Horses and Sony (may be long, sorry)

["MP" <roednt>]

I've been on the list for a while but never posted anything as I'm mostly a 
reader, but wanted to comment on the following:

First off, I just got Horses/Horses, had to go to two stores to find it.  My 
local Best Buy had 3 copies but they had sold out (or they didn't know where 
they put them, which is the case more often than not).  As much as I don't 
like Best Buy due to them contributing to the destruction of nice little 
music stores around the area, it is close to my home and it is convenient. 
I ended up getting it from a local store (which felt much better to buy it 
from them, though it is a longer drive), for a dollar less than Best Buy 
even.

Well, the CD is very nice, I really liked the packaging and it was worth 
buying it, even though I already have two other copies of Horses.  I really 
liked what they did with the pictures from then and now.  I haven't ripped 
it to my ipod yet but I will later on tonight.

I bought 3 CDs today, Horses, Kate Bush Aerial (her new one) and Eurythmics 
Ultimate Collection.  I examined them at the store before paying for them 
and examined the latest Santana CD (which I know for sure has that copy 
protection/root kit/DRM thing).  The CDs I bought didn't have that label 
that states that it runs on Windows etc. etc. so I went ahead and purchased 
them even thought they were Sony in one way or another.  This brings me to 
this posting.  I've been reading a lot about this issue and as much as I 
want to boycott Sony, it seems to me they have their hands on just about 
every CD out there.  I'm thinking for sure they are going to expand 
eventually and put that root kit thing in more and more CDs.  While I think 
something should be done about pirating, this really makes it a pain to 
manage my music.  I personally like to make a copy of the songs, being 
either a compilation CD or just a copy of the CD and archive my original so 
that it will stay nice for many years, though lately I've been just ripping 
them to my Ipod, ever since I got an Ipod..   I know for a fact that car CD 
players and CD changers plus all the taking out and putting back in of a CD 
can be hard on discs, plus there's the question of if the car gets broken 
into, the thieves won't get away with the originals.

I've been thinking a while about this DRM situation and I'm hoping that we 
as consumers can do something about it.  I believe the whole statement about 
music companies losing money is false, I know that people who love the 
music, the fans will buy the CDs by a certain artist they love even if they 
have it already, like Horses for example, just because it includes a better 
packaging, a cleaner mix, extra tracks or whatever.  I think the DRM is a 
sham from the big record companies to have even more control over us ( the 
consumer) than they already do.  We need to stop them, though this probably 
will be very difficult as, like I said before, increasingly it seems there's 
only one or two companies running the show even though they use different 
labels.  I foresee myself not buying any more CDs no matter who the artist 
is if this situation doesn't get solved.  I don't want to in 5, 10 or 15 
years to be reminiscing about the "good ole"   days when CDs were not copy 
protected.  I do own about 5500 CDs and I'm a collector, but I can see 
myself completely stopping my CD buying if I'm going to be restricted in any 
way on how I can listen to my CDs.  We the consumers and the artists need to 
stop them!!!

Hope this makes sense and sorry if it was long, hope some of you got through 
it.


Mauri