Be Cautious of iTunes “Deauthorize All Computers”

When I bought a new Intel iMac, I wound up using the “Deauthorize All Computers” command to get the number of computers I really had synched up with the number listed in the iTunes Store. What I didn’t realize is that Apple only lets you use that command ONCE A YEAR! This is, in a word, RIDICULOUS!

I’ve been one of those people who have supported Apple’s DRM. As a writer and sometimes videographer and photographer, I understand the importance of copyright. While I feel the movie studios and RIAA have often gone too far, I have not had a problem with Apple’s implementation for the simple reason that what they were asking me to do or not do seemed reasonable. Until now.

There’s lots of reasons why a consumer can get out of synch with the number of computers they’ve authorized. Apple’s own iTunes Help file advises you to deauthorize your computer before performing any upgrades, lest the software monitoring you think you’ve moved your stuff to a new machine and cause you to have to use two authorizations for one computer. The same thing applies if you buy more than one new Mac in a year, something likely to happen in families especially now when the whole Mac community is shifting to new processors and software versions, however varied the pace may be. A complete reloading of OS X would also seem to posses the risk of needing additional deauthorizations, so limiting a complete deauthorization of all five of your licenses to once a year seems overly restrictive. I’ve had a hard time, in fact, in figuring out a scenario that would require you to limit the number of deauthorizations at all. As long as any account holder always has only five authorizations allowed, how are they going to cheat that?