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Another Class Action Over Crippled Music Disks
pulaski writes "Here's a link to an interesting Baltimore Sun story. It's about the case of two Californians trying to take some major record companies to task for selling copy protected CDs. It's got the classic Cary Sherman whine but the plaintiffs apparently have some legal muscle." A similar suit was settled with the defendants agreeing to make changes in their practices.
From the article (the "Cary Sherman whine" referred to in the posting):
... Cary, mi amigo: The copy protections on video tapes and computer games don't cause your VCR or computer to become unusable. If they did, those industries would have exactly the same problem you're currently having. Putting a warning label saying "Be careful, this apparently innocent disc may eat your computer" isn't sufficient: it would be better to, oh, I don't know, maybe use a method that works without breaking things?
"Music creators have the right to protect their property from theft, just like owners of any other property," Sherman said. "Motion picture studios, and software and video game publishers have protected their works for years, and no one has even thought to claim that doing so was inappropriate, let alone unlawful." [said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Assn. of America]
Umm
It's a small point but I'd like to see people start using a phrase like copy crippled instead of copy protected as protected has a positive connotation.