THE RIGHT THING: BURN, BABY, BURN!

Kim Hohl and her father constantly argue about ethics. One of their regular disagreements concerns downloading and uploading music.

It's not that there's a great divide between them over downloading music illegally, an issue that, among other things, can sometimes result in heated discussions about stealing someone else's property and copyright-violations charges from the recording industry. Both agree that this practice is out of bounds.

Where the 19-year-old college student and her father, both of Sunbury, Ohio, part ways is on whether it's OK for her to play music that she downloaded from a site other than iTunes on her iPod. To be able to do this, she says, she sometimes has to download the song to a blank CD and then upload it back onto her computer using the iTunes software. It's a bit convoluted, but it allows her to play songs that aren't available from the iTunes store.

"My dad believes that it is unethical to do this," Hohl writes. "He thinks that, when I bought the iPod, I agreed to use its software. I disagree, because I only go to other Web sites when iTunes refuses to carry a song I want."

Hohl wants to know if she's ethically bound to iTunes or if it's OK to use other services when iTunes doesn't carry what she wants.

When you buy an iPod, it comes with software that you load onto your computer to enable you to upload music from most music CDs and also to move music that you've downloaded to your computer onto your iPod.

Some Web sites other than iTunes already sell songs that are compatible with the iTunes format. Amazon.com, for example, recently announced that it is opening an online music store to compete directly with iTunes. Music downloaded from the new site should be playable on iPods and other mp3 players without any problem.

But Hohl and her father want to know about those occasions when the downloaded music isn't compatible, preventing her from listening to it unless she goes through the rigmarole she describes.

As regular readers of my column know, I'm a diehard when it comes to respecting the copyright of musicians. I've shown little tolerance for people who burn illegal copies of CDs to give to friends or to those who believe it's OK to replace their cassette-tape collections by burning illegal copies of a public library's CDs of the same titles.

But Hohl's question is wholly different. She's going out of her way to legally purchase or download the music she wants. It's no fault of hers that some of what she wants is not available at the iTunes online store.

Perhaps a clever reader could figure out a way for Hohl to avoid some of the steps she's taking to get the music she wants onto her iPod, but it doesn't strike me that she's doing anything wrong. It's not all that different from uploading music from pre-recorded CDs that she happens to already own.

The right thing for Hohl to do is exactly what she's doing. And the right thing for her father to do is to continue to challenge his daughter to make decisions that reflect the honesty of her intentions. In that regard, each of them seems to be succeeding.

c.2007 The New York Times Syndicate