Music: May 2005 Archives

Today's "new music Tuesday" was a particularly fruitful one. I went to Target on the way to work this morning, and picked up new CDs from Fall Out Boy, Nine Inch Nails, and Acceptance. I listened to the first two discs at work, but paused before I unwrapped the Acceptance disc. On the front spine, it has a funny logo and says "Content Protected". This triggered my "uh-oh" reaction, and I flipped to the back. Apparently, on Windows machines, this CD has crazy content restrictions (you can only get low quality WMA versions of the songs, which can only be transfered to certain portable players). But apparently, on the Macintosh, it behaves like a normal audio CD.

I don't know how to feel about this. A large part of me wants to return this CD to target and wash my hands of the whole thing. I don't want to send the message that by consuming this CD, that copy protection is okay. On the other hand, on the Mac it doesn't appear to be protected at all. And I buy copy-protected DVDs all of the time, and while it bugs me, I'm not out protesting in the streets.

I wrote to Sony/BMG and complained, but what I really want to do is complain to the band. I think that if bands knew that their fans were pissed off about how hard it is to transfer the songs from their legally-purchased CDs to their iPod, then something could be done about it. So, I went the to the official Acceptance website, but I didn't see an e-mail address on there anywhere. Humph!

I still haven't opened this CD, so I still have a chance to return it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

-Andy.