December 22, 2001

So we’re starting to see Copy-protected CDs from one of the major media conglomerates, Vivendi/Universal. The point is to make it impossible to rip MP3s from them (which, even under the absurd Digital Millenium Copyright Act isn’t necessarily illegal, I don’t think), but the net effect is that copy-protected CDs simply will not play in many computer CD-players, or even some plain-old CD players. If you buy one of these, return it as defective.

I’ve asked amazon.com to post a notice on their info page for every copy-protected CD they sell, so I’ll know not to buy it. Perhaps if enough people make the same suggestion, they’ll do it. This should make Universal sweat a little.