The five major record companies have been hit with a class-action lawsuit charging that a new breed of CDs designed to thwart Napster-style piracy is defective and should either be barred from sale or carry warning labels. RIAA issued a statement calling the lawsuit "frivolous." Although a voluntary advisory label seems reasonable enough, for the most part I have to agree with the RIAA on this one. I can't see how these CDs are illegal, any more than Liquid Audio files are illegal. A silly analogy: Mice have two options. They could file a class-action lawsