Copyright protection efforts making some CDs a dud in players (March 7, 2002)

BY HEATHER NEWMAN

FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

The next time you go to buy a compact disc, better flip it over and read the fine print. There's a small but growing chance that it may not work in your CD player, thanks to new copyright protection efforts on the part of record labels.

In their continuing efforts to win the "cut off your nose to spite your face" award, labels have begun quietly releasing copy-protected compact discs that, critics say, lack the quality of traditional CDs and can fail to play in all CD decks over time. Most don't play, even when new, in computers' CD and DVD drives and some standard decks.

While most copyright-protected discs have so far been sold abroad, a small but growing number are hitting shelves locally. Universal Music Group's "More Music From The Fast and the Furious" CD carries a label warning that there might be playback problems due to the copyright protection. Universal has said that it plans to copyright protect all its discs by the end of 2002.

Labels are pursuing copyright protection to try to stop the millions of bootleg copies of songs that are traded by folks online and in illegally created CDs.

The copyright protection attempts to prevent illegal copies by introducing slight errors that normal CD players can compensate for, but which trip up more sensitive computer CD drives. Those errors are magnified when discs are copied to a computer hard drive, ruining the sound quality.

The new protection has a number of groups up in arms -- for example, folks who buy music legitimately and want to load it onto custom-mixed CDs and portable digital music players. The U.S. Supreme Court specifically upheld consumers' rights to copy music onto different media for their own personal use in a case several years ago, when record labels sued the makers of MP3 players.

Those manufacturers -- along with the companies that make the drives which write compact discs -- are also against the new copy protection measures, which creates some interesting situations.

Sony Music, which supports and uses the copy protection, is on the opposite side of the fence on this issue from Sony Electronics, which makes portable music players.

And Sony Electronics and the other creator of the CD format, Philips Electronics, have said the changes reduce the quality of CDs to the point where they should no longer carry the Compact Disc logo, a trademark that Philips controls.

In the meantime, labels are trying to anticipate the problems by putting stickers on copyrighted CDs with warnings about playback trouble and issues with computer CD drives.

The music recording industry is building a track record of inconveniencing and insulting its best customers with overly broad attempts to prevent piracy.

First, it was music-swapping services like Napster. Labels and industry associations have repeatedly turned down chances to work with them to set up legitimate music-swapping systems that would repay artists for their work.

Then it was Internet radio, which had the misfortune not to be included in previous laws about royalties that covered traditional radio stations. The labels sued them, and now they must pay more than most make each month to record labels if they want to keep broadcasting.

Now this.

I support protecting copyrights. I make a living writing copyrighted material. But labels shouldn't penalize all their legitimate customers to attack the fraction who are breaking the rules.

Perhaps the industry should be directing some of that energy toward creating products that would appeal to digitally-savvy consumers: less-expensive albums that could be created on the fly with professionally produced album notes, lyrics and packaging, for example.

In the meantime, watch what you buy, and don't be shy about returning discs that don't play in the CD players you own.