Ah, the wonders and intricacies of copyright law. Many of the new "copy-protected" CDs on the market are so-called "double session" CDs that have two copies of a recording on the CD. One copy is in the traditional CD format so that it will play back on traditional CD players, the other copy is generally in a proprietary format for DRM restricted copying onto PCs and other devices.

How this intersects with copyright law is quite interesting. The publishers of music CDs (holders of the copyright in the performance) traditionally have to pay a mechanical license fee to the music publishers (holders of the copyright in the music and lyrics, but not the performance) for use of their songs, which is slightly less than a dime. As C|Net News reports, CD publishers have only been paying the music publishers for one copy of the song on each CD, even though these "copy-protected" "double session" CDs have two copies of the song (Rights issue dogs CD protection). Therefore, although the recordings are identical (except for format), the music publishers are demanding royalties for both copies, which the CD publishers have not been paying. Back payments required could be in the tens of millions of dollars. I think that the music publishers actually have a pretty good legal argument here.

Of course, the irony of engaging in blatant copyright infringement in order to reduce copyright infringement is off the charts.

The C|Net article is actually pretty good at looking how the division of music copyrights is causing problems for the inclusion of music on DVDs as well as licensing to the online music stores. Couldn't happen to a nicer industry.