Michael's Weblog

This post might well appear to be a bit opinionated, but this is a subject that annoys me a lot.

I have sometimes wondered why I much prefer to have a CD copy of an album rather than downloading a digital copy. I think it's far better to have a physical object for my money, rather than a sort of ethereal representation of what I had bought. Here's another reason. From this site:

Windows Media Player 11 does not permit you to back up your media usage rights (previously known as licenses). However, depending upon where your protected files came from, you might be able to restore your rights over the Internet.

So, that basically means that any protected files you "buy" will be useless to you if you move them to a new computer, reinstall an existing one, or buy a new music player. There are a good number of scary quotes in that site as well as the above, too. You might well be able to jump through the right hoops in the right order to restore your "rights", but I'm sure it'll be painful. It would appear that Microsoft, presumably sponsored by the RIAA, are trying to apply their "Software as a Service" model to music as well. Eventually you'll have to pay every single time you want to hear a track, I'm sure.

Do not use Windows Media Player. Do not use iTunes. Do not use WMA or AAC. If you rip or create music, use MP3 or (even better, if you have hardware to play it) Ogg Vorbis. If you don't, you will just get screwed over in the end. Even buying proper Red Book CDs aren't perfect, seeing as about 90% of the profit goes to the record companies and is never seen by the artists. But, they're better than nothing, and at least you have a copy that can be used without your "rights" to use it being spontaneously revoked.