T11 Group 2

iTunes

Group Information
CPSC 203 Fall 2008 -- Section L02 -- Tam

CPSC 203 Fall 2008 -- Turorial 11 -- Tanvire Elahi

Group Members:


 * Nouran Emam
 * Rachael McMaster
 * Eric Rampone

Project Statement
This Wiki Page will focus on the impact iTunes has had in putting a stop to music piracy and the flaws they have taken in their approaches to do so.

Topic
Is iTunes putting a stop to music piracy?



Introduction
Throughout the history of music there has been the ongoing debate about music piracy and the continuous loss of revenue music artists suffer from. Apple has attempted to tackle this problem with the program iTunes which acts as an easy, effective, and efficient way to legally purchase your music via their iTunes store. With time, the iTunes store has been successful in causing an increase in the number of people legally purchasing their music. iTunes has set up multiple different mechanisms in an attempt to further reduce piracy and have while used the iTunes store to sell over 4 billion songs.

Pros and Cons of using iTunes
PROS:

iTunes is said to be the best source for music downloading. It has more music titles and genres available than any other music service. The service is easy to navigate, easy to use and has lots to offer. You can use it to tip, save and burn music from CD's. Downloads are of good quality, fast and legal. Many music downloaders are illegal so with iTunes you don't have to worry about getting fined. Although some people disagree, downloads from iTunes are generally inexpensive. As you can pick and choose which songs you want, you don't have to spend $20.00 on a CD that you only like a few songs. When browsing the catalogue, each album has a 30 second stream of every song so that you can see if you like the song before purchasing. It is a great way to manage your music, for example using playlists. iTunes also offers more than just music. You can get TV shows, music, videos, podcasts and as of recently you can buy and rent movies. Apple promises to have more than 1000 movie titles by the end of February. iTunes is also very easy to synchronize music to your iPod, as that is what is designed to do.

CONS:

Although iTunes is one of the best sources for music downloading, it of course has its flaws. One of the biggest problems is that if your computer hard drive is lost or you get a new computer, you can't get the songs you purchased re-downloaded. Another downfall is that iTunes doesn't offer any membership services, so it can get quite pricey if you are a regular buyer. You have to pay for each song separately so if you are someone who buys a lot of music it would be much more beneficial to have a membership which is something that is offered by other music services. Purchased videos cannot be burned to a viewable CD or DVD which means you can only ever watch the movie on your computer. The music downloaded is only available to listen to on your computer or ipod, whereas you can listen to CD's wherever you want. ITunes is also said to use up a lot of CPU, it generally requires anywhere from 10 to 100 megs of memory.

iTunes Store


The iTunes store promotes legal purchasing of music for your musical device. (mp3, iPod, etc…) Once iTunes is downloaded there is an automatic connection to the store available on the left hand side of the selection box. General navigation of the website is designed in a very user friendly way. Its set up in such way so that once entered there is clear visible access to the top songs/ringtones and albums. iTunes provides easy navigation around their websites through obvious headers and notifications about where you should go, given what you are looking for. The iTunes store will also keep your information on file so that you only have to set up once and then the payment process is easy to use.

iTunes provides their buyers with user reviews about certain songs, albums and movies, this makes it very convenient for the buyers and gives them a good idea about whether or not they wish to follow through with their purchase.

Among providing the service of purchasing music iTunes also allows you to purchase TV episodes and rent movies.

History of Music Piracy
Music piracy can be dated back as far as the 1800s when Thomas Edison invented the first mechanical sound recording device, the phonographic cylinder. The term piracy is generally used to describe the deliberate infringement of a copyright on a commercial scale. From LP’s to mp3’s the piracy of music has long been a concern to the artists who create the music. Napster was one of the first musical online sharing services that enabled users to download and save illegal mp3 copies of their favorite songs. Created by Shawn fanning while he attended north-eastern university in Boston Napster, operated between June 1999 and July 2001 before being shut down by the RIAA, Napster paved the way for illegal downloading of mp3’s.



