This is Hi-Fi

Well, after spending about 2 hours at Waterloo Records, I'm about $50 poorer in cash and about $50 richer in musical assets. Of course this also means that I haven't had enough time to go through all of my pictures from California or ACL yet. Procrastination be me. Here is a preview of one of my favorite Trish Murphy pics, though:

Those that know me well, know that I am pretty anti file-sharing, because I don't think the primary users of things like Napster, Kazaa, and Bit Torrent have any intentions other than getting stuff for free. My stance has always been that I hate the RIAA and I choose to spend my dollars (or not) in order to try and influence their practices. I flat out refuse to knowingly steal in order to provide myself with free benefits or added convenience. I don't think it's my choice to make. So here I was, at Waterloo Records, holding Charlotte Martin's CD in my hands. I had heard her at the Chicks with Attitude concert in SF, and I really loved her music. Then it hits me. I notice all sorts of anti-piracy text on the packaging, but most importantly the long blurb about the copy protection used on the disc. I'm all for stopping piracy, but copy protection is not the answer. Making a backup copy, or a 2nd copy for personal use is well within my rights as "Fair Use". The copy protection schemes that they use are a huge hassle, generally degrade the media in either durability or fidelity, and are a flat out inconvenience.

So, what do I do? It's time to put up or shut up.

It went back on the shelf.

Saddened, I took my other purchases with me to the checkout and went on home. Thankfully, I found out that the copy protection scheme used on her CD is the crappy MediaMax CD3 scheme that is easily circumvented. On one hand, I'm annoyed that they'll likely collect royalties for their faulty software. On the other hand, I can get what I want, with no hassles. I'll probably go back to Waterloo and buy it tomorrow. Hooray for the internet.

This experience annoyed me enough that I'm going to do some research on copy protection schemes and keep a little cheat sheet with me, so I remember which ones are actual annoyances and which ones are non-issues. Stay tuned for more.