[the anti-liberal]

You were able to deauthorize- I've had my machine's built-in video card wink out, requiring the whole motherboard be replaced. I was fortunate in that I was able to copy the HDD onto DVD, but recovering the music was a pain (MusicMatch Jukebox).

An interesting thing about purchasing through MusicMatch, I can only make three copies of a song or cd. Now I haven't lost a cd yet, but I can see where that could become a pain.

In any case, I've simply stopped purchasing music, in any format- it's not worth it and I don't need it. (I can conceive of a parallel to cigarette addiction and music addiction- in a strictly limited sense.)

[rivercat]

I like being able to purchase songs from iTunes because I don't generally buy whole CDs. I'm willing to live with the DRM limitations since I can buy just the songs I want for 99 cents each. Yes I have been concerned about what happens if my hard drive becomes unrecoverable, but I don't have enough invested in downloaded songs that I even bother to back them up to CD/DVD.