It used to be that the RIAA wasn’t as worried about music copying because, when you copied a cassette, then copied that copy and so on, the recording degraded with each generation. Theoretically, digital brought us perfect copying every time which really annoys them. However, look at the possible degradation that is happening. As some popular video clip is copied to a DIVX file, it loses data. Then as it is uploaded to YouTube, it loses other data. Then, as it’s ripped by someone to another lossy compression format, it loses more. Similar with WMA to mp3, etc. Anyway, it seems like some of that degradation is coming back in some ways.
They were worried about it in the cassette days too, homey; they just have more money now so it’s easier for them to throw a bigger fit.
Oh, and you should use FLAC. Lossy encoding is for n00bz (though OGG is reasonably acceptable, I suppose).
This is true. Even as recently as when VCRs came out. The media makers all thought their lives would be ruined.
Judging strictly from mp3 quality, degredation often does occur in the original extractions. Sometimes they show up as blips in songs, sometimes not until a format change or a different mp3 player. Ubernet is painful, but worth it in the long run. (and FLAC is supported) Now i compare my first attempt at conversion using cheesy Yamp extractor and they lack. The quality difference is something that can only be felt, not identified. Some extractions skip like a flat rock.