Want to listen to it on your computer? No problem. Port it to your personal music player? Go right ahead. Burn it to disc and play it on a standard CD player? Your wish is now a command.

You can do just about anything with music purchased online that you can do with a store-bought CD, including making a personal backup copy or ripping tracks to your hard drive.

But movies aren’t as user-friendly. Thanks to encryption technology, you can’t copy a DVD like you can a music CD. While there are several legitimate movie download services on the Web, each one comes with a set of restrictions. Some services only allow you to watch the movies on the computer used for downloading, while others might allow you to burn a backup disc that is not compatible with DVD players.

Of course, the best way to sell movies online would be to sell downloads that can be burned to blank DVDs and played on common DVD players. But Hollywood has been reluctant to make it that simple, preferring instead to take this entire downloading thing one step at a time.

The bottom line is: Hollywood doesn’t want to find itself in a situation similar to what the recording industry faced six years ago when it was trying to shut down the original Napster, but didn’t have a viable, legitimate alternative to offer those music fans hooked on filesharing’s instant gratification.

However, recent developments might change the way Hollywood sells its wares online.

First off, Sonic Solutions and Movielink announced a technological agreement that would allow consumers to download movies, burn the films onto DVDs and then watch the movies on standard DVD players. Sonic is the company responsible for the Roxio brand of disc-burning software, like Easy Media Creator and Digital Media Studio, while Movielink is a movie download service.

The gist of the deal is that Movielink has licensed Sonic’s DVD burning technology with the idea that Movielink customers will be able to purchase, download and then burn the movies to DVDs. Sounds sweet, eh?

But there’s a catch. The announcement of the Sonic/Movielink alliance states that the technology will come into play when “authorized for use by content providers.” But since Movielink is a joint venture of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Bros., and already distributes films by Walt Disney Pictures and 20th Century Fox well as independent studios, it’s almost a sure bet that Movielink is only moments away from securing that authorization.

It should also be noted that Movielink and Sonic are talking about downloading and then burning entire DVDs. Meaning that all the extra content you expect from a store-purchased DVD will be included in the download, such as the director’s commentary, alternate scenes, outtakes and everything else found on DVDs – including copy protection.

Just because you can download, burn and then play the resulting disc on your DVD player doesn’t mean the disc isn’t copy-protected. We’ll spare you the geek-speak, but part of Sonic’s technology includes a feature that allows for a variety of copy-protection methods to be applied to the DVDs as they are burned.

“We are anticipating an industry resolution to establish rules for converting secure Internet-delivered Movielink downloads into a secure format compatible with DVD players in the market today,” Movielink CEO Jim Ramo said. “This gives consumers a more flexible product while providing copyright holders with adequate protection of their content. Our relationship with Sonic is a critical advancement and will enhance the value of our service, along with the capabilities already available, by allowing customers to burn and play back movies on standard DVD players.”

But while Sonic and Movielink trumpeted how Movielink customers will someday be able to download and then burn movies to disc, CinemaNow did them one better – by offering such a service today.

Helping CinemaNow with the technological know-how is ACE GmbH, creators of fluxDVD. Like Sonic’s technology, fluxDVD is designed for secure online DVD distribution. Also, like the Sonic/Movielink collaboration, customers will receive all DVD content, not just the flick and a credit card charge.

Although CinemaNow is referring to it as a “beta service,” meaning that it’s still working out the bugs, customers of the movie download site can download and burn selected DVD content that has been approved for downloading and burning by the content owners.

And that might be the catch. You see, not all of CinemaNow’s movie inventory has been OK’d for downloading and burning. At least not yet. Sure, there are some big-name titles, such as “Scent Of A Woman,” “Backdraft” and “Charlie’s Angeles: Full Throttle,” but most of the films available for downloading and burning are not exactly big-screen extravaganzas.

You may not find “The Godfather” or any of its sequels, but you can download and burn the big-budget “Godzilla” flick from eight years back along with “The Godson” starring Kevin McDonald, Rodney Dangerfield and Dom DeLuise.

On the other hand, CinemaNow’s download-and-burn inventory also includes several music-oriented DVDs like “Diana Krall: Live In Paris” and “The Pretenders: Loose In L.A.” So there’s something for music as well as movie fans.

But there are some potential problems with CinemaNow’s current download-and-burn service and Movielink’s upcoming service. For instance, even with broadband it takes more than a few minutes to download an entire DVD’s worth of data. CinemaNow’s F.A.Q. states that a download can take up to two hours. What’s more, the same download might take up to two to five hours to burn onto a disc. Not quite as convenient as, say, purchasing a movie from Comcast’s OnDemand service and then watching it seconds after you click on “Buy.”

But it’s a start. For the past few years, the vibe coming out of Hollywood was that the movie industry didn’t want to find itself “Napsterized,” seeing its intellectual property hijacked by third-party file-sharing services while it struggled to provide movie fans with a legitimate alternative. By giving fans a chance to download, burn and keep the DVDs they purchase online, the movie industry may have stayed one step ahead of the P2Ps. At least for today.