Nora Jones new CD -- Copy Protection -- YIKES

It is incorrect to assume that any business can ingore lost income. Every penny of sales matters. Lost profits expose poor decisions. A small but vocal groups can often generate enough noise to change policies.

I had already sent an email and now I will follow it up with a phone call.

I have paid for all the music in my collection (over 1000 records and 2300 disks). I do make some CD copies. I have copied for use in the car and on my second system. I do make compliations for personal use. I have never made a copy a friend.

The point is that I will only purchase a high quality product from a company that is up front with their customers.

Businesses do care about angry customers. Angry customers are more likely to influence others to avoid purchases.

I have 23 years experience coaching businessmen. None of them want negative feelings about their products.

Before posting above, I expressed my sentiments to Blue Note, and as others have suggested, the more that do, the better.

I spent too many years making compilations the hard way -- via reel-to-reel and cassettes. I don't intend going backwards.

We should make our voice known to the music purveyors by communicating same -- phone, e-mail, and by not opening our wallets for any of their products, if one is copy protected....

Depending on what type of "protection" the cd has..it is crackable. On copy protected discs this outer track is corrupted, which prevents copying, or even playback, by PCs but is ignored (at least in theory) by regular CD players. Covering up the outer track via a magic marker disables the protection, allowing a disc to be played as normal in a PC or Mac.

The technique may sound risky, but I did it to the latest "A Perfect Circle" release with success.

In the end, record companies are killing themselves and it is great. I will NOT buy the Norah cd but will pick it up on vinyl in March. I usually buy both as I did with the latest Radio Head but I refuse this time. My system set-up only consists of my Rega 25 and my iPod for digital use so ripping failure is not an option. More and more people are getting outraged by the actions of greedy record companies and are NOT buying the material which they previously would buy. I love it. Its just sad that some music might get lost in this "war"

I am disinterested in this album, and I agree with your sentiments in general about fair use of what you buy, but I understood that copy protection is on nearly every new cd. Is that not the case?

Here's a way we could circumvent this problem, and send a message to bluenote and their owners. Someone buys a copy and cracks it then burns the AIFF/WAV files on to a CD-R. We pass that around via postal mail, each person burning themselves a copy then passing that along to the next in line. (a Vine, it's called, in music-trading circles... only talking about sharing legit content in this context, not piracy).

Obviously this would only be open to people who have bought the CD and can prove it (need to find a way to do that part of it) and just want a copy for their own backup. Would require a little work to do the first crack/copy/archive but after that a simple enough process.

-Ed