I bought a handful of CDs from play.com (who were the cheapest around, and delivered quickly). One of the CDs was the Deluxe Edition of Royksopp's new album, "The Understanding". I really enjoyed "Melody AM", so thought I'd splash out a bit on this.
It arrived this morning, and says on the back of it "This disc contains Copy Control technology", and also says "On some equipment, for example car CD players playback problems may be encountered" (EMI's FAQ).
If you're a music fan, don't buy this sort of "CD". Whilst it may work now, what's to say your shiny new CD player (or car!) will play it properly? What if you want to listen to it on your iPod? What if you want to listen to it on your Linux PC? I'll bet they won't work on the new intel based Macs. What if some new way to listen to YOUR music is invented and you can't use it?
This is a blatent infringement of our rights as consumers. Remember, I bought this music, I didn't rent it, I didn't buy a "home CD player only" version. I have never illegally shared or downloaded music. Why should I be penalised? Remember, these actually aren't CDs - they look the same, but they're EMI's own music disk format. They're passing off substitute goods as the real thing.
Wordsmith letters are being dispatched to Wall of Sound, Labels (France), Virgin Records and EMI Music. More at EMICopyControlledCDs.
Comments
I got an email from Matt saying he'd had similar problems. He also managed to get an ordinary CD at a Virgin Megastore. That lead me to check, and HMV on Oxford Street, London also have non-protected CDs. The in-store staff weren't 100% sure if the disks really were unprotected, but of course said I could bring it back if it was a problem.
Are EMI (et al.) supplying protected disks to mail-order companies and regular ones to shops?
I really enjoyed Melody AM, but I'm not buying The Understanding because it has Copy Corruption on it.On my system, the deliberate errors (they pepper the data on the disk with these to prevent you ripping the disk) manifest as ticks or clicks, which ruin my enjoyment of the music.It's very sad. (:frown:)
Alden Bates
I finally found a copy in a local store marked "US Import" which didn't have any Copy Control rubbish listed on the label.Could be that the US version doesn't have that crap on it (I'm in New Zealand).