L ife tends to offer small moments of triumph and tragedy in the strangest places, and today we have a small moment of triumph courtesy of a Windows 2000 PC (of all things) and a smart radio station operator. The Age, an Australian newspaper, is reporting that some copy protected music discs sent out by record label EMI to a radio station are keeping that station from playing the music. From the short article in The Age:
The station in question has no standalone CD players, just desktop PCs (all running Windows 2000) and a couple of old Denon CD Cart players.
"The CD tries to install some files to allow the PC to play the CD but my boss wonit authorise the installation of these files because he has no technical info on the software," wrote the gentleman who let us know about this. "And if we canit transfer the CD tracks to our digital playout system the CD ainit going to get any airplay at all!"
This wonit help the career of Dave Bridie one bit - one of the CDs which landed at this station was Hotel Radio.
You can read the full article at The Ageis Web site.
Copy protected CDs are not actually CDs at all, but are music discs that have been altered to keep users from making copies, and in some cases from even playing them on Macs and/or PCs. In some cases, the copy protected discs rely on particular Windows software to control access on a PC. Such appears to be the case with this disc(s). Record labels are releasing copy protected discs in an effort to limit perceived piracy through absolute control over when and where music can be played.