Can I hook up my ipod to a friends computer to get his songs

Two problems:

1. Unless your friend is selling you all his songs and deleting them off his system, this is illegal.

2. Your iPod can't interact with two iTunes libraries at the same time. Therefore, when you connect to your friend's computer, all your current songs on the iPod will be deleted.

Otherwise, it will work.

hi,
am i understand that if i owned two ipods within my home,for example one mine and the other owned by another member of the house,
then i need to install itunes only once and that could handle all the ipods and there are no serial no. etc issues.

I ask this because i am actually facing this situation,since i have one already and my wife intends to get one,and since our music library is one and the same,so it would make sense to have only one itunes for both of us.

rgds
samir arora.

No problem doing what you want to do, Samir. Connecting both iPods to your one computer and iTunes library works beautifully and is completely legal. The contents of both iPods will be identical.

Many thanks for your reply Mark.
this brings me to another query.

I have a considerable collection built into my ipod and i know to share music etc is piracy ,but as you know that friend so sometimes share music ,but that is not the question.

is there any way ,i can protect the music in my ipod. For example,if a friend borrows my ipod,and while i dont mind him using it ,i dont want him to simply copy all my music into his computer etc. in otherwords,can the music installed into the ipod ,be password protected in some way,or is the music free for download to anyone ,who can lay his hands on the ipod for a couple of hours.

thanks in advance
rgds

Your friend shouldn't be able to copy your music, for a couple of reasons.

First of all, it isn't so easy to get songs OFF the iPod. In fact, I'll suggest now that you make sure your songs are always backed up somewhere else since it takes some doing to copy them back off. You can't just open iTunes and drag them into your library, or mount it as a disk (if disk use is even enabled) and copy the files, you have to download other software to recover them.

Secondly, if your songs are mostly purchased, even if your friend went through the trouble of getting them off, they would have to know your authorization to play them.

Your tunes are safe... however, why are you lending your iPod to someone you trust so little???

Although there's not a a password-protection system that I'm aware of, iPod music transfers are designed to be one way - iTunes to iPod. You need third-party software or have to do certain steps to get the music from the iPod to the computer.

People can do this, however, if they know what they're doing, so in my opinion it would be best not to loan your iPod if you're concerned with this. Also, what if your friend dropped your iPod? Probably best if they purchased their own.

actually all the music is from my own cd collection that i have built up over the past 20 years or so ,so no authorization codes there.

its not that i lend my ipod to everyone ,but sometimes ,if one asks for something you own to borrow,one cannot be petty everytime and refuse and hence my query.

The way i figure it ,my ipod is worth about 350dollars,but with my music collection,all in ,its worth hundreds of times more,atleast for me and i dont personally believe in piracy myself.

its different if a friend wants to burn a cd or two ,but i would not want all my music burnt in a mass scale and hence my enquiry.

There should be some way to password protect archives in itunes as well as in the ipod itself.

just my thoughts.

rgds

Well, if you look around on the discussions about people trying to recover music from their iPods you'll see it's not so easy... I guess why Apple didn't bother to include an encryption mechanism.

Your friend would really have to make an effort to steal your music (maybe they should just ask first). They would also have to have the connection cable. So maybe if you're worried about it you can just keep the USB cable with you when you lend your iPod. 😉

"i dont personally believe in piracy myself."
"its different if a friend wants to burn a cd or two"

No, it's not different. Piracy is stealing whether it's your entire library or just one song.

I completely agree with you ,but what to say to a friend begging you. although this is completely off topic,but we all have to face this sometime or another and its hard to explain how piracy is bad and why not get your own copy etc..

real life is not at all idealistic.

personally,i would not do it and would prefer noone else does it,but then thats me.

rgds

PS ,i should have mentioned that the friend/s i am talking about already HAVE ipods,its just that they dont have the 60GB(in fact nothing even close to 10GB) of music to go along with it.

Please help. I have over 1000 songs on my IPOD. They were all downloaded from my own (bought!) cds which I had in ITunes on my old computer. I recently sold my Emac and didn't know how to back up the files. I have just bought an Ibook and have sold ALL my cd's as I am moving abroad. I therefore do not have all the files on my new itunes. My sister connected her IPOD (which had all the files on too) and accidently erased all the files (as it came up with message "this IPOD is linked to another Itunes library.... she said yes and her IPOD was wiped) I have all the files on my IPOD. How can I transfer all the files onto my new Itunes so that I can then transfer them to her IPOD. We bought all the cds together so they are her songs as much as mine!!!

Samir, ethical issues aside. There are a number of products available which facilitate the ability to move files to/from your iPod.

Check out the following : http://www.thelittleappfactory.com/application.php?app=iPodRip

The above product is intended to safely backup and restore lawful content. Please ensure the success of iTunes and iPods by purchasing music and ensuring no copying of copyrighted materials by friends or anybody else.

Hope this helps.
-RG

Welcome to the discussion Sharon.

There are several posts on this in the iPod discussions, here is one to get you started:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?128@@.68b7f0b6

note: this is not really the topic of this thread. in future, please search for threads related to your question, or if you can't find anything related begin a new thread. with this in mind, enjoy the help you should be able to get here on apple discussions!