[dayglored]

> When I let Windows Media Player and iTunes scan my drives for music they go through the mp3’s of music I’ve written and promptly mislabel all of it with “best guesses”. There was one song in particular that Media Player wouldn’t play because I didn’t have the rights to it! So I forsee a lot of people like me having their original work being deleted under such a scheme.

I have a lot of my original music saved digitally.

- It's on my regular computer, but on an external hard drive, RAID1, only connected when I'm working on the music.

- It's on a series of backups on other external hard drives, stored elsewhere in case of theft or fire.

- It's on the computer that's part of my studio -- but that machine doesn't have a network connection, for isolation and security. I move files to and from it using portable hard drives.

If you're serious about your own music (and it sounds like you are), you should be keeping backups, and never let your studio computer on the internet.

If you use Windows, that means you have to download the updates manually, but I find that less annoying than having Bill Gates reach inside my machines at midnight and reboot them. Like happened at work last Tuesday...

[max americana]

same here. I’ve got every back-up, external hard drive just in case some malware hits my primary pc. When I travelled to canada and going back, my files were re-labelled “vacation in Vancouver and Calgary” LOL and encrypted as well. Heard of the TSA stories about the gubmint confiscating hard drives.