AllOfMp3 was precisely what I was looking for when I first heard about iTunes. It gives me much more choice in the format I want, and thus I can get the format that I would have gotten if I went to a store and bought the CD, then ripped it myself. Through making choices in format quality I even get a choice in the price I want to pay. For that single song that is decent put not great I can grab in Vorbis for cheap. For a good album I can download FLAC, generate my own Vorbis file for my hard drive and burn the FLACs to CD (resulting in a CD logically equivalent (same data, without jewel case or cover design) to the one in stores).

We've discussed this tool in Ethics and Law, and through deciding to defend it in class discussions came to deciding to use it. It will make a mainstream compliment to Magnatune for me. The RIAA doesn't want people using AllOfMp3, but the reason appears to not be because the artists themselves don't get paid, but that the Russian music copyright group pays the artists directly and the RIAA members get much less in booty royalties. Apparently when the Russians were setting up their version of ASCAP/BMI (where radio stations get cheap rights to those top 40 hits they play in non-ceasing repeat) they decided to cut out the middle man, and I find that awesome. The only thing left to worry about are importation laws between Russia and the US, but so far the federal government has stayed out of Internet import/export law other than cryptography export (for national security concerns).