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"How I Became A Music Pirate" takes the blogosphere by fire.

An all vinyl and CD music lover details his attempt at legal downloads. After being DRMed into the ground, he turns his back on the dark side.

The Consumerist printed a reader, let's call him Jarrett the New Pirate, submitted tale "How I Became A Music Pirate" and everyone everywhere is pointing to it. It's a great read and a great lesson in how technology tends to look like one thing, but end up being something all together different (he thought he was buying the songs, but he was buying a license to listen to the songs).

There where many little nuggets in the story. The one that was glaring was he never actually pirates any music! At the end, he suggest he might, possibility take a burned copy of a CD:

"Since I've resigned myself not to waste any more time with the music business, I suppose I'll have to resort to purchasing used CD's & records, or having my friends occasionally make me a copy of one of their newer CD's."

Well there's no chance the RIAA is going to be able the track that. One could even argue in falls into the definition of Fair Use (not me of course, but someone could).

Here are some other tidbits that are part of the problem that we're trying to address (mentioned in the Beyond Consumer Activism post)"

"I tried to move the .WMA files into iTunes"

That's a need for consumer education. WMA is the Windows Media Audio format and I'm sure Microsoft and Apple will do everything they can to make sure WMA files won't play in iTunes. For the tech-savvy, that's just common sense. But for the rest of us it is actual common sense to think an audio file should play in an audio file player.

"...she suggested there was no way the files could be played on my iPod."

Is that true? Seems to me somebody out there has figured a workaround for this. Anyone want to add a comment on how it's done?

"There I sat, a loyal music fan who has shelled out actual money to a business that is supposed to be having financial problems,"

Now this isn't a technical problem, but definitely a consumer education problem. There is no financial crisis in the music industry. CD sales may be down, but the industry's profits are up, way up. The ways in which you can get the music you enjoy has radically changed in the last several years. For the music industry, Jarrett is their bread and butter, always using the old distribution system. Jarrett didn't need the digital distribution until the music he loves ended up in the Long Tail of the digital marketplace (the Luna covers album?). Where is the music industry for him now? I'll tell you where: Blocking his access to the music he loves (and wants to pay for!).

Evast ye matey! Thars obscure alt-rock music burried on that island!