Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 2001
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Peter Cochrane has a warning for the music industry
IT appears that the music industry has just taken another giant step in the direction of corporate stupidity. Shops are beginning to receive batches of "copy controlled" CDs for general sale in order to test market reaction. What is their problem?

When you buy one of these new-format CDs, you will find that it does not work when you slide it into your laptop or PC. It will play only on a bona fide CD player. This is a clear attempt by the music industry to dictate what we do with our CDs.

Many people, including myself, have sometimes decided not to purchase a CD player but to use a computer as their main source of music. In fact, this is the principal way to listen to music when travelling, apart from the in-car CD player.

The music industry is worried about the rise of the MP3 player and the free exchange of music files, hence this latest effort at controlling content. I can guarantee that consumers will retaliate - to the further detriment of the industry as a whole.

We might even see a change in the course of technological history in the making. If the music industry is determined to shoot itself in the other foot, having already shot itself previously with Napster and other online music-sharing sites, then there is little anyone can do to save them from themselves.

However, there is a lot that can be done to circumnavigate their efforts. By far the simplest solution is to take the audio output from a CD player and feed it into a PC and digitise the music straight into MP3 format.

There are people who will complain that the quality of the music is not as good as the original CD, but I think most will be delighted by the outcome. It may take a little while to completely transform a copy-controlled CD into an MP3 format, but if people want total flexibility then it is worthwhile.

It is amazing that the music industry would suppose that they are so smart they can create either a format, or encoding system, that will stand the test of time against the obvious onslaught that will now follow.

I can guarantee that every hacking group on the planet will now focus on creating a solution that allows us to copy CDs in the same way as we have enjoyed to date.

It is also only a matter of time before CD players for laptops and PCs appear on the market in the format of a standard CD player, so will be able to play this new controlled media. All of this will be another stride in the direction of the illegal practice of copying and distributing CD music tracks among friends.

One way or another, a route will be found that allows us to lift tracks directly from these CDs and pass them on, or convert them into MP3 format for onward transmission. I suspect the music industry is just about to damage itself very badly again.

You only have to look back at the history of technology to see that people who go into a mode of technology denial and control suffer badly in the end. The next five years are going to be incredibly entertaining.