#like the 2005 sony-bmg records rootkit software on some of their cds

[fishmech]

Yeah it's people who don't really understand how anything works, like in their heads the only thing that ever existed is Spotify and CDs. And it's extra funny because a lot of them are like, genuinely unaware you can buy music files? Like there's a lot of assumptions that once Spotify got big in 201x surely all the music download places must no longer be in business.

The people specifically advocating for the analog hole stuff is also so funny because it's been really easy to just use a program to fake there being an aux cord but its really just recording the audio to a file or sending it as input to another audio program for free for like 20 years now. Absolutely no need to get other devices in there.

Heck back when DRMed music downloads were still a thing there were even specialty programs that you just told to go convert all your DRMed purchases via the virtual audio cable method if you were feeling particularly low effort about setting it up.

You really don't need to burn CDs if you want to air quotes own your digital music files. Afaik even iTunes or whatever doesn't enforce any kind of drm besides counting which computers you can download songs from them on, and ofc bandcamp or pirated music doesn't care at all.

My android phone has never spoken to iTunes and has my whole library on it, I have a big external drive with music that I pass between computers as needed and never had any issues, I can use all of them in video or audio editing software directly without doing aux cord tricks

You just have to actually download the files onto a device instead of streaming everything forever is the thing. If you want CDs because they look nice or because you have a car that has a CD drive but no Bluetooth or place to charge your phone (can't you use a lighter adapter?) or you want to send someone a mixtape or whatever, knock yourself out, but otherwise files are good enough