The cry of Mp3

With the proliferation of mp3 players in the market, more and more consumers are switching from conventional CD players, walkmans, mini discs and other media towards mp3 players which offers plenty of advantages over the latter in terms of song storage and portability. Because of this new phenomenon, the rise in digital file sharing has increased which bred a new technology whereby major labels are applying onto their CDs to prevent piracy. This has led to numerous problems. One of them is that users are not allowed to rip them into mp3 format.

By not allowing the user to rip CDs legally purchased into mp3s means disallowing them to actually listen to the CD on a mp3 player. So what are millions of iPod users are going to say about it? Well they have been complaining like mad and even artists are revealing methods to going around this copyright protection code.

- source CNN

As for me, personally I think that this will encourage more people to download off the internet or through peer-to-peer softwares rather than going through the trouble of trying to rip it into another format then converting it again. The extra hassle will not discourage people from downloading through peer-to-peer networks but rather encouraging them to do so. But luckily my mp3 player plays windows media format so it doesn't really bother me, just the other millions of iPod users. heh