Consumers fight back against new protected CDs — ‘All across the world, people are dropping newly purchased $17 CDs into their CD-ROM drives and freaking out. In some cases, the CD won’t play at all in their computers. In other instances, the CD cannot be ripped into digital files for use on MP3 players. And sometimes, the CD will play only with Windows Media Player.

For people who have grown accustomed to using their PC to play CDs, this is tantamount to fraud. In some countries, these so-called protected CDs have labels on them so that computer users know which ones to avoid. However, this is not the case in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom. The music industry’s head-on collision with technology has never been a thing of beauty, but I think that selling people CDs that are effectively broken has to be a new low…

Thanks to a site called Fat Chuck’s, irate consumers are compiling their specific knowledge of protected CDs (Chuck calls them corrupted ) into a database. You can search and browse the database as well as send in reports of the corrupted discs you buy so that others won’t make the same mistake. Even better, Fat Chuck–whoever he is–tries to verify the comments that people make, so you’re not just getting feedback from people who don’t like the CDs they buy for other reasons.’ CNet