Thinking about selling my CD collection = MP3

Were you permitted conjugals with your hard drive? All's I know is I've had one go down on me, and nothing else feels quite like it.

....and that's why they call them "gagabytes"

Marco

Assuming you take care with a music server - dedicated machine, don't run other programs on it, plenty of disk space, etc. - you should easily be able to put all your music on the server, have a backup strategy that fully protects you, and be able to interact with your music more flexibly than ever before. I would suggest a lossless format, and I would store the music on dedicated external USB drives. Support for any part of that setup won't go away for a long time.

Keep or sell the CDs? There are possible legal issues, probable moral issues, and a loss of ultimate security of your collection if you sell. To me, though, this is a completely different question than whether everything should be on a server and accessed that way.

Tvad-

While I agree that d/l mp3s wasn't the question presented, the takeaway is that the RIAA is *very* vigilant about enforcing its perceived rights, and if there was a way that they could go after people merely for storing their own ripped CDs, I suspect they certainly would try. While there is no simple existing means for determining what's on your hard drive, the subpoena game played by RIAA is hardball--look at their track record where people (including grandmothers without computers) are being forced to prove a negative after being sued. I'm not so sanguine about the ultimate "privacy" of my hard drive--there have already been attempts by legislators to require software monitoring compliance with copyright.

Besides, keeping the CD is sort of the ultimate backup.

You're really not going to get very much money for them and somewhere down the road you'll wonder why you sold them.
Don't. I have and ended up buying stuff for a second time.

When you purchase a CD, you are purchasing the right to listen to the music. Fair use allows you to make a backup copy just in case the original becomes lost or damaged. Now, when you sell the original CD, you are selling your right to listen to the music. So, you no longer have the right to listen to the backup copy. Like many stated above, it's really hard to enforce this at the present time. However, if you anger the RIAA gods and they sue you, then you will have to prove that you own the rights to listen to all the CD's on your hard drive. Anybody that has been following the endless stream of RIAA suits will know that you are guilty until proven innocent.

FYI--

I have about 1700 of my favorite CD's ripped in lossless. I've had to rip them three times know. Original rip with DRM on, re-rip with DRM turned off so I could stream to SB2, and re-rip after hard drive failure. Make sure to backup your collection. In addition, consider using an E-sata external HD for backup; a lot faster than USB2.