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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Jack Schofield

iTunes music without DRM restrictions

Please confirm that the iTunes DRM [Digital Rights Management] has now been relinquished. An affirmative will allow me to buy an MP3 player. A ­negative means I will have to buy an iPod, which can only partly meet my requirements.
Ray Stephens

Apple said it would stop using its FairPlay DRM on music tracks by the end of March, and to the best of my knowledge, it no longer does. However, videos may still have DRM protection, as do Audible's audiobook files. Also bear in mind that your MP3 player will need to handle the AAC file format that Apple uses – and not all do. You can "transcode" media files from one format to another, but this involves some loss of quality, however small.

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