Discussion on:

Ailing music biz set to relax digital restrictions

Do you mean something like not making it a pain to actually use music you legally purchased on any equipment you want to? Something like not assuming consumer=criminal and thinking that someone who forked over some of their cash for your product might deserve a little respect for doing so? It took the music business that long to think of this?

I want real music, not some compressed equivilent. I have to get this from CD's or streamed. If I wish to get it all, I have to listen to the selection, not just pick it from a list. I buy my CD's and should not have to have a special machine or drivers to play it unless I am using some exotic format or device to listen to it. Paying for the music should give me the right to put it in the format that pleases me or is the most convienent for me. I do this for me, not for profit or resale. No broken laws there.

You have to get uncompressed 16 bit digital music from CDs, as you say. I don't understand the problem there. I think that the article is talking about an experiment with downloadable music that would compete with iTunes. If that experiment goes well then it could lead to less DRM on music files.

As far as CDs go you can still play them in a generic CD music player or on a computer. If you want more flexibility using music CDs on a computer then Linux may be for you. Otherwise, even using Windows to listen to music CDs on a computer, I don't understand what you are complaining about.

You can only play the video on a windows box. to hear the music I HAVE to put it into a CD player.

To listen to in on my windows box I had to use a linux box to rip mp3s of it.

Music and multimedia players on Linux can play files in the flac format. Flac is a lossless compressed audio format. I've heard that some hand held MP3 players can play flac files too but I never verified that.

I don't know if there are any music playing applications for Windows that can play flac files. I would think so but I don't know. It might be worth looking into.