Do you own songs bought online? Well, sort of. Put another way, no.

Reuters tackles an issue that many people apparently don't understand (partly, perhaps, because of Apple's misinformation about the topic):

You ... have spent perhaps a few hundred dollars buying songs from the company's iTunes music store.

But do you really own the tunes? Whether you do, however, depends on how you define ownership.

Apple's FairPlay digital rights management, or DRM, software prevents you from listening to those purchased songs on a music player from Dell Inc., Creative, Sony, or others. The same thing goes for songs you've imported to your computer from CDs you already own.

The DRM software is Apple's way of preventing piracy and is a large part of the reason why the recording industry has so warmly embraced the iTunes Music Store.

I won't buy music from the iTunes Music Store because Apple's 128 Kbps tracks are of too low quality to convert them to decent-sounding MP3 files. For this reason, I prefer Napster (192 Kbps) or MSN Music (160 to 256 Kbps) instead. I wrote about this process in Connected Home a while back. [Paul Thurrott's Internet Nexus]

This report is BS. You can import any of your CDs as MP3 at very high quality. I do it at 160 kps but you can go up to 192 kps. With no DRM, allowing you to play them on ANY MP3 player. If you buy something from iTunes, you can convert it to a normal CD format and burn it. then import it back in WITHOUT DRM, into iTunes as an MP3, allowing you to play it on ANY MP3 player. I do not believe this is possible using MSN or Napster.   comment []10:41:36 PM