or nothing for me — so I'm biased in that way.

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The iTunes Music Store hasn't been using DRM for a long time. You can also upgrade your music with DRM to non-DRM. versions but it will cost you money. (This is exactly the reason why I didn't buy any music with DRM. I don't know how you could ever do that.)

Here is how you can deauthorize all computers associated with your iTunes account (the third list of instructions): http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1420

It's a bit hidden but it's easy to do.

Apple no longer applies DRM at all in their music store.

It still does in the video store though.

I would buy way, WAY more iTunes video if I could re-compress the video to any format I want, and share it with friends. (I realize that the latter is highly undesirable to content holders, but video has always been highly social among my friends, with frequent sharing of DVDs and such.)

maybe "deauthorize all" and re-auth the computers you still use

I'm sure there's a quick fix for the iTunes purchased albums I still have, but the long-term solution is definitely to avoid purchasing from iTunes. For me, at least.

As the iTunes Music Store hasn't used DRM since January 2009, no long-term solution is necessary. Just don't travel back in time and you'll be fine. :)

I'm writing this from 2007!

Anyway, thanks for the responses. I was embarrassingly unaware of the changes. Though maybe the moral of the story is that DRM is a good way to lose a customer who won't come back under any circumstances if there's an equal service available without it.

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