Warning: Virgin Classics is apparently encrypting their cds so that they can't be copied as MP3s. Since I do 99% of my listening on MP3 players, this makes my cd of Rolando Villazon singing Italian Opera arias useless to me.

There was no warning on the outside of the package that buyers would not be free to listen to this cd on their MP3 player.

I regard that as cheating the customer, since it is widely known that many customers expect to be able to do exactly that, and copyright law allows it.

Therefore I will never again buy a cd from Virgin Records. Cheat me once, shame on you. Cheat me twice, shame on me.

From [url/http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2005-02-27.shtml]Uncle Orson Reviews Everything[/url]

(Thanks to autodidact for pointing us to this!)

Well Orson apparently has not been informed about the immense effect that piracy has had on the demand for opera music.

Just yesterday, there was a group of kids at the park trying to turn other kids on to Madame Butterfly, Carmen and the Marriage of Figaro.

It's disgraceful.

/end sarcasm

So now one by one consumers are finding that the evils of DRM touch their daily lives. Isn't something just in the paper anymore. So how long does this go on before the majority of consumers go into open revolt and refuse to buy such? Or will they just meekly accept this new way of locking up the media so that no fair use at all is available?

oh.. but thanks to a 3 year smear campaign, they think it's "their right to control their property"..

sadly i think it will take a severe drop in sales this year for sony-bmg to finally put an end to lockdown cd's.

I dont want to pay to simply try.. but i'd love to see exactly how strongly this cd he speaks of is "protected".

Bet you a million bucks i can fiddle a way round it within 10-30 minutes (depending on internet speed).

oh well, guess it's to the p2p networks with him.

I wouldn't know if this type of encryption is rampant or not, since I'm not buying anything. One day, when I do start buying again I might be surprised, but if I can't do what I want with a CD, I'll return it as defective!

Calling it encryption is misleading. Encryption would be a challenge to break - those CDs are just plain audio CDs with slightly invalid formatting information that should prevent PCs (Or high-end CD players, DVD players, some car CD players...) from reading them.

I don't know part of me thinks whatever the media pushes on us we will take. I mean just look at the latest movies. Ok there have been a few, but some I honestly feel like ... why did I rent this?! Most people to be honest don't know what DRM is don't know what an mp3 player is don't know how to rip a CD. However those of us who do know what they are, and what a p2p network is, we see a potential that perhaps one day we could download a cup of water off the net, or a pizza for free, thus ending world hunger. Of course every company would be lost then because we could replicate... dang I'm a stuck record.