Here it is for your enlightenment Arny - Paragarph 3
The link has the rest of the article.
Thomas Slattery of California has sued Apple Computer for engaging in
monopolistic practices. Slattery was apparently displeased when he learned
that music purchases from the iTunes Music Store could only be played back
using iTunes and Apple's portable iPod line of players. The suit was filed
this past Monday in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, and alleges that
"Apple has turned an open and interactive standard into an artifice that
prevents consumers from using the portable hard drive digital music player
of their choice, even where players exist that would otherwise be able to
play these music files absent Apple's actions."

Technically, that specific claim is false. There is nothing stopping a user
from converting protected AAC audio files from iTMS to MP3s, which can then
be played in almost any music device of late. The problem is that converting
a compressed, lossy music file to another compressed, lossy music format
will result in a further loss of quality.

One might argue that a consumer has a right to make perfect copies of
digital materials for Fair Use, but the courts as of yet have not supported
that idea, and Judge Newman ruling in Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley
explicitly wrote that "Fair use has never been held to be a guarantee of
access to copyrighted material in order to copy it by the fair user's
preferred technique or in the format of the original." In short, the "I paid
for it, so I have the right to make a 100% perfect copy of it" argument
doesn't play so well in the courts, at least yet.



http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050106-4508.html



Carl