True story from the front lines of music piracy: Yesterday I was flagrantly breaking the law by transferring songs from my iPod to my brother's computer, using a nice little piece of software called iPod Rip. Among the songs I transferred were a handful that I'd recently purchased from the iTunes music store. By doing so, I seem to have triggered the virtual equivalent of an explosive dye pack: I can no longer play any of the songs from these albums, at least not on my iPod. Even if I delete the old files and try to replace them with the songs from my laptop (which still work fine), the iPod refuses to read them. Apparently this is Apple's unadvertised way of making sure that I respect copyright…or else. The annoying thing is that nothing prevented me from transferring the files in the first place; rather, it punished me after the fact. How cruel and unusual is this? I've been deprived of Moby's Play, the Avenue Q soundtrack, and Justin Timberlake's Justified. Needless to say, I'm crying myself a river.