Information Research Weblog

An interesting article appears in the online edition of the Australian newspaper, The Age. Entitled "Copy-protection: are these CDs or not?" it concerns the purchase of a music CD which failed to play on an X-Box because of the copy protection software.

Music CDs have suffered in the market over the past year (but for an alternative view, read Wired News) and, as a result, music companies - or, rather, EMI in this case - are exploring copy protection as a means of reducing piracy (in spite of a lack of research to support the idea that piracy reduces buying).

However, a good deal of information is now available for all kinds of purposes on CD - the field of family history, for example, is increasingly dependant upon CD versions of the historical censuses and of old town directories. These CDs aren't very costly for the enthusiastic family hitorian and I doubt whether much piracy goes on, but one could envisage a situation in which someone bought CDs and, like the person in the article, found that they did not run on his/her particular setup.

CDs that fail in this way are clearly not 'good for purpose' and, presumably, it would be possible to sue the producer. Interesting times ahead?