Well, I didn’t quite expect it like this, but I got an answer to my question: What are you paying for when you buy music? The EFF reported on an RIAA filing that wants to make ripping your own CDs to play on your portable audio device fall outside the fair use definition. In fact, so would just making a backup copy of your CDs.

Thanks, RIAA, for wanting to turn practically everyone who owns a computer into criminals. That should go over very well. Let’s see: I got an iPod so I could carry my entire music collection around with me, which worked out to about 3,800 songs. Re-buying those from the iTunes music store at $0.99/song would cost me $3,762.00. Yeah, I don’t think so. I’m willing to take my chances as a criminal.