The recording industry has begun selling music CD's designed to make it impossible for people to copy music to their computers, trade songs over the Internet or transfer them to portable MP3 players.
Until now, most of the protected discs have been distributed in Europe, with little publicity. But the strategy has already provoked a reaction there. There are also objections from American music lovers who fear that they will be unable to use the increasingly popular portable MP3 devices or burn their own CD's to copy music that they have legally purchased.
The practice is also drawing the ire of several consumer electronics manufacturers, including Sony Electronics, which says it cannot guarantee the audio quality of these CD's on its players, and Apple Computer and Sonicblue, whose sales of popular portable music players might suffer if copy-protected CD's became the norm.
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