Plugged In: Crackdown Coming on CD Copying

1. No More CD Copying

The Buzz: The days of ripping music CDs to your PC are numbered. Leading the charge is EMI: All of its new United States CD releases will be copy-protected by early spring, according to EMI's Richard Cottrell. (Some copy-protected CDs may already have landed; see Letters.) But copy-protected CDs don't play on some DVD players, so other labels are exercising caution. Universal, for instance, will probably release relatively few copy-protected discs stateside this year, and BMG (which copy-protects its European discs) won't release any. Still, now that one label has taken the plunge, other penguins are sure to leave the ice floe.

Bottom Line: To hear the recording industry tell it, those nasty CD pirates are to blame for lagging sales. Ah, now I know why no one buys Mariah Carey CDs.

2. Throwaway Technology

The Buzz: What's next after disposable razor blades and throwaway cameras? Disposable phones and DVDs, of course. Hop-On Wireless's cell phones extend the prepaid phone card concept in the form of an LCD-less handset. The $40 units--preloaded with 60 minutes of calling time--can be recharged with add-on minutes, recycled, or discarded. Even stranger are the new disposable (and recyclable) DVDs that become unreadable after a preset time. Thus far, the discs--from New York's Flexplay--have been used exclusively as promotional items, but it's only a matter of time before they show up in video stores.

Bottom Line: Products that suddenly stop working after a few uses? That's not a new idea: Microsoft perfected the gimmick years ago.

3. Wooing the Little Guy

The Buzz: Suddenly, tech vendors are cozying up to the small-business market. Cases in point: AOL for Small Business; Dell's new service to help small businesses set up networks; Microsoft's reworked Small Business Manager 7; and IBM's repricing of its WebSphere middleware package for companies with under 1000 employees.

Bottom Line: Small business is now seen as a big opportunity. That's what happens when the economy craters and there's no more cash to be squeezed out of government, big business, or consumers.

4. You Better Watch Out

The Buzz: He's making a list and checking it twice; gonna find out who's naughty and nice. No, not Santa. I mean onetime Iran-Contra conspirator John Poindexter, who has been tapped to run Total Information Awareness (TIA), a federal project that will sift though mountains of public and private data to "detect, classify and identify" terrorists. TIA will look for telltale patterns among credit card records, driver's licenses, airline ticket purchases, and the like.

Bottom Line: Civil libertarians are frightened about potential governmental abuse. Me, I'm just quaking at the prospect of John Poindexter decked out in a white beard and fuzzy red suit.