Downloading Mp3s After Paying a Fee. Is This Legal?

Self ^ | 10-11-2003 | Auggy

[auggy]

I paid $24.94 for unlimited downloads, for a lifetime. The company is Mp3downloadcity. Am I now safe to download mp3s?

[auggy]

Thanks to you, Rightonline!

I think you are righton about being taken. One good thing about credit cards is the ability to cancel payment, which I plan to do.

[ItsOurTimeNow]

You'd be surprised what you can find on these networks.

I had been searching high and low for music by blues great Floyd Jones, and was able to locate several files on Shareaza.

[ItsOurTimeNow]

I had been using Kazaa for the longest time, spyware-free. Then they came out with a mandatory version update, which came bundled with 3 other software programs. If you deleted the rogue files, Kazaa wouldn't work properly. It was a huge mess, and it took me a while to really clean everything out.

[auggy]

"Roxio just released Napster 2.0. They made a deal with RIAA, so you pay to download, but it's perfectly legal"

Many Thanks, to you and all Freepers. I knew I would find the info I needed here. Napster 2.0 sounds pretty good. I can wait ,until the 29th.

[StriperSniper]

You'd be surprised what you can find on these networks.

Oh I know, that's where I got a bunch of stuff from "Elvis Hitler", a band that used to be out of Detroit. They had kind of a unique style that I dubbed 'Punkabilly' before they broke up a few years back. I heard that the drummer, Damian Lang is the one who did the tracks for the intro to "King Of The Hill", it definately sounds like it could be his work.

Now that this discussion has come up, I'm going to go look for a few tracks from "TT Quick"'s debut EP. As far as I can tell, it has never been released in any digital format so it will be pure luck that someone has made that conversion and is out on the web.

[pageonetoo]

You can go to WWW.APPLE.COM for all of your music download needs! and get yourself an iPod!

[auggy]

Looks like I'm not the only sucker. lol

[StriperSniper]

Yeah, that page was one of the top 'hits' on Google. You know what they say, if it sounds too good...

;-)

[WhiteGuy]

Reference Bump

[StriperSniper]

Filesharing now the topic on CSPAN Washington Journal.

[TheFrog]

You could try buying the CD, what a novel concept!

[inPhase]

"You can go to WWW.APPLE.COM for all of your music download needs! and get yourself an iPod!"

Any idea of how I check for and delete all the spyware they load on my macs?

[pageonetoo]

talk to your congressman about that!

[Swordmaker]

Any idea of how I check for and delete all the spyware they load on my macs?

What spyware is that, inPhase?

Seeing as how ANYTHING that is installed on a Macintosh OSX computer requires Administrator level permission before it can be installed, there are no problems with "spyware" or worms or viruses unless the Administrator level user allows it.

[inPhase]

Good name, this is a two pronged answer:
first look here:
http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/macpartners/2003-September/000115.html

It is not true that Unix or Macs with r w rr priviliges are inpenetrable. If you are even connected to a printer (a simple network) there are ways to break in. It's just that there are so few macs, it is not as much fun for the hackers. Worms, viruses not yet.

If you are downloading on the net any net, you are vulnerable.

With a different purpose, but

eg
"The award-winning Spector has been built from the ground up for Macintosh. It is fully compatible with G3 and G4 processor-based Macintosh computers running Mac OS 8.0 - 9.x.

Spector does not currently support Mac OS X "

Any others?

[inPhase]

re: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/macpartners/2003-September/000115.html

especially at Universities, there is always someone flipping between machine lang, C and machine lang etc to find loops to break. Then they post on the Univ net or internet.

[Swordmaker]

this is a two pronged answer:

inPhase, I respectfully suggest you do not know what you are talking about.

What does Tivoli Storage Manager (a remote storage backup system) have to do with unwanted installation of "spyware"? Spector is merely a method of checking on employee and family member computer activity on YOUR computer for YOUR purposes. Not the same thing at all.

Spector has this to say about their product... which is not spyware in the now accepted usage of the term:

----------------------------

SPECTOR

The only Spy Software for Mac OS 9!

Install Spector on your Mac running OS 9 and it will record EVERYTHING your spouse, kids and employees do on the Internet.

Spector AUTOMATICALLY takes hundreds of screen snapshots every hour, very much like a surveillance camera. With Spector, you will be able to see EVERY chat conversation, EVERY instant message, EVERY e-mail, EVERY web site visited and EVERY keystroke typed.

Unlike other e-mail recording software, Spector also records HotMail, Yahoo Mail, and other anonymous email accounts via snapshots.

