Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Tuesday 25/09/2001

Once, Michael Jackson tried to relaunch his career by floating a giant statue of himself along the Thames past the ZDNet UK offices. We were flattered, but didn't buy his album and Jacko went off to palely loiter in his ranch for a few years. Now he's back, and is sniffing after publicity by making his CD unplayable on computers.

This is one of the first serious shots in the anti-copying war; the idea being that if you can't read it you can't make rips of it. Only there's no indication of this on the cover of the CD, meaning that people - such as yours truly - who habitually play CDs on their computers while working will be denied the pleasures of Michael's silky pipes. Hardly fair. And a quick check on the Gnutella network reveals hundreds of copies of the file available to one and all, so someone somewhere can clearly read it - which is just as well, 'cos if you can't play the CD you paid for you've got to get your music from somewhere.

Off the wall, man.