Copy-Protected and iPod-Incompatible CDs Still Selling Nicely

Reuters is reporting via the Washington Post that despite being incompatible with the 30 million iPods in the US, copy-protected CDs by the Foo Fighters and Dave Matthews band are continuing to sell extremely well.  The CDs, put out by Sony BMG, are designed to restrict owners to burning only 3 exact copies of the albums, and then only into Microsoft’s Windows Media format.  The copy-protection also prohibits the music files from being transferred to an iPod, due to licensing clashes with Apple’s Fairplay software and Windows.  While both the albums, and others like it, are available in iPod-compatible digital forms on Apple’s iTunes service, this hasn’t appeased fans who like to own a physical disc from which to rip the songs.

The best part of the Reuters’ article comes at the end where Sony BMG advises disgruntled users to rip the songs from the CD, burn them back to a blank CD, and then rip them again in an iPod-friendly format.  I always like to see big companies encouraging us to work around security and copyright-protection.
 
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