DRM Removal From iTunes Purchases

[PhishJY]

First off, I know that this is a touchy subject.  However, the U.S. Supreme Court hasn't said it was a violation of law to do it, so until there's a ruling, I assume it's legal.

My wife purchases music from iTunes.  I prefer Amazon, but that's neither here nor there.  Some of the songs are not purchased from iTunes Plus, so they're DRMed *.m4p files.  I want to remove the DRM and convert them to a MP3 file.  I know it's lossy, but it works for my purposes.

There are 2 ways that i'm aware of to accomplish this:
     1) Burn songs to CD, then rip CD
     2) Purchase software that burns to virtual CD and then rips it

Is there any freeware that will accomplish this?  I hate to spend $40 to get something that I can get for free.

[tet]

i don't believe there are any compatible tools left that can do this.  there used to be a project called Hymn, but that is long-defunct.

the burn-to-CD-and-rip method may be your best

[jedifunk]

yeah, i had heard the the hymn project was close to a new version for 7.5 but we're on 7.7 now...

[sls.stormyrider]

what about converting to wav and back? does that accomplish the same thing w/o burning a cd?

[nab]

what about converting to wav and back? does that accomplish the same thing w/o burning a cd?

I think it would.  Both involve an additional lossy step.  It might even be a bit more secure considering the loss of an extraction step.

[tet]

what about converting to wav and back? does that accomplish the same thing w/o burning a cd?

I think it would.  Both involve an additional lossy step.  It might even be a bit more secure considering the loss of an extraction step.

except iTunes won't let you convert .m4p files into anything directly except a CD.  considering that no other application can handle the DRM wrappings of a purchased iTunes track, you don't have any choice other than to look for another hack like hymn or burn to CD and rip to lossy.

[nab]

what about converting to wav and back? does that accomplish the same thing w/o burning a cd?

I think it would.  Both involve an additional lossy step.  It might even be a bit more secure considering the loss of an extraction step.

except iTunes won't let you convert .m4p files into anything directly except a CD.  considering that no other application can handle the DRM wrappings of a purchased iTunes track, you don't have any choice other than to look for another hack like hymn or burn to CD and rip to lossy.

Makes sense.

[jephrey]

Only if you must because a song that's at 128k, then burned is turned to a wav, then re-encoded to 128k makes at best a 64k recording.  If you can handle that, then ok, but your file is going to have very poor sound quality.  And you'll definitely be able to tell, in headphones, while mowing the lawn, in a tornado, next to an airport.

[blatboom]

in a tornado

:lol:

that's good to know!

[PhishJY]

Thanks for the info!  +K all around.

[rowjimmy]

Of course you know that stripping the DRM is a violation of the DMCA

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law which implements two 1996 WIPO treaties. It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that are used to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as DRM) and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself.