All across the world, people are dropping newly purchased $17 CDs into their CD-ROM drives and freaking out. In some cases, the CD won't play at all in their computers. In other instances, the CD cannot be ripped into digital files for use on MP3 players. And sometimes, the CD will play only with Windows Media Player.

For people who have grown accustomed to using their PC to play CDs, this is tantamount to fraud. In some countries, these so-called protected CDs have labels on them so that computer users know which ones to avoid. However, this is not the case in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom. The music industry's head-on collision with technology has never been a thing of beauty, but I think that selling people CDs that are effectively broken has to be a new low.

Staind stained
I wrote about these protected CDs when they first came out. At that point, however, they were hypothetical, a kind of legend. You heard rumors about protected CDs, but you didn't run into them. This is no longer true.

Recently, Molly Wood, an associate editor at CNET, found this out firsthand. She dropped her new Staind CD into her computer's CD-ROM drive, and a window popped up listing two options: "Listen to the CD" and "Install Winamp with custom skin." She discovered that if she selected "Listen to the CD," it played only on Windows Media Player. But here's my favorite part: if you choose to install Winamp with the special Staind skin, it installs but won't play the disc. That's right--the CD manufacturers included a Winamp skin, but the software can't play the CD even with the skin installed! This technology is not just frustrating--it's dumb.

Why put protection on CDs? Record labels are attempting to break the cycle of people ripping MP3s and uploading them to share with others. This particular attempt fails spectacularly in that regard (the name of Staind's CD is, ironically, Break the Cycle). You can easily use Windows Media Player to rip songs on this CD to unprotected WMA files that you can trade on file-sharing networks. All you have to do is go to Tools > Options > CD Audio and uncheck the box that says "Enable personal rights management." Then you simply hit the Record button. No sweat. The only cycle that this protection breaks is the cycle of people being able to listen to a CD they purchased via the mechanism of their choice.

Another piece of irony is that there's a sticker on Wood's Staind CD that reads "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content." This sticker exists so that parents know not to buy the disc for their kids, and kids know that this is the CD to buy to upset their parents. But where is the label that says "Plays only in Windows Media Player"? Why aren't we allowed to know about that? Simple: the record companies realize that nobody wants to buy a CD that prevents them from using the disc however they want. Many protected CDs won't even play on normal CD players, thanks to all the "protection" they're being "protected" by.

Power to the people
So without labels, how on earth are you going to find out what CDs to boycott (assuming that you like to listen to your CDs without being forced to use whatever program, skin, stereo, CD-ROM drive, operating system, or media player The Man wants you to use)? Thanks to a site called Fat Chuck's, irate consumers are compiling their specific knowledge of protected CDs (Chuck calls them corrupted) into a database. You can search and browse the database as well as send in reports of the corrupted discs you buy so that others won't make the same mistake. Even better, Fat Chuck--whoever he is--tries to verify the comments that people make, so you're not just getting feedback from people who don't like the CDs they buy for other reasons.

Each corrupted CD has its own page so that different people can report each problem. This is helpful for dealing with the multiple levels of protection that the labels are experimenting with. I found Staind's Break the Cycle filed under a section of the database called "Corrupt CDs or crap production?" The page describes a variety of experiences that people have had with the CD. Some think it's an enhanced CD rather than a protected CD. Others say that the disc won't play at all on their PC.

No fair!
I'm sure that, even as I write this, the labels are trying to find a way to stop Fat Chuck with a lawsuit. But if they try, they might run into a little thing called fair use. It's an affirmative defense for copyright infringement, meaning that when someone accuses you of illegally copying a piece of copyrighted material, you can use the fact that you are making a copy only for yourself as your legal defense. Such a limited, not-for-profit personal copy is permitted under fair-use laws, but protected CDs infringe on that right. If only we consumers had as many lobbying dollars as the recording industry, we might actually see our right to fair use survive the digital age. But I fear that because of the unjust DMCA and this new anticonsumer technology, record companies are going to be able to break the cycle of fair use.