The bad thing is that you are almost promoting what you are trying to protect against. You are upsetting the fan that went out and purchased the record.

Jason Brown, president of Philadelphonic, a management company that represents Tristan Prettyman, whose album in among those trialing ‘copy-protection’ with EMI.

Fans get annoyed with having newly purchased CDs marred by the implementation of Digital Rights Management (DRM) software which controls what can be done with the content. By restriction consumer choice, the record companies are driving away their most needed customers, the ones who are tech savvy enough to rip their music to a computer. If they can’t do that, surely the response will simply to download if illegally? What’s new is that now the artists themselves are joining in the protest by aiding listeners in breaking the DRM. The software normally allows users to burn at least one ‘standard’ copy of the music on an unprotected CD. That CD can then be ripped back onto a computer as with any unrestricted CD.

Columbia Records act Switchfoot, whose latest album, “Nothing Is Sound,” is copy-protected — and debuted at No. 3 on The Billboard 200 last week — recently took copy-protection defiance one step further. Band guitarist Tim Foreman posted on a Sony Music-hosted fan site a link to the software program CDEX, which disables the technology. The post has since been removed.

CNN.com: Musicians tell how to beat the system

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