An Inauspicious Beginning

Welcome to 2006! This is going to be the year when PC and Mac users bury the hatchet; when Jennifer Anniston finally rebounds with somebody great; when TomKat's little squab finally enters the world (to Kat's complete silence, we all hope) and when Michael Mann's new movie finally comes out. Some remnants of 2005 — you remember, that year of graft, death, greed, incompetance and broken dreams — are still holding out, however: Our no. 7 top link today reports that the new Coldplay CD comes with some massive and devastating DRM protection, with a photo of the sheet explaning it that comes with every CD. Our favorite sentence from this slip is this: "In order for you to enjoy high quality music, we have added this special technology." It then unhelpfully adds that the CD can't be played "in some players, in some DVD players, in some portable players, etc." Supposedly, of course, it can't be copied to a computer hard drive, and, pointedly, it says the CDs don't work at all with Macs. What do you think bloggers' reactions to this would be, now that it's 2006? Well, surprisingly similar: " It's amazing how the labels always seem to come up with new ways of screwing artists: if they're not cheating them out of royalties, they're systematically alienating their fan-base," writes Cory Doctorow in the BoingBoing post. A more legalistic response, which we find completely sound, available here: "If I were to buy a copy of the CD at my local Borders or Barnes & Noble or WalMart, take it home, open it, discover the “rules” and realize that the CD won’t play on some or all of my playback devices, don’t I have a good contract claim against the store under Section 2-314 of the UCC (implied warranty of merchtability) and maybe even 2-315 (implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose)?" The answer is yes. When somebody finally serves a record company with this lawsuit, it'll be a great day for music listeners.

Posted by Philip Ewing at January 2, 2006 11:19 AM

Category: The Soundscape