Martin McKeay's rant against music CD copy protection is worth a read. In addition to obvious ease-of-use issues, McKeay's experience points to substantial problems with legacy player systems. As much as the music, consumer electronics, and computer industries might like consumers to update their systems, the ability to play copy protected music CDs is unlikely to be a major motivation. Snippets:
...I finally got the chance to put the CD I had purchase into my laptop and play it. Or rather try and play it. The laptop in question is off the network for various reasons and I generally just use it to play CD's through a stereo (old laptop, really old stereo). When I placed the CD in the laptop, it immediately started trying to access the Internet. I thought that was odd and opened up Windows Explorer to look at the disk. Normally there would be a number of .cda files that are the actuall songs, but instead there were a host of installation files and subdirectories. I took the CD to my main computer where I could access the Internet. When I tried to play the CD this time, it opened Winamp, which is apparently incompatible with whatever technology is used to protect this CD.
