Music industry watch

Copyprotected CD considered defective in .fr

A woman in France managed to sue EMI and got the court to state the EMI cannot sell defective CDs:

A Nanterre court has ordered the music label to refund a woman who could not play her new Alain Souchon CD on her car CD player. Alternatively, EMI is to provide a full-working copy. The ruling applies to all people who have bought CDs which they cannot play on some CD players, computers and Walkmans.

But EMI was not forbidden by the court to sell copyright protected CDs per se, merely that it must not sell defective CDs. So it appears like it could be back to the drawing board for the anti-piracy measures it uses.

This is good news, since by definition copyprotected CDs are not redbook compliant and therefore defective in at least some of the players out there. It won't take much longer for EMI and the others to realize that copyprotecting CDs won't be worth it. Software manufacturers figured that out in the late 80s.

Posted by Mayhem at September 5, 2003 03:05 PM