Billboard has a story about the increasing prevalence of copy protected music CDs. Typically these CDs are designed so they won’t play in — and therefore cannot be ripped by — computers. Most come with a second layer containing DRMed Windows Media files of the music.
There’s a very odd claim by Billboard buried in the article, however,
Columbia Records act Switchfoot, whose latest album, “Nothing Is Sound,” is copy-protected — and debuted at No. 3 on The Billboard 200 last week — recently took copy-protection defiance one step further. Band guitarist Tim Foreman posted on a Sony Music-hosted fan site a link to the software program CDEX, which disables the technology. The post has since been removed.
Umm, CDEX is an open-source CD ripping software that is hasn’t been updated in more than two years. The last release of the software is from September 9, 2003.
If Sony’s copy protection can be defeated by CDEX, they might as well not have any copy protection at all.
Source:
Musicians tell how to beat system. Billboard, October 4, 2005.