I recently bought a CD, Hallucinations, by
David Usher, a minor
Canadian star receiving heavy promotion from his label,
EMI/
Capitol Records. It comes with a label that states:
Copy Controlled -
Playback problems may be encountered on some equipment
It has become normal for me to rip a new cd and play it on my
iPod or my
mp3 player, never listening to the CD. I tried putting the CD in my
Win2k computer at work; the program tried to install some random software of unknown stability that would create deliberate restrictions on what I can do with my computer. No thanks.
I had also heard about this marker trick; it's a bit too permanent for my tastes.
I slipped the noncompliant CD into the
DVD drive on my
Linux computer and typed the following command:
cdparanoia -vB
Now I had a complete set of perfect
wav files; I burned these to a blank CD and put that CD in my
Macintosh PowerBook and ripped that CD to my hard drive. Now I can play this album on my
iPod. No marker necessary.