A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

I used to download music. Most of this occurred during university when funds were limited, and acquiring music illegally was really the only way to stay current. My downloads weren’t excessive like other people I knew, but it was enough that I didn’t need a music budget. Once I finished my run as a student and started my career, music downloading eventually ended for me. I could now afford to buy music and was happy to pay the artists for their work. I was happy, the artists were happy, and the record companies were happy - everything was perfect.

So there I was, happily buying and listening to my compact discs. Then, as it constantly does, technology got smaller, faster and cheaper. Huge capacity hard drives were becoming dirt cheap and portable music devices could now hold entire music collections. The music digital revolution was underway and I found myself in the middle of it.

People were now transferring their music CDs to their computers which would act as their hub for listening to tunes. CDs were becoming irrelevant. Over the last year I started ‘ripping’ all of my music CDs to my computer. It was a relief to finish my collection that is in excess of four hundred discs. Now after I purchase a new CD, the first thing I do is pop it into my computer and transfer its contents. Once done, the disc usually ends up in a box in my basement. Now the new songs are available on my home stereo through my wireless network, or are ready to hit the road on my Dell DJ.

Then it happened. I bought the new Delirium disc, ‘Chimera’, threw it into my computer - and nothing. The music played fine, but transferring the songs to my computer was a no-go. After a bit of kicking and cursing I took a look at the CD case and noticed a special logo - ‘copy protected’. WTF?

At that moment I vowed to check for this logo before buying a CD. Sounds like a good plan, but I can tell you that I have forgotten to do this almost everytime. I went a while before falling into this trap again. This time it was ‘Honeycomb’ by Frank Black (frontman for the Pixies). This time it really pissed me off since I had recently purchased my Dell DJ and did the majority of my music listening through this device. I owned this disc for about two weeks before I actually listened to it. I’m sure I could have found a hack to get the music onto my computer, but I shouldn’t have to. I bought this disc legally, and was unable to listen to it the way I wanted to.

So what did I do? I downloaded the CD illegally of the internet (actually I don’t know if it is considered illegal if I own the disc). I just wonder what will happen the next time I go to buy a CD, and do notice the ‘copy protected’ logo? Am I going to buy it? Or am I just going to say, screw it, and download it? Even though I may not have agreed with the ways record labels were handling the music revolution, I was willing to follow the rules until they figured everything out. But if their solution to piracy is punish the customers who are willing to pay for the music, I don’t think I want to be part of that solution.

For further reading, check out this article Copy-protection Turning Fans Off.