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Ever listen to music CDs on your computer? Or burn favorite songs onto a mix CD to play in your car or at a party? If so, the recording industry's new copy-protection schemes could come as a big shock to you.

That's because some antipiracy methods render music CDs unplayable on many computers. These same methods aim to make it impossible for people to rip music tracks and create MP3 files for use in a portable player. Worse, some early implementations have resulted in degraded music CDs that can't even be played on ordinary audio players.

PC World has been reporting on these developments as they've occurred (see "New Shackles on Your CD, Video Copying" in our January News & Trends section and many of you have responded. This comment by a West Hartford, Connecticut, reader was typical: "I want the ability to copy something I bought, uninfringed, as long as it is for my consumption. Copy protection has never worked and never will. It will cost the entertainment industry more in implementation, dollars, and goodwill than it ever dreamed."

Protect the Artists

Now, there's nothing wrong with copyright owners trying to protect their property. Musicians, artists, writers, and their intermediaries--including record labels and publishers like PC World--all depend on copyright law to stop blatant rip-offs.

The problem is that even sophisticated safeguards can often be cracked. Hackers long ago broke the Content Scrambling System used to protect DVDs. And within hours of the release of Windows XP, Asian programmers had bypassed Microsoft's smart new antipiracy system.

The result: Copy-protecting music will prevent innocent fans from transferring tracks to their MP3 player or burning a party disc (all perfectly legal activities if the disc is for personal, noncommercial use). Meanwhile, serious thieves and determined file-swappers will eventually devise ways to hack anticopying codes.

More troublingly, as copy armor grows clumsier, it may render virtually obsolete a lot of today's hardware--including the many CD-RW drives people have bought in recent years. It may also discourage the experimentation and innovation that push the whole field forward.

Instead of chasing a technological fix, why not deal with the issue head-on? Build a small fee into the cost of rewritable media and hardware to cover royalty payments to artists and record labels.

There is precedent for such a move. In 1992, Congress passed a law that affirms people's right to make personal copies while requiring hardware manufacturers to pay a royalty on certain recording devices. The act also imposes a 3 percent royalty fee on sales of blank audio CD-Rs (which are tagged differently from standard data CD-Rs), digital audiotapes, and MiniDiscs. It would be simple to extend the law to all recordable media.

Use the Justice System

As for illegal file sharing, court action was highly effective in shutting down Napster, and concerted efforts can also succeed against the decentralized file-sharing networks that have taken its place; witness the effectiveness of the FBI's two-year crackdown on so-called warez software piracy rings.

These moves may not represent perfect solutions to the problem of digital piracy. We would be happy to hear any other ideas you may have, including those for better copy protection. But at least these proposals don't hobble the technology in an attempt to stop the miscreants.

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