Q: I am trying to make a music compilation CD using songs from CDs I have purchased from stores. I was successful until I tried to include a song from one of EMI's copy controlled discs. As I have legally purchased all the music discs, I thought I would be able to make my own mix of songs to listen to in the car, at work, etc. I have tried e-mailing EMI about the problem and have had no luck. Please let me know if there's a way I can use songs from these discs as part of a mix CD.
A: EMI, which also owns the labels Blue Note, Capitol, Parlophone, Virgin Music and many others, has been using copy-controlled CDs for some time to prevent the theft of their intellectual property.
They are not the only company using copy protection. BMG is another, but there are others.
Judging from the amount of copyrighted material available on file-sharing networks, this tactic doesn't seem to be working very well.
The copy protection consists of data in the discs' table of contents which, when inserted into a computer's CD-ROM drive, appears to be bad.
Your computer thinks the disc is unreadable and you are unable to rip the tracks from it. Ordinary CD players don't have any difficulty with the data and the music plays just fine, although people with older players as well as some portable and car stereos have reported compatibility problems.
You'll find plenty of Web sites from angry customers unhappy that EMI prevents them from listening to music they purchased using the technology of their choice. Record companies would love it if everyone bought a CD for their home stereo then paid and downloaded the same music a second time for use on their portable MP3 players. Needless to say, most people only want to pay once.
EMI has felt the backlash and there are reports that they have backed off a bit on the use of copy controls, but they still use them on selected records.
A disc with such protection is supposed to be labelled as such, but it's not always easy to spot.
You may want to seek a legal opinion about copying your discs, but Section 80 of the Canadian Copyright Act (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/C-42/39385.html#rid-39498) gives individuals the right to make copies of music for their own personal use, so I don't imagine bypassing EMI's copy protection is illegal.
I don't have any such CDs to test, so I can't verify if any of these programs work, but I have read numerous reports of people successfully bypassing copy protection using Windows Media Player (www.windowsmedia.com), Exact Audio Copy (www.exactaudiocopy.de), MusicMatch (www.musicmatch.com) and dbPowerAMP Music Converter (www.dbpoweramp.com).
If none of those programs work for you, there's a very simple, low-tech solution. Connect your regular CD player's audio-out jacks to your computer sound card's audio-in jacks, play the CD and capture the music to a digital file. You will have some loss in sound quality, but unless you're a hard-core audiophile, you'll probably never notice, especially if you're listening to the music in your car or through headphones connected to your portable MP3 player.
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