Thinking about selling my CD collection = MP3

Actually, the quoted section was misquoting Herman's post before yours... ;)

B'sides, "[n]one agreed on the interpretation of the copywright law as it applies to the area we are discussing" is basically where blog comes out. I think my point in citing the blog was the fact that it spelled out the actual controversy under the law--and the relevant statutory provisions--fairly well. This is not some well considered digital policy issue before the courts, its the intersection of the relatively ancient First Sale Doctrine and the relatively ancient law of Fair Use. The copyright laws were not written with digital media in mind, and haven't changed for a while. The courts are banging square pegs into round holes.

I totally agree with your last two points. Given the vagueness of the law, keeping CDs--in my mind, even if the law itself is screwy--makes practical sense as an last resort backup, makes practical sense in terms of a legal defense should you ever need it, and moral sense in that it seems to me to be the right thing to do as a means of avoiding the bypassing of artist compensation.

Here is what I would do, copy them all to your hard drive as lossless wma or mp3 format and then eventually save them on DVD-rom dics. DVD roms when scratched don't suffer the same way cd's do and you won't have to keep all your music on a hard disc that might crash, in the future when you do have the time you can "listen" to your archived lossless music archives on a audiophile quality universal player that plays mp3's or wma files. The lossless files should sound as good as your CD's now and scratching the discs won't affect the playback.

Heck if they are not interested then I am! What CD's do you have for sale? Will you send them to Australia? :)

An update. I am almost complete with ripping my CD collection to my computer. It has been going very smoothly, just doing a few at a time. I purchased two hard drives, on internal and one external. So I am saving the mp3 files to three locations, my computers main hard drive, and the two extra ones I purchased. I also just purchased an 80 gig iPod, so I am storing them to 4 locations. I listened to my iPod this morning on the way to work, it sounds fantastic connected to my cars system! I am more that pleased with my decision to go with mp3 audio.