About ‘iPod-incompatible’ copy-protected CDs

Posted by Pierre Igot in: iTunes, Music, Technology
August 6th, 2005 • 11:20 am

This article dated August 4, 2005 on Reuters is a story about the recent release of copy-protected CDs by Foo Fighters and Dave Matthews Band in North America and the backlash caused by the fact that they are incompatible with the ever-popular iPod music player.

I do not have either CD personally so I cannot verify what is said in the article myself. But the Amazon.com pages for the products have dozens of complaints about the iPod incompatibility.

As usual, there is a fair amount of gobbledygook coming from both the record companies and the maker of the iPod, i.e. Apple. The record executives say that they are “continuing talks” with Apple and Apple say that they “have not announced any plans to license Fairplay technology.” Very helpful stuff.

What I find rather shocking, however, is what is said in the last paragraph of the article:

Sony BMG, a joint venture between Japan’s Sony Corp. and Germany’s Bertelsmann, said users can get the music onto iPods by transferring files to a PC, burning them to a CD, ripping those and transferring them into iTunes.

So let’s get this straight… The record companies use copy protection to prevent users from making illegal copies of their CDs, and then they openly advocate ways to circumvent the copy protection!

I hope that I am not the only to see the absurdity in all this.

It is a well-known fact that CD copy protection is very easy to circumvent. As I said, I don’t own the two CDs mentioned in this particular article, but I have several other supposedly “copy protected” CDs, and I have never had any trouble ripping the songs with iTunes and transferring them to my iPod. One of the first thing I do after I install Mac OS X is that I go to the “CDs & DVDs” preference pane in System Preferences and I change the setting for “When you insert a music CD” from the default “Open iTunes” to “Ignore.”

This effectively prevents Mac OS X from automatically launching any software on the CD that the record companies might be using to try and prevent users from making copies. The CD then mounts simply as an audio CD on the desktop and shows up automatically in iTunes anyway, and after that it’s just a matter of selecting the track and dragging them to the main iTunes library.

I don’t know about Windows, but I suspect it similarly easy to block the copy protection.

The fact that the copy protection is so easy to circumvent, even without using the work-around described by the Sony BMG representative in the last paragraph of the article, is probably part of the reason why the backlash has been relatively small and has had no impact on the sales of the CDs in question.

But it also means that whatever model record companies are trying to impose for copy protection is severely broken. It makes you wonder why they even bother.

You can hardly blame Apple for not bothering to license Fairplay technology to record companies so that they can incorporate them into their CDs. (On the other hand, I really do wish that Apple would license the technology to third parties that want to sell iPod-friendly protected digital music tracks online without having to go through Apple’s own iTunes Music Store.)

The bottom-line here is that all that copy protection on audio CDs does is further exacerbate the tension between music buyers and the record companies and the lack of mutual respect. Music buyers have no respect for record companies that send out contradictory messages about the validity of music copying, and record companies treat music buyers as if they were all thieves.

And the artists in all that? As usual, they don’t have much say. I don’t suppose Foo Fighters or Dave Matthews Band care much about a few lost sales because of apparent iPod incompatibility, and I suspect that they have their own iPods and know very well that the copy protection is easy to circumvent. So why do they even let their record companies do it? Ultimately, you’d have to ask them. It’s probably something that their lawyers negotiated with their labels.

However, by letting such absurd developments happen, they do play a not-so-laudable role in this ever-increasing alienation of music buyers and music lovers. Artists who will sell millions of CDs regardless of whether they come with CD protection or not could certainly afford to have some principles and try to defend the integrity of the artist/listener relationship, which record companies and technology providers keep messing with it in the name of “intellectual property”and “copyright”—when their actual motivation is nothing other than maximum profit from minimum investment.


One Response to “About ‘iPod-incompatible’ copy-protected CDs”

  1. MHC-in-the-box » Copy-protected CDs iPod-incompatible says:

    […] Ohhh! So now the iPod is seen as a hindrance to music sales? It seems the music industry has been starting to make CDs that have some type of copy protection that make them iPod-incompatible. Well one thing hits me at first: aren’t they going to be handing over their business on a silver tray to the Apple iTunes Music Store? If they allow Apple to sell their artists, of course… I came across this excellent opinion by Pierre Igot of Betalogue, About ‘iPod-incompatible’ copy-protected CDs. He cites Foo Fighters and Dave Matthews Band whose latest albums use this type of copy protection for the North American market. And the move is an anti-Apple move of sorts: As usual, there is a fair amount of gobbledygook coming from both the record companies and the maker of the iPod, i.e. Apple. The record executives say that they are “continuing talks” with Apple and Apple say that they “have not announced any plans to license Fairplay technology.” Very helpful stuff. […]

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