Isn't that the entire business model of iTunes? Just because the Russian music indudstry doesn't have same ripoff licensing rates as the RIAA doesn't make them illegal. If you think it may be perfectly ethical to violate DMCA laws by removing DRM then I fail to see how you don't think it is ethical to use allofmp3.

No, itunes's business model is to sign a contract with an artist (or more likely his distributor), and Apple turns over the lion's share of the revenue to the record company that owns the distribution rights. Allofmp3 takes those same songs and sells them without permission. What allofmp3 does is no different as the guys who make and sell pirated DVDs. You're aware that's illegal?

If I purchase a DVD (or a track on iTunes or Urge) and remove the DRM in order to play it on my incompatible player, no, I don't think I've done anything wrong, even though I've certainly violated the DMCA.

I'm aware that most people don't think like me, and that both acts are illegal. I just feel that violating the DMCA to use a song I paid for is okay, and is much more morally defensible than abetting what amounts to large scale piracy.

Does my position really seem that inconsistent to you?

The position of allofmp3 is that they have the necessary rights and that they are operating legally BetaNews Article Now the British Phonographic Industry is telling Uk users that it is illegal to use, but that they will be prosecuting AllofMP3, which they got the Ok to do this week from the high court, not the UK users.

Roms say
I suspect that if a percentage of the sale price is charged in royalties to go to record companies & artists then they would be annoyed if the site is charging so little for the tracks.

Yes the law is changing:
By the way this site has second place in the market behind Itunes in the UK.

I am in a similar situation - I have boxes full of CDs that I have ripped to an external hard drive. Now I want to pull all of my music onto a dedicated computer or even an iPod to drive the sound system in my home, but because of the DRMs, only 1,450 of the 9,000 songs will play on either the new computer or the iPod.

This really annoys me, since I have paid for the CDs, and the application makers are just making my life difficult.

Any other suggestions aside from dodgy Russian retailers? Any one-stop apps that will extract the DRM from my music files and allow me to move them?

You own the CD and ripped them to your hard drive with a protected DRM? That's new to me.

Maybe you just ripped them to a file format your iPod can't understand?

Yes on both counts
 

Correct on both counts.

1. The earliest CDs were ripped to a hard drive on Computer A in the early or mid-nineties, I believe, and subsequent CDs to computers B, C, D and E. All of the songs have been aggregated to an external hard drive along the way, and computers A, B, C and D are long gone.

Now on Computer F, none of the songs ripped to Computers C through D will work because of DRM, and I suspect some of the ones I can't play were early in the life of computer E as well. Computer A songs (the earliest) are no problem, and ones I think are from B are also OK.

So apparently, DRM went into effect somewhere during the life of C, and now it has caught up to me as I try and load them onto Computer F.

2. And of course, transferring them from the old WMA/WMV/whatever format to mp3, etc. for the iPod is negated with today's software if I don't use the original CD.

Do I really want to rip a thousand CDs again, knowing that the same thing will happen in a couple of years? Not so much.

I don't think you have a DRM problem, Wilbur. It sounds like you ripped the CDs to wma, which is a file format that's not compatible with Ipods. If you don't want to re-rip the CDs, you can transcode the wmas to mp3, which will play anywhere. There's plenty of programs that will do this for you, but you should know that there will be some slight quality loss.

In the future, you'll probably want to rip to mp3.

Any audio editing and converting software can be of use. Suggests FlexiMusic Wave Editor. Directly can't read WMA file in FlexiMusic Wave Editor, so play and record the Wma file in the software and then using the "Save As" command, convert and save the recorded Wma file as Mp3 format.

Wrong, they are claim to pay royalties to a collection agency. It just happens that said collection agency is not a member of the international association of collection agencies so the payments never reach the artists/composers. Apparently said agent has broken many violations and were told to get in line or be thrown out.

So they are paying to someone who is not recognised as a collection agent and who is not transfering funds on to artist.

Lets not deal with semantics. Just download the torrent file and be done with it.