This is turning into THE story of the year, isn't it! -At least as far as audiophiles are concerned.

My two cents worth: ANY DRM is "going too far"! If you can't hold the CD/LP/cassette in your hand, then you really don't have anything.

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...what do you propose the RIAA due to curb presumably negative effects that the proliferation of exact digital copies has on their bottom lines? I

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If record companies are so determined to control their beloved "content", perhaps they should stop pretending to want to sell it when what they really want is a pay-to-play system where everytime anyone, anywhere listens to music, their cash register rings.

Hey, can someone get this person to register to the forum. What a brilliant statement, hits the nail right on the head, as they say. Whoever you are, please come and join us and add some more clever insight to these discussions.

Aw shucks, that was just me posting from work. (I couldn't remember my password.)

Gosh, now I feel all this pressure to be brilliant, clever and insightful with every post!

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:Gosh, now I feel all this pressure to be brilliant, clever and insightful with every post!

Ah, nobody can live up to that kind of pressure. I thought your point was a good 'un too. Stealing is wrong, no matter what we call it -- but so is giving poor value, and crippling a product to "save" it is poor value.

I quite agree - stealing is always wrong. Even when it's the (poor) music lover stealing from the (rich) record companies.

Personally, I have never copied friend's tapes, records or CD's. And as far as I know, I have never bought a boot-legged copy of anything. I will confess to letting a couple of insistant friends tape some albums when they were poor, starving college students. So I guess that makes me an accessory. But they would not have bought these titles at retail anyway, so there was no loss inflicted upon the music industry. But, I digress.

Really, this is a golden opportunity for others (Apple, anyone!) to capitalize on the paranoia and stagnation within the record industry. Internet distribution of music via downloads will continue to grow, but there will surely always be a segment of the market that prefers to own their music collection in a more tangible form. And there is ample opportunity for up-and-comers there, too.

To music lovers, the record industry serves mainly as a filter and a facilitator. They filter out the bad music (supposedly) and make availabe to consumers the good. How good a job of filtering they do is always debatable, and they are increasingly doing a poor job of facilitating too, or else we would not be discussing such a thing as "DRM" in the first place!