In addition to the US version of the album, I thought it might be interesting to get the Canadian version of Sarah Brightman’s new album, Harem. So I did.

I received it today. Much to my great irritation, the music disc (according to Philips—owner of the CD logo and standard—it can’t technically be called a “CD”) was copy-protected in an effort to twart copying or “ripping” the disc to convert it into a storable format such as MP3. This is a major problem for me because although I have several hundred CDs in my collection, I have the all stored in MP3 format on a central server. I listen to the music using either the computer, network appliances that can play MP3s over my network, or my iPod.

Mind you, any attempt to prevent copying is completely futile; the worst they can do (and have done) is to make copying more difficult, much to the chagrin of many law-abiding consumers such as myself. Because the disc was designed to be playable in conventional CD (and DVD) players, all that I had to do is use such a player with digital output, and pipe that digital music stream back into my computer to record it. So I did. The added complication was that I had to solder together an improvised cable to allow me to connect the SPDIF digital output of my DVD player to the 2-pin header digital input of my computer’s sound card:

This experience underscored the idiocy of attempting to copy-protect music discs. Some such discs have even been rumoured to damage computer CD-ROM drives. All in all it’s a huge disservice to the consumer, and ineffective for stopping music piracy. I hope there’s a special place in Hell reserved for the likes of the RIAA and their supporters.