Yellowcard: Silent Lights and Sounds

07 Mar 2006

Stupid DRM. My computer, of course, gets around the copy protection on this CD instantly. My DVD player (which I use as a CD player: shut up Steve, CD players don’t sound a-few-hundred-dollars better, so I don’t care! ;-) ), on the other hand, can’t play the damn thing. As of right now I’m ripping it to my computer (losslessly with FLAC) and will have a prestine, non-DRM copy on a burnt CD for my use in a matter of minutes.

And if a friend ever asks if they can borrow my Yellowcard CD (bought on a whim knowing only one of their songs, I’ll add), I’ll be sure to lend them the version that works better: The one I burnt myself, without your stupid-arse software all over it.

Oh, yeah, and I’ll hesitate to purchase EMI CDs in the future. All other DRM-encumbered crap I’ve bought in the past has at least had the courtesy to work in my DVD player (this one made detection take ages, then picked it up as a VCD with wierd timecoding) — this is the barrier at which point it becomes infinitely easier to use Peer-to-Peer than buy things that look like they might be interesting in a CD store.

With physical media, I can (read: should be able to) toss it in anything and expect it to work instantly (no ripping required, etc.).

And, you know, if I wind up using Peer-to-Peer for this kind of stuff, my lossless (yeah, that’s CD quality, not MP3 junk) audio collection will be shared back with the rest of the world. Yes, even the CDs you make it harder for me to use legitimately. I will figure out a way to get them onto my computer (or someone else will with another CD), and I will use sharing networks if scumbag content providers provide me with sufficient impetus to do that.

(Incidentally, if anyone wants to borrow a non-DRM-encumbered Yellowcard CD…)