No more music CDs without copy protection

Running roughshod over innocents.

As if we needed another incentive to move to vinyl/sacd... anyway, here's what specialists have to say:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993020
Just another example of greedy/clueless executives helping "sink their own ship".

With all due respect to those who are using this bad news to trumpet the virtues of vinyl, please bear in mind that incompatibility issues has been hoisted on record playing audiophiles quite a few times in the past. Enough is enough! When will we ever learn? Or is it that the greedy corporations have learned that we are just sheep to be led to slaughter and bled dry?

In all seriousness, the record business really does have a problem on its hands which is different in absolute terms from previous episodes. It actually doesn't seem as if they forsaw, when they made the move to digital all those years ago, that one day copies with zero degradation could be dubbed at home - and certainly not that free (if imperfect) copies could be mass-distributed by something called the internet without a physical disk changing hands. Not that I give a hot damn about the majority of the recording industry, but I do worry for the future viability of making a living as a recording artist (and about those good but smaller labels who aren't busy fouling the market with their crap product and reactionary thickheadedness). Although the industry is surely going about it the wrong way, digital copyright protection is a legitimate and very thorny issue to solve, if that even proves possible at all. I would love to see the day when artists can bypass labels entirely if they so choose, making money by distributing their own content over the Web in a high resolution format directly to consumers, but it's hard to see right now how they could protect their franchise against file-sharing schemes. Saying musicians will have to make their living off of performing is too limiting and discriminitory; a recording artist should be able, if they want, to be like the author of a book, attempting to make money from the sales of their original works in accordance with the works' popularity, without having to make a second career out of touring just to repay label advances and make up for unauthorized copying and distributing of their intellectual property, if they don't desire to. Ironically, it's the very digital technology that gives them the means of cheaply recording and distributing their music without the support of a label, that also makes them vulnerable to being ripped-off by their potential customers.

Zaikesman, zero degradation is relative. Every era thought it self to be cutting edge. Yet, people still complain about the "perfect sound forever" hype. Zero degradation of what?. I personally have no interest in making copies. I am concerned that the self serving corporations may be hindering the advance of future technologies such as digital amps, cross-overs,room correction and art itself. The idea that these measures may compromise compatibility with existing and future play back machines is especially egregious. The implication that all recording machines and software are only in existance to illegaly copy the only valuable art worth recording (their exclusive property) is arrogant. Whats next a flag for copy machines to protect publishers? Of course not, it's to bothersome to copy and costs little enough to buy the publishers product. Who is being best served by these restrictions? The current standard marketing of artists restricts choice and freedom of expression. This encourages a disproportionate allocation of money to select artists. How many geniuses are we exempt from because of corporate marketing formulas. It doesn't matter how good you are if you don't look right or don't appeal to the youth market. Who's benefiting from this, a select few or the majority? I'm not in favor of burning anything and especially any art that can't be reproduced. I suspect that the average Audiogoner owns at least 1000 CD's. If the powers that be realized how much money is behind each one of our voices, a petition, demostration and/or boycott by Audiogoners might make a difference that benefits all music lovers not just audiophiles.