I am not a thief. I've never shoplifted. I once took a candy bar from my sister, but felt so guilty that I confessed and paid her back — three times. I feel bad taking more than one sample from the cheese platter at Whole Foods. I'm an honest person. As such, I've always felt that stealing music was wrong. Very wrong.

Before becoming a writer and audio engineer working in the TV biz, I was a recording engineer struggling to make a living in the music business. My paycheck was directly influenced by album sales. If someone stole the music I recorded, I wasn't gonna eat. Neither would the receptionist, or Ernie, the guy who swept the studio floors.

So why am I so enthusiastic about the recent announcement that EMI, one of the biggest labels in the music biz, is going to let their music be downloaded through iTunes without DRM (digital rights management), the copy protection that's kept a tight leash on music use?

Isn't EMI afraid that the big, bad music pirates will suddenly pillage their entire music library? Or maybe, just maybe, they trust that people are basically good. Perhaps EMI just come to their senses and realized that if you charge someone for music, you need to let them use it in a reasonable fashion.

Until now, trying to move protected music that you've legally purchased from iTunes to any non-iPod is just about impossible without jumping through hoops. Now, with DRM-free music, you can move your legally purchased music to all your portable devices (as long as they can play AAC files) and easily move it from computer to computer. I could have my purchased music on my laptop and my desktop. Novel idea, right?

With DRM-protected iTunes songs, the only way to transfer them to non-iPod MP3 players is to convert them from 128-kbps AAC files to WAVs and then to MP3s, seriously degrading sound quality. The new EMI files will not only be free of DRM, but they'll sound a lot better — 256 kbps versus iTunes' current standard of 128. Why should you care? Because you can hear the difference. Listen for yourself over a pair of really good speakers — compare a downloaded file to an original CD of the same song and you'll hear the difference. A file ripped at 256 kbps will have more detail, more depth, and less digital artifacts than a 128-kbps file, sounding more like the original recording. Each time that file is converted into MP3, WMA or AAC and back, more and more of the original sound is lost.

When music was confined to the iPod, lower quality was acceptable — well, maybe not acceptable, but we just didn't have a choice. Now, with everything from home theater systems to car stereos being 'iPod Ready,' the quality of your music matters more than ever. Granted, these better-sounding music files will be larger, take up more space on your computer and portable player, and take longer to download or transfer. But for a lot of people, it's well worth those inconveniences.

The new offerings from EMI come at a price. Instead of the usual 99¢ per song, these will cost you $1.29. Don't care about quality or DRM? Fine. Download the lower-quality protected file for the usual 99¢. Pissed off that iTunes is making you re-purchase songs you've already paid for? For only 30¢, you can upgrade songs you've already purchased and downloaded to the unprotected, 256-kbps files in one easy step. Nice work all around. Listen up, other labels — the rest of my music wants to taste freedom too! I'm tired of being treated like a criminal. — Leslie Shapiro