The two most prominent suppliers of copy protection for music compact disks, are set to come back to the market with rethought offerings whereby CD copying is allowed, but limited to a set number. This strategy, dictated by the record labels as “where they are trying to get,” will emerge in new offerings from market leader Macrovision and SunnComm, during the course of 2004.
So far, CD copy protection has been crude. It is either on, or it is off. You can either copy as many times as you like, or not copy at all, and the record companies have been terrified of implementing the “copy protection on” mode in sensitive markets. For sensitive markets read the US, primarily, and some parts of Europe.
In Europe there have been some prominent legal cases in which customers have returned CD disks as “faulty” if they cannot play in the various different CD players, including car stereos, or if personal copies cannot be made.
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