Security: Personal Music List Being Viewed Publicly
iTunes is one of the most well known and accessible programs for downloading and storing music world wide. It allows people to download the songs they want without having to pay for the ones they don’t. Despite the great benefits iTunes provides to its consumers/users it contains many security flaws:

1.) For those people who don’t wish to pay for their music iTunes makes it easy for them to do so. If a person decides that they’d rather get free music than that offered from iTunes they can. All the person has to do is find their song on a site that offers pirated music and then drag and drop it into their music library.

2.) iTunes allows people to take music from one person’s library and install it onto numerous people’s iPods. For example if a person decided they didn’t want to go through the hassle of making their own music library all they have to do is go to their friends computer and download all their music onto their iPod. iTunes does however prohibit people from combining more than one person’s music library onto an iPod. This does thwart some copying of music, but it is still flawed. Library sharing was first introduce with iTunes 4.0 where users could freely access shared music anywhere in the internet, however Apple removed this feature with its version 4.0.1 claiming that users were violating the terms of agreement.

3.) Some people prefer their privacy when it comes to music and videos. ITunes however shares music and videos through an unsecured network without displaying any caution. Even within the University of Calgary many people remain unaware that their music playlists and videos are being accessed throughout the network without their approval or even acknowledgment. This problem deals with personal security and privacy.

Successes and Failures in Preventing Piracy
Since it was introduced by Apple on April 28,2003 iTunes has set out to stop music piracy. Many music piracy website have seen their amount of visits drastically decline since then.

The creation of iTunes has paved the way for many other paid music services such as AOL music and Rhapsody.

Some of the problems with the iTunes store is the fact that there are a number of major artists, among them includes The Beatles, who will not sell their music on iTunes. This poses a problem because it could potentially lure legal music buyers to get these songs illegally since they cannot find them on iTunes. Another problem is the fact that the bulk of their buyers, younger teens, do not yet posse’s credit cards which could also lead them to run into problems with trying to maintain the legal buyer population. According to reports 36% of US teens bought music using online stores in 2006, up from 28% in 2005 and 20% in 2004.

As of January 9, 2008 over 4 billion songs have been downloaded and set a record of 20 million songs sold in a single day. Many critics also claim that iTunes has also made it possible for new artists to receive exposure to large numbers of people.

iTunes still has to overcome the challenge to keep legitimate music lovers buying from them, as well as to attempt to lure in the illegal downloader’s.

iTunes has recently begun to tackle to problem of movie pirating by offering the service of buying/renting movies through their store.

Figure 1.0                   Figure 2.0


 * Figure 1.0 This graph shows that iTunes has indeed been successful in turning people towards more legal methods of purchasing music. iTunes has gained an obvious increase in the number of users over the years.
 * Figure 2.0 illustrates that while iTunes sales have gone up, the number of music sales does not account for all the space on our iPods.

Digital Rights Management (DRM)
Copy protection only prohibits unauthorized copies of media or files the digital rights management allows the issuer of the media/file to control in detail what can and cannot be done with a single instance. Basically protects the copyrights of data circulated on the internet enabling secure distributions and disabling illegal distribution of the data. Typically, a CRM system protects property by either encrypting the data so that it can only be accessed by authorized users or marking the content with a digital watermark so that the content cannot be freely distributed.

DRM used to be encoded on all songs purchased through iTunes as a way to prevent sharing of music between users. However, in February 7, 2007 Apple indicated that it would sell music on the iTunes Store without DRM, thus allowing track to be played on third-party players. This is a huge setback for iTunes in their attempt to prevent music piracy; removing DRM now allows users to share their music freely between computers but also allows for the potential stealing of entire music libraries without actually paying for them. Now there is not stopping someone from posting their tack on a P2P (illegal file sharing, i.e. Limewire) allowing their music files to be downloaded and enjoyed for free by millions people who haven’t paid for the songs.



Conclusion
Taking all evidence into consideration, it can be concluded that iTunes has had a major impact on dampening the use of illegal music download sites. It can be seen through the statistics and the demographics that over the years iTunes music sales have gone up and music download sites have gone down. iTunes has implemented many different programs and/or devices in an attempt to limit the piracy while using their program and while some have been successful there are those which have not been. There are still many loop holes that people can do in order to download illegal music and still have the benefits of using the iTunes program. iTunes still has a long way to go in their battle against piracy.