How to transfer tunes between iPods

Apple locks out your ability to move your iPod’s music to any other place. They of course allow you to purchase and download music from iTunes to your computer, and then move it to an iPod (or as many iPods as you care to buy). Apple’s goal: keep the artists who made the music happy by making it hard for you to illegally give away or sell music you bought for your own use.

So the answer to your question depends partly on your morals, and partly on the kind of music you bought. But if you want to put your iPod-based music on another person’s iPod, well… yes, you could, but you would almost certainly be violating the copyright of the artist who created the song and sold it to you under the assumption you’d be the only one using it.

That said, here are some legal or at least morally upright solutions to nightmare scenarios (I invite all visitors to submit their own, LEGAL suggestions):

1) Nightmare: Your computer dies with all your legally-purchased songs on it. You have your music backed up on your iPod, but now you have no way to connect your iPod’s music to a new computer you buy, without erasing your old iPod’s music (Apple forces that step). SOLUTION: MacWorld’s editor-at-large John Dalrymple likes Podworks software. For 8 bucks, and, without stripping the music of its legal DRM protection, Podworks lets you move the library on your iPod to your new computer.

2) Nightmare: You have tons of DRM-protected songs from iTunes. You have kids. They want your music. Bad, right? You either “steal” the music and give it to them (although some would understandably say you should be able to include them in your license); or you tell them they have to buy their own songs. SOLUTION: Apple now sells non-DRM-protected music. You can upgrade any or all DRM-protected songs in your library to non-DRM songs for .30 each and transfer those newly-liberated songs to your kids’ iPod, Zune, Creative Zen, or whatever they own.

And yes, there are other, quasi-legal software remedies out there for sharing (its initials are “Requiem”) that I’ve heard of but do not endorse, but you’re on your own there.