CD Copy Protection, and the music industry’s fear of MP3: Matt’s pet rant #377

Sony have a new idea for CD copy protection – story here (and a slashdot thread here).

So the CD has copy-protected mp3-alikes included. And they’ll play using Sony software or Sony hardware… Handy for us iPod users then… (Oh, Sony produce the world’s worst software, by the way – ick doesn’t come close). The truth of the matter is CD copy protection is not going to happen, is it? My CD player still needs to be able to read the thing (otherwise it’s not a CD – Phillips, attack…) and if my CD player can read it, then so can my CD-ROM drive in my PC, and so iTunes can rip – sorry… import – it.

I’ll leave the comment from BMG’s spokesman for the moment (trust? you talk about trust? grrr), and make my final point of this blog about the insinuation that Apple’s iTunes software ties people to the iPod – err, it imports CDs to good old, standard, MP3 (if you tell it to). There’s nothing stopping you chucking those MP3s at any other well behaved MP3 player… You are missing the point.