Windows decided not to load 2 of my hard disks (yes, I'm buying a RAID 1 setup tomorrow -- yikes!), so I wasn't able to access my music collection. I can't work at all without some sound. So I found a shared folder from KCeasy and lo and behold, it had a few interesting things in it, so I queue'd them up.

Well, one track was by Ayumi Hamasaki, and I quite liked it. So I thought, hey, I'll go buy the CD. $28, not that bad. Oh wait, what's this?

Shopping Note:
· This CD is copyright-protected. The tracks on the CD can be played on PC running Windows operation system, but cannot be copied onto any PC nor can they be played on Macintosh operation system.

Can be played on a PC, but can't be copied? Huh? That means they do Some Very Evil Stuff. If a CD can't be copied, then something seriously wrong is going on. Now, the only thing I've heard of is it that lame technology that puts a driver on your system to screw things up and then gives you access to WMA only. I think it comes from a company that has the word “Sun” in their name. The one that you can bypass by disabling Autoload.

Well, I don't play CDs, period. My playlists are huge, I'm using my DVD drive for other things, and I hate the idea of passing physical media around for no reason. I also despise any company that tries to covertly install drivers to destroy my computer.

So, what's the outcome here? Well, I'm not gonna buy the CD. The artist loses $3? Oh no. I'll still get the music (gonna queue it up right now), and if I like it, I'll be a fan and if I happen to be around where a concert is, perhaps I'll go. But as far as paying for locked down media? Screw 'em. In fact, if I'm going to PAY for the media, I'd like them to ship a professionaly encoded set of WMA tracks at 256Kbps along with the CD audio. Actually, heck, just send me the WMA files. I don't need CD-audio. Send me higher quality WMA files (higher sampling, higher bit depth, WMA Pro codec, lossless compression). Oh yea, and get rid of the lame attempt to use DRM. Then I'll buy.