Here is an article on MarketWatch.com about audio copy protections, probably the most useless technology of today. Record companies are planning to use them a lot, but they know they are easy to bypass.
It seems they really think they can get their record sales up again by using copy protections that will make the records only more expensive. The only one that benefits from this are the copyright protection producers.
One group that caught between a rock and hard place is the music retailers, says Pam Horovitz, president of the National Association of Record Merchandisers. Retailers have to walk a fine line because they serve two masters -- distributors and customers -- leaving them vulnerable from both sides. So they're not willing to take part in the labels' battle against file-sharing and piracy. |
"We are becoming less concerned about file-sharing than we are about calling our customers 'pirates,'" Horovitz said. "We're just not going to call our customers 'pirates.'"
Eric Scheirer, analyst for Forrester Research, said the most crucial issue with copy-protected CDs is effectiveness and that is where much of the technology is falling short.
Hackers easily can penetrate current defense mechanisms and quickly find ways around new ones. A simple solution for CDs that won't play on PCs is to hook up a CD player to the computer, he said.
"We've written in our research to record companies that this is not a good idea," Scheirer said. "I don't understand how anyone can look at this judiciously and think that it will work."
Source: Marketwatch.com
