[Vision2020] DRM-free music from the belly of the beast

[Paul Rumelhart]

It's come to my attention that Wal-Mart is selling DRM-free MP3 files on 
it's website.  Many people probably don't care, or aren't surprised, or 
don't see what the problem is - but this has dealt me a small dilemma.

Do I "vote with my pocketbook" to show support for a company that is not 
cowing under to the big music publishers and the dreaded RIAA and is 
providing legal music in a form that I can backup in case it gets lost, 
copy to my mp3 player, burn to CD and play in my car, etc?

-or-

Do I continue to have as little contact with one of the signature Big 
Evil Corporations as I can get away with?

Luckily, they make it a bit easier by not having too many songs or 
albums in MP3 format, the only other choice being a DRM-laden Microsoft 
craplet codec known as WMA that requires Windows Media Player to get 
through the digital rights management code they are using.

I wish allofmp3.com would come back.  A lot of people won't buy through 
them because they think they are owned by the Russian mafia or something 
and are stealing music from the mouths of starving artists like P!nk or 
Britney Spears.  The fact is that they are following the law in the 
country they are in.  They have money set aside for the RIAA to claim, 
but they refuse to.  So I lose no sleep when shopping there.  You could 
get any song in almost any DRM-free format you cared about (including my 
favorite, ogg), at whatever bitrate you wanted.  You simply paid based 
on the size of the file.  The prices were really low, some albums were 
around 3$ depending upon  your format choices.

Paul