Music Labels Back Away From Copy Protection; Microsoft Adds Some More

Surprises

from the diverging-paths dept

Not exactly the pair of articles you’d expect to see together these days. First, an article about how the music labels are still keeping away from copy protection in the US. They claim that it’s because the technology just isn’t good enough yet, but it seems to have a lot to do with the (extremely loud) consumer backlash they hear from the US every time they mention the possibility of copy protected CDs. There’s a scary quote from a VP at Transworld Entertainment, a company that runs a number of retail stores for music. Showing just how short sighted he can be, he says, “We think they should just get it done. We’ll take care of consumer complaints.” By “take care of”, it sounds like he means “ignore”. What happened to listening to what the customer wants? Anyway, the contrasting article to this one, is about a new Windows Media Center PC from Microsoft and HP, that includes PVR functionality (like TiVo), but which includes restrictive copy protection, that some analysts seem to think will hurt sales. So, let’s see, the entertainment industry is moving away from copy protection, while the tech industry moves towards it. That doesn’t sound right…