Comments on: Protected CDs quietly slip into stores

Consumers in ordinary record stores are unwittingly buying CDs that include technology designed to discourage the making of digital copies.

So now they tell us WHERE to listen?

In the last 7 CDs I have purcahsed, 4 of them have had this FBI Anti-Piracy tag on them. I don't own a plane old CD player any more. Not even in my car. I have put a CarPC in and only listen to MP3s in the car. My home entertainment system is my computer. The last CD player that I owned that was JUST a CD player was back in 1997.

Where am I suppose to listen to this mucis that I have bought? I have rightfully purchased these CDs with the intent to listen to them, not to use them as coasters.

Sure I can go online and pay for the music, but there are many limitations to this. First, and a BIG concern of mine, is that the recording is limited to 160k in most cases. I rip all of my music at 320. Next is that some of these will not play unless they are loaded into a compatable portable MP3 player. Don't have one of those. Third is that I STILL wouldn't have the hard copy to fall back on if something were to happen to those recordings that I had already paid for.

I think it's complete hog wash that these companies are now effectively dictating where we can and can't listen to the music they so desperately want to sell?

What about those of us who WANT to do the right thing? What about those of us who WANT to support the bands and let them know that we like their music?

It would be nice if these companies would think outside of themselves and their money and think about the people that really keep their companies going: the consumers.

[ackmondual]

AFAIK, u can still listen through PC cd player

The pops only come when you try to burn tracks to PC hardrive. If you're also having problems just playing the tracks from your PC CD player, then I stand corrected

[ackmondual]

If you CAN play it on your PC...

I suppose a desperate measure for the consumer would be to play the song and use a sound recorder to capture it into a cleaner MP3 file.

Ok if you only have some tracks, still not practical for those who like to convert dozens of dozens of CDs into MP3s.

Glad alot of this "CD protection" nonsense has slumped