I’m angry tonight.  Which is never good on a Sunday.   Day of rest, yadda yadda…

My oldest daughter got an MP3 player for Christmas– a little bitty thing that’s really nothing more than a slot for a memory card and a USB connector.  She’s been requesting some new tunes for it recently so I thought tonight was as good a night as any.  I’ve got an iPod nano, I’m familiar with iTunes, I’ll just pop into the iTunes store and get what I need.

Well, I got the songs I needed.  But lo and behold when I tried to convert the songs to MP3s to put on my dear child’s non-Apple sponsored mp3 player (what parent has enough money to spend $100-$200 on a glorified CD player for a pre-teen?  Are you insane?), I ran into the big big nasty thing known as DRM.  Which is an initialism (another word I learned today) for Digital Rights Management.

Digital Rights Management means to me that I bought the bits and bytes; as long as I don’t sell them to others, I can transfer them by beaver slobber if I want– neither the artist nor the distributor nor the producer is losing money, because I already bought their product.

Digital Rights Management means to Apple and to the RIAA (cursed be their name for aeternity.  That’s like eternity, except it’s even longer, and more significant because the a at the beginning makes it all Latinate.)– ahem, DRM means that THEY continue to exert control  over the media I’ve purchased, after I’ve purchased it,by technological fiat.  Neeener neener.

So here’s what happens: you buy a tune on iTunes.  It downloads in AAC format.  Normally, with tunes you rip off a CD, you right click on the file and select ‘Convert to mp3.’  (Assuming your import settings are configured to import in AAC)  Right click on the file you purchased from iTunes AND…no convert.  No clicky-clicky.

Daughter not happy.  Dad not happy.

Amazon just got a customer.

Yes, I know there are ways to convert files bought off of iTunes to mp3s.  I shall do this.  I shall not, however, return to iTunes to purchase music henceforth.