More reason not to buy CDs.
I can’t believe the extent the music companies are going to. iTunes has opened up a huge market for them and increased profits dramatically. People like me, who rarely spent money on music even before it could be downloaded, are spending more money on music because of the benefits of downloading music and portable music players.
Sony’s little stunt with copy-protection makes it difficult for someone with an iPod to get the music they purchased on to it. While it is a step in the right direction that they are for now removing the software, CDs already purchased cannot be listened to on someone’s computer (even directly from the CD) without their spyware installed.
Some people are going to go through the effort to crack whatever copyright protection they place on it. And when the music companies punish the legitimate consumers to prevent the few truly bad ones, no one wins.
If I ever buy another CD, I’ll make sure I know whether it is spyware’d up and made unusable for my most used methods of playback (on my computer and my iPod).
it’s kinda old news now, but Tim Foreman, the bassist of Switchfoot taught fans how to disable the copy protection measures in their own CDs, presumably upsetting Sony and perhaps unwittingly testing the anti-circumvention rules of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/21/christian_rockers_drm_tips/
David
November 11th, 2005