I do not buy copy-protected cd-like plastic discs, and I actively encourage everyone I know not to do that either. When I buy cds it is of course because I want to listen to its contents. I usually listen to my music using a music player on my computer or as music files on my smartphone, the problem with the copy-protected cd-like plastic discs is that the record companies actively are trying to stop me from listening to the music where I want to listen to it, which forces me to instead download an unlicensed private copy over the Internet. This has happened to me, I wanted to buy a record this summer, but the record wasn’t available on cd, only on copy-protection, so I downloaded it instead.

Okay, so it actually is rather simple to work around most of the copy-protection schemes, but this is a matter of principle. If the record companies actively do not want me to listen to their product, I will not buy it, in the same manner that I will not buy from an on-line shop that actively trying to stop me from using my favourite web browser, or keep my money in such a bank.

I have also now learned that it can be outright harmful for one’s equipment to play these cd-like plastic discs in your player, EMI’s copy-protection scheme destroyed a dvd player for a Norwegian music-lover. Interestingly enough it is supposedly easy to play these discs in a pc, which means that the only way to play EMI discs in a normal cd player is by burning your own copy. If one have to do that anyway, one might as well just skip the detour through the record store and download it directly over the Internet.

If it were up to me, the record companies should be required to add a warning label similar to the ones on the cigarette packages: This fake cd could damage your equipment.

Oh, well, the record companies may just as well continue to shoot themselves in the foot, the only ones who suffer are the greedy record label presidents—when the artists get why people have stopped buying their records they will switch record companies to one less customer-hostile.

Dare to refuse copy protection!