Why do we “rip” MP3s?
Where did the term come from?
First program?
Ripping the songs off?
Sound the computer makes when it “rips”? Hahahaha
lemme lisen muh hedfones
Huhhhhhhh…
was that an answer I don’t understand or just social commentary (that I also don’t understand)?
I think what E. was trying to say was, “You answered your own question.” #2.
[E., why aren’t you in school? 
]
Duck Duck Goose:
That may have been what Evnglion meant, but it’s hardly the correct answer. First, the question is incorrectly posed. Forgive me for nitpicking, but we don’t “rip” to mp3. We “rip” to wav, then “encode” to mp3. It’s called “ripping”, because it sounds a lot sexier than “extracting”. A ripper copies the raw digital audio from an audio CD and formats that into a wav format. The wav format is the defacto standard for raw audio on computers. Since wav files tend to be quite large, most people perfer to convert these to some compressed format, mp3 being the most popular.
Now I’m not sure what you meant by “rip off” nor do I know how Evnglion interpreted that phrase, but when I see the words “rip” and “off” used together, I interpret this the same way as “steal”, however technically, “ripping” is not stealing in most cases, since it requires a legal copy of the CD to work from.
Suggestion: If you feel this question has not been answered to your satifaction, ask a moderator to change the subject line to something more descriptive, such as “Why do we ‘rip’ MP3s?”
More people who are knowledgable of the subject will then notice the thread.