You're very very wrong. Don't believe blindly everything that the music companies want you to believe. You don't buy the right to listen to a CD, you buy a cop

You're very very wrong. Don't believe blindly everything that the music companies want you to believe. You don't buy the right to listen to a CD, you buy a copy of the CD and the music for use as you wish. Many European countries have an explicit right to private copy, you can copy/transform/archive anything you have for personal use. There is a tax on storage media that goes to the labels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy I believe the US has something similar (you can do whatever you want with the copy that you own) but an American would be better place to comment on that. What you generally don't have (across jurisdictions) is the right to make copies and distribute them. CD rippers have never been illegal. They are illegal in a few places if they circumvent copy protection mechanisms and even there it depends on the details. You can have a look at the legal FAQ of VLC media player that debunks some of the myths. https://www.videolan.org/legal.html https://www.videolan.org/legal.html