Lotus Geek :: Jhymn 0.8.2 now available

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Jhymn 0.8.2 is now available - you can download it from here. If you do not know what JHymn is, then let me enlighten you...

JHymn is the official GUI for the HYMN project (Hear Your Music aNywhere), an open source project developed to allow users to exercise your fair use rights granted under US copyright law. Hymn (and all projects based on it) are designed to allow you to unlock your music that you purchased from iTunes and remove the DRM restrictions - without any loss of sound quality.

Some people (such as Apple) view this as pirating - an assertion of which I violently disagree. I believe that Apple (and other companies) are being overly restrictive with their application of DRM against music I purchase. If I buy the music, then I should be free to use it any way I damned well please, as long as I do not provide it for free to other people (because that is piracy). I do not participate in file sharing (such as Kazaa), and all of the music in my collection was legally purchased. I believe that I am the average music consumer, in that I don't mind paying for my music - but by the same token I should be free to use my purchased music in any way I desire, as long as it doesn't break the law. I should be able to take my music purchased from iTunes and use it in any MP3 player I want, or put it on one of my 5 computers, or whatever.

Another reason I support the HYMN effort is that on more than one occasion I have had my purchased music from iTunes mysteriously be unable to be played anymore. iTunes seems to get occasionally confused about my credentials, and it prevents me from playing my purchased music. I tried contacting iTunes tech support, and that was a waste of time. I first used JHymn to reclaim that music that iTunes locked me from - and it worked wonderfully. I have also wanted to play my music on something else than my iPod, and when it was DRMed I couldn't. Now with JHymn I immediately unlock all songs I purchase, and convert them to MP3.

So, to restate: I really like iTunes. I have no problem paying for my music, and purchase music from iTunes on a regular basis. I simply want to be free to do what I want with my purchased music, as I am legally allowed to do. Here are the reasons that the HYMN folks give for creating this project:

Why use Hymn Project software?

To decrypt your iTunes protected AAC files so that they can be played on operating systems for which no official version of iTunes exists, such as Linux.

To use non-Apple AAC-capable hardware to play your music.

To eliminate the five computer limit imposed by iTunes.

To make archival backups of your music.

As the first step in converting your music from protected AAC to MP3, Ogg, or your other favorite audio file format, for use with your non-iPod portable audio player.

To demonstrate your belief in the principles of fair-use under copyright law.

The latest release of JHymn was created to counter a new "requirement" imposed by Apple on iTunes. iTunes now requires release 4.7 or later to contact it - JHymn was built to mimic 4.6. The guardian and creator of Jhymn, "Futureproof", has spent about a month figuring out how to fix this - and he finally has. This is just the latest series in the cat-and-mouse game played between Apple and the HYMN community - and so far the "good guys" are winning.

BTW, special thanks to FutureProof for keeping up the effort on JHymn - it is most appreciated.

So, if you use iTunes and want the freedom to use your purchased music as you see fit, I recommend you give JHymn a look. If you have any questions about it, please feel free to ask.

Enjoy!

Rock
**Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. - Mark Twain

Comments

1 - "violently disagree"?

You must be quite the aficionado.

But I do agree with you. I have written on several occasions that it is probably not a good idea in the long run for record companies to be suing their customers so they can make more money off them. Something just doesn't compute in the logic.

When the market speaks, it is a good idea to listen. The market wants to share music unemcumbered, and so shall it inevitably be.

If the artists had any snap at all, especially the lesser known artists, they would be cranking out their music on the web for $0.78 a song, undercutting Wal-Mart. When the number of those artists who are publishing on the web begins to reach critical mass, the power and influence that has been ensconced with the moguls running the record labels and studios will begin to devolve to those producing the work.

As it should be.

Posted by Don Callaway At 02:04:07 PM On 04/14/2005 | - Website - |

2 - What I see is an opening in a chat applet for ND6?
I think we all need one in the ND7 version.

Regards,
John

Posted by John Willemse At 06:34:07 PM On 04/15/2005 | - Website - |

3 - The way I got around all of this was recording the music to a cd and then encoding it back. No matter what itunes does, they can't avoid preventing this method. It is a waste of a cd, so it might be worth it to look into if somebody wants to create a program that takes aac/wma to cda to mp3.....just a thought

Posted by ocean At 01:13:26 PM On 07/21/2005 | - Website - |

4 - Hi, did they move the JHYMN AAC ripping app somewhere else? I cant get into the site to download it...
thanks!

Posted by peter Lawrence At 01:13:05 PM On 10/24/2006 | - Website - |

5 - Thanks for this post! Now if I only had time to get to all this stuff!

Posted by Jon Johnston At 05:25:17 PM On 04/12/2005 | - Website - |

6 - Nice. Thanks for the post!

I'm curious, though: What hardware *is* non-Apple AAC capable? (Besides a forthcoming Sony phone that will cost more than a laptop)

Posted by Tim Brown At 10:23:40 AM On 04/13/2005 | - Website - |

7 - COOL!!! Well, this might actually work out for iTunes, because I was going to quit using it now that I have this HP iPaq that I won at Lotusphere. Did I tell you I won an iPAQ at Lotusphere? One worth almost $600.00? I did? Oh, ok, sorry about that

Now I can keep using iTunes and move my music on to the iPAQ without having to frikin burn it to CD first. Yay.

Now let me work on moving all that Black Crowes stuff....heheheheh WOOO HHOOOOOO!

Posted by Tom At 05:40:17 PM On 04/12/2005 | - Website - |

8 - Here's a couple:

Panasonic SV-SD75: http://www.hifichoice.co.uk/review_print.asp?ID=1424

This CD/MP3 player does as well:
http://www.overstock.com/cgi-bin/d2.cgi?PAGE=PRODUCT&PROD_ID=152127&cid=25608&fp=F

This iRiver player does too:
http://salestores1.com/iriddatmulpl.html

So, while they are scarce, there are a few players out there that support AAC (there are others that I didn't list here).

The sad thing is that, at least to my ears, AAC sounds a bit better than MP3 (of the same sampling rate). However Apple has given AAC a bad name because of the DRM stuff, so there just isn't that much support. I went ahead and converted my files to MP3 (192bit sampling rate) to ensure that iTunes doesn't try to "reclaim" my unlocked music (which has happened in the past when I didn't remove the appropriate atom tags).

Rock

Posted by Rock At 10:46:10 AM On 04/13/2005 | - Website - |