Free Culture Swarthmore

We’re not protesting Tower Records itself as much as we’re protesting some of the products that they are selling, foisted on them by the big labels. Most of the CDs in the store do not have “copy-protection” (yet) and therefore our actions should not seriously disrupt their business, especially since we are going to be distributing information about which CDs they should specifically avoid.

As for why you should avoid CDs with “Digital Rights Managment” or “copy protection”, please take a little time to read this article: (”Firestorm rages over lockdown on digital music“, USA Today) Sony, for example, was selling CDs that infect your computer with a virus-like program that takes control of your computer, and leaves your computer vulnerable to real viruses. This resulted in a class action lawsuit (which was settled recently) and a general recall of the affected CDs. Many dangerous CDs remain on the market, however, and not all of the recalled CDs have been pulled. This is one thing that we will be checking for on Saturday while we distribute information to passers-by.

UPDATE:
One reason that we have to take the relatively extreme measure of having a protest to inform consumers about these crippled CDs is that they frequently are not clearly labeled, and there is no way for the consumer to tell ahead of time that the CD will not work as expected. Take a look at this Coldplay CD, for instance, which says “This CD can’t be burnt onto a CD or hard disc, nor can it be converted to an MP3″ and “This CD may not play in DVD players, car stereos, portable players, game players, all PCs and Macintosh PCs.” Unfortunately for the consumer, it only provides this warning INSIDE the package, so that you can’t see it until you have already purchased and opened the CD. (Here’s the warning transcribed for your reading pleasure.)

It’s unreasonable to expect consumers to have x-ray vision and see inside the CD packaging to find out that this CD will not do any of the things that a normal CD ought to do.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2006 at 11:33 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.