While we firmly believe that the world would be a far better place if there were a lot fewer copies of this CD floating around, we'd rather credit enlightened and improved tastes than evil record label copy protection schemes.

The monolithic record labels that peddle 95 percent of our pop culture obviously have no problem marking a $0.35 piece of aluminum-coated plastic up to $20. It should come as no surprise, then, that their attitude towards the customer in the area of copy-prevention would also be condescending. This attitude is particularly offensive in light of the fact that current copyright law, as embodied in the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, allows consumers to make copies of pre-recorded material for non-commercial use. In fact, it even requires manufacturers of digital recording devices and media to pay royalties to the record industry to offset the lost revenue caused by such copies. Let's put things into perspective: Here I am, Average-Joe-or-Jane-Teenie-Bopper. I buy the soundtrack to The Fast and the Furious because it's just, like, so totally rad. Let's rewind here just in case you haven't followed the scenario so far... I buy (i.e. fork out half-a-day's pay -- hey, I work at Blockbuster -- in exchange for less than a dollar worth of plastic and metal) the soundtrack for The Fast and the Furious. I own it. It's mine. I can listen to it, use it for a coaster or shoot skeet with it. If I like, I can bequeath it to my dog Fido after I die. Suffice it to say that I am the legal proprietor of this CD. Clear enough? Now I decide that I'd like to make a cassette copy of it so I can play it on my car stereo, and to rip some MP3s so that I can load them into my iPod for my trip to visit Grandma next month. These are both activities that I am legally allowed to undertake. I succeed at creating my cassette copy (though making a digital copy, with one of those dual-deck CD burners for instance, wouldn't be as straightforward), but I am unable to generate any MP3s because this disk has been "copy-protected" (it really has; The Fast and the Furious was part of a pilot program to test copy-prevention techniques). The bigwigs at Universal say that they are protecting themselves by keeping me from sharing my MP3s on Morpheus (probably a moot point now -- Ed.) or Aimster or whatever. This is true -- if I can't make a copy, I can't very well share it, can I? But at the same time, they are really pissing me off! I own the infernal disc, and I darn-well want to listen to it on my iPod! I'm not doing anything illegal here, and to find fat corporate noses so firmly ensconced in my anus is enough to make me, a normally rather calm teen, lay down my slacker ways and throw a trash can through the window of the nearest McDonalds!

The above scenario amply embodies my feelings toward copy-prevention schemes. I'm not saying that it isn't legitimate for owners of copyrighted material to take steps to ensure that their rights are protected. Whichever side of the Napster debate you fall on, you have to admit that having one's copyrighted material bandied about the virtual world without so much as a "by your leave" can be irksome to any copyright-holder. But let's keep in mind that while the concept of copy-prevented media would certainly put a damper on such activities, the adverse impact on perfectly legal activities such as those described in my little scenario makes the ideas floated by the copy-Nazis seem excessive. What particularly steams me is that while the markup on mainstream CDs seems to get more and more extravagant, the use you can actually get from your duly purchased merchandise lessens steadily. I'm not naive; contrary to my sarcasm above, I realize that what a consumer is buying when he purchases a CD is more than just a piece of plastic-coated aluminum. He is paying off the artist, the recording studio and its staff, the record company personnel, advertising, PR, lawyers, distributers, retailers, etc. That's a lot of people, after all -- all of whom have keen interests in getting you to buy CDs. Unfortunately they have no interest whatsoever in your actually being able to do anything with that CD once you've bought it.

There's something else that rubs me the wrong way. It concerns the actual physical mechanisms proposed to copy-prevent CDs. There are various schemes to do it, but in essence they basically rely on vandalizing the digital audio data on the disc. By messing things up just enough to foul up computer drives and copy devices, but not enough to impact more robust playback devices (like consumer CD players), copy-Nazis hope that the general public won't notice the inevitable pops, hisses and clicks that occur when digital audio data is arbitrarily manipulated. To an audiophile (and even, I'd assert, a non-audiophile), this is unacceptable. If you're dead-set on sticking your nose in my business after I've legally purchased your product, please do so without taking a butcher knife to the audio signal!

I'll leave you to decide whether the big music Nazis have a right to do what they are proposing (you can probably tell which side of the argument I'm on!). What I think we can all agree on is that it's pretty frickin' annoying! I'll close my column with metaphor: Imagine going to a fast food restaurant with a self-serve beverage station that offers free refills. Now imagine that uniformed thugs are posted at the station, as well as at the exits of the restaurant. They beat you senseless if you try to refill your drink with something different than what you ordered ("Hey you had Coke, not Root Beer!") or if you try to leave the building with anything left in your cup ("Beverages must be consumed on the premises!"). Yes, perhaps the restaurant would only be protecting its rights, but it would also be displaying more than a small amount of contempt for its clientele. I would hope that such a situation would trigger public outrage -- not necessarily (though perhaps) because of the policy itself, but because of the way the policy is being enforced, without even the pretense of accommodating the consumer. I sincerely hope that similar public outrage will attend the ill advised copy-prevention ideas coming out of big music these days.

-- Noah Wane