I'm not an iTunes user, so I don't know if this is possible:

- Download a song from iTunes.

- Song is in a proprietary, digital-rights-managed format that won't play on anything but an iPod.

- Use iTunes to burn an audio CD of the song.

- Rip that CD using an ordinary MP3 ripper/encoder.

- Ripped MP3 can now be played on proper equipment.

Temporarily setting aside the issue of re-encoding a piece of audio that's already been encoded once before, does this work?

Yes. Apparently DVD Jon solved the problem in a more elegant manner, but I haven't looked at that.

Thanks!

There's also a way (on a Mac at least..) to skip the burning and ripping by just exporting the AAC to AIFF using Roxio Jam or something.

The process "DVD Jon" came up with gives you an exact copy of the AAC file, minus the DRM. No re-encoding occurs, so no loss of quality.

Now if more players would support the industry standard AAC, we could play these songs we bought off the iTunes store on our portable devices.