Watching the recorded activity with Spector is like using a VCR. Just press "Play".

Spector is 100 percent compatible with all versions of AOL and AOL Instant Messenger.

--------------------------

Neither of these applications meets the now accepted usage of "spyware." "Spyware" are applications surreptitiously installed on your computer for the purposes of monitoring your computer usage for the benefit of some third party, not a monitoring program YOU intentionally install to check the usage other users are making of your computer. Nor is "spyware" a program designed to archive your data to a remote location for safekeeping which you determine and initiate.

Your original post implied that Apple was installing spyware on YOUR computer without your knowledge... I pointed out this was impossible without your permitting it to happen. Unlike MicroSoft Windows, Macintosh OS X REQUIRES Administrator level permission to install any software and even higher level permission to alter and add to the core System software.

Note also that Spector is for Macintosh OS8.0 - 9.2 and NOT for OS X. Perhaps you might have gotten a clue from that? It is not available for OS X because on OS X it is impossible for one user, even an Admin level user, to see the files and actions of another user, or even to access their directories. Such access require ROOT level access, which can only be activated AT THE COMPUTER.

You stated "facts" that actually perpetuate a myth about the fallibility and penetrability of UNIX based systems and Mac OS X:

It is not true that Unix or Macs with r w rr priviliges are inpenetrable. If you are even connected to a printer (a simple network) there are ways to break in. It's just that there are so few macs, it is not as much fun for the hackers.

Strange, your opinion does not seem to match the opinion of people who are experts in UNIX and in Macintosh OS X, which at core is BSD UNIX. Burt Janz, a senior software engineer who is president and owner of CCS New England, a computer-services provider in Nashua, N.H., who has developed software on all the major operating systems -- Windows, Unix, IBM Corp.'s OS/2, as well as OS X -- says "While creating a Mac OS X virus is not impossible, the degree of difficulty here is at least 9.5 on a scale of 1 to 10."

And, unlike the Mac OS, a user account with administrative privileges on a Windows machine can wreak catastrophic damage to data, programs -- or the system itself.

"Any misbehaving task under Windows is capable of modifying any [non-running program] anywhere on the system," Janz said. "And, when that [executable] file is run, bad things will absolutely happen."

UNIX is not just some minority OS, inPhase, it is a major player on main frames, servers, and other industrial strength requirements where security is absolutely imperative.

"Many orders of magnitude more people look over the source code for OS X and the related BSDs than have access to Windows source code," said John Klos, a developer of NetBSD, a flavor of Unix closely related to OS X.

Thus, many of the obvious holes in OS X were closed years ago.

So I again ask, "What spyware is that, inphase?"

[Jorge]

I've downloaded a few songs from Music.com, $.99 each.

They have you sign an agreement to only pass it on to a few computers, to burn 3 CDs etc.
I thought it was an honor system type of agreement.
Until I tried to burn a 4th CD and it wouldn't let me.

I was so ticked off. Until I found a way around the restriction.

[Swordmaker]

Incidentally, inPhase, MacScan, while it will RUN under OS X (it is "carbonized") it only detects and removes "spyware" programs that run under OS 9.2.2 ... in other words, MacScan only scans "classic" files.

MacScan is still in BETA test three years after its first intoduction... which might tell you the demand for its services are very small.

Sorry, no banana.

[inPhase]

Not sure how your last post relates to your one before it. But the mit link

eg Folks,
>>
>> Can anyone recommend a product that will scan and
>>remove spyware or adware from a Mac? I am also
>>curious about whether there are free downloads or
>>trial versions and whether they work for OS X or 9.x
>>
>> Spybot is the best tool I have found on Windows,
>>but they do not have a Mac product yet.
>>
>>Thanks,
>> James


is what I am talking about. There can be spyware and adware installed on macs. You are vulnerable among other times on download.

There is no doubt that there are many programmers able to crack unix (and have) or any network. I personally have known them, usually in physics departments not CS. Usually just thinking about finding weaknesses in systems for no reason other than needing mental exercise. Many operating systems ahve been written in this way and eg Cray and its new owner and IBM have bought them up. Usually they were designed for specific computer architectures designed to solve one kind of problem!
These people can crack many systems. I was not kidding about knowing people who convert in and out of machine language to higher levels.

I am not surprised that Mac Scan is beta a long time. Not surprised if programs only cover Classic. Anyway, thanks for not using "no cigar", that is such a boring expression.


One thing implied in my previous post to you is that often we want to know not only what has been uploaded but also downloaded on our systems.