Something has me confused. The reason for my confusion is my latest attempt at being cool, by downloading music from the internet. These days, even the average eight-year- old knows how to leech music from one of the hundreds of download sites on the web, but I don't. My MP3 collection hasn't changed for the past five years - and all those songs were favourites ripped from my own CDs. The trend today is to use Limewire or some such program and leech gigabytes of sounds to load onto an iPod, or Walkman, or whatever they're called. But this is theft, and, as an upstanding member of the community (ha!), and a former professional musician, I am not big on pinching music and feeling responsible for forcing The Feelers or OpShop to queue up at Baker's Delight with other homeless souls at the end of the day in order to cadge some free boston buns. So, sitting astride my high horse, I set off looking for a song I heard years ago and, for the life of me, cannot find for sale anywhere in town (mention Charles Aznavour to one of those tattooed, pierced-nipple types at the CD shop and you'll see what I mean).

Anyway, long story short, I found the song on one of these "legal" music download sites. After all this time, it was just a credit - card transaction away. I bought it - cost: 79 pence, roughly $2. The download speed was great; the site obviously sits on some serious servers. With anticipation, I pulled on my headphones, checked to see I was not about to be disturbed for three minutes, opened my usual player (Media Player Classic) and loaded the file. Huh? All I got was a "Cannot render the file" error. Talk about audius interruptus. My first thought was the file was corrupted, so off I went to re-download it. Hmm, it seems I can only download it four more times. Oh well, once is enough, at least I can back it up once I have it. I tried it playing the new file - nothing. Time to check out the fine print. A few minute's reading produced the answer: the file is copy protected with Digital Rights Management, or DRM. Apparently, Windows Media Player could play it, but I have long since ripped it out of my system because I hate it. I have also decided I don't like DRM.

Having been in the music business, I know what a cut-throat, dog-eat-dog industry it is. There is also a downside. Artists, who I am sure do all the hard work (or at least all the hard drugs) end up getting only cents from a $30 CD/record sale. While many made so much money they didn't notice (or care), their record companies raked in the real dough. I can only suppose this is why a $2 song is DRM protected. By this point I was quite annoyed; all I wanted to do was play my #$%#@! song! I eventually had to concede defeat and installed Windows Media Player, a great ugly behemoth that instantly added shortcuts and icons all over the place like some kind of graphical pox. I had to untweak my security software to allow WMP to download DRM, which I found a real PIA. After supplying a username and password, the licence was duly downloaded and installed and I finally got to hear my song, though by this time I was far beyond enjoying it. What a palaver for one song. Another annoying thing is that I discovered it can only be played on my computer now; while I could copy it to my iPod (if I had one) I couldn't play it there.As I understand it (the legalese surrounding DRM is so complicated that only a Queen's Counsel could decipher it), I would have to buy another licence to be able do that. So I did what every technically inclined person would do - I hit Google to find out if there was a way of removing DRM (for educational purposes, of course). Turns out there is, although it's about as simple as performing eye surgery on yourself with a KFC knife and fork while bungy jumping from a train. While some clever people have developed software that can "remove" DRM, none of the trial versions I downloaded could manage it, and besides, the software isn't cheap either and besides, it is illegal - I think.

I can see why people download free music, it's way less trouble. Any fear of the music police raiding me pales beside the frustration of downloading and playing legal music. For me, it is back to searching the music shops - I'll rip my own MP3s from now on, thanks very much.