Fair Use

Virgin Records in India is distributing some regular CD's with copy protection on them. Being someone who works on a product that suffers from billions of dollars of loss due to piracy every year, I should be sympathetic to this, but frankly I think it's underhanded.

When I buy a CD, I'm paying for an unprotected digital master of that CD, and I may choose to copy that CD on to my computer so that I can listen to it using my media center, or my ipod, etc.

If the owner of the copyrighted content decides that they want to rights-manage it, then that's certainly their perogative, but then they shouldn't distribute it in a medium that's generally not expected to be rights-managed by customers. The worst offense here is the last line on the insert: "Except for manufacturing problems, we do not accept product exchange, return, or refund." So now that you've sold me something different from what it was billed to be, I can't even return it?

Behavior like this is indie-music's best ticket to success, and big labels best way to lose customers...

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 04, 2006
  I agree! I would not by a CD with copy protection for the same reasons. I think that all CDs should have a notice on the outside, so that I can avoid purchasing them.
• Anonymous
  January 04, 2006
  For newer CDs I MUST copy them in order to play them in my car CD-player. If I wouldn't, those awful "copy protections" make the music stop every few seconds.
  
  No I ordered an iPod for my car. They FORCED me to copy music in order to listen to. I hate them :-(