There have been a number of hints submitted regarding various methods of evading the copy protection on songs bought from the iTunes Music Store. I have decided that I will not be publishing any of these methods as hints, for a couple of reasons.
The first and most important reason is the existence of the DMCA, which can bring harsh penalties to those promoting methods of disabling or circumventing copyright protection. As my primary objective is to keep macosxhints online, avoiding DMCA violations is fairly high on the list of things to do. While some of you will probably call me a "wimp" for not even trying just to see what happens, I have no interest in being a test case nor attracting unwanted attention to macosxhints.com.
The second reason I won't run any of these hints is that the information is already out there, in a number of locations (probably even posted here somewhere in the unmoderated comments from various posters, though I haven't read every comment on every hint). Those who really wish to create protection-free versions of their purchased songs can easily find out how to do so.
Finally, I will close by saying that I firmly believe in the right of fair use, and that a purchased song should be usable however you wish, as long as it's for your own use only. As a purchaser of a few songs from the store, I'm quite irked that I can't play them on my living room's MP3 player (see the Serve your MP3 collection to your stereo hint).
My personal feelings on the matter don't change the fact that publishing hints on how to work around the iTunes copy protection puts the macosxhints site at risk of attracting the wrong kind of attention. Since I don't want that kind of attention, the most realistic solution is to avoid publishing such hints. While I hope that you'll all understand my position, I'm sure I'll catch some flak for it ... so be it. I'm one person with a $0 legal defense fund, and I'd like to make sure it stays at that level...
-rob.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030507104823670