Obviously Microsoft is trying to shape our view of owning music in a undesirable way(for us, or a desirable way for recording industry). This is very similar to their logic of software usage. That is, when you've paid $199 for Windows XP, you don't actually own it, you just paid for the rights to use it for a certain period of time on a specific machine. This is what licencing is all about--not only telling you what you can do and not, but also put hard restrictions with technology.
When applying this logic to Music, it's absolutely against music lover's interests. When you've bought a CD and converted the music to WMA 7.x format in your PC, you DO NOT own the copy anymore. Instead, whoever controls the licence controls your usage since you normally cannot fiddle with the licence itself. In all, use Windows Media if you want to lose control of the music you own and want to being tracked each time you copy, rip and so on(Technologically they have no problems tracking you with controlled licence and internet connections mentioned in the article). Otherwise, stick with MP3.
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When applying this logic to Music, it's absolutely against music lover's interests. When you've bought a CD and converted the music to WMA 7.x format in your PC, you DO NOT own the copy anymore. Instead, whoever controls the licence controls your usage since you normally cannot fiddle with the licence itself. In all, use Windows Media if you want to lose control of the music you own and want to being tracked each time you copy, rip and so on(Technologically they have no problems tracking you with controlled licence and internet connections mentioned in the article). Otherwise, stick with MP3.