The Null Device

The law of unintended consequences

Melbourne designer type Stephen Marovitch picked up the new Norah Jones album, with the intention of playing it on his PowerBook. Unfortunately for him, the disc in question is from EMI, who are in the habit of releasing intentionally defective CDs which choke Macintoshes. So he did what anybody would do and made a copy of the CD, exactly what the "copy control" mechanisms were meant to prevent.

"Just a courtesy email to inform you, that as a result of problems experienced playing the Norah Jones CD containing your Copy Control measures on Apple OS10.2 Titanium Laptop, Windows 2000 workstation and Windows XP workstation, I have now been forced to copy your CD just to listen to it," he wrote.

"Please congratulate the genius that concocted this anti-pirating strategy."

Marovitch said he was unlikely to buy anything from the same label again.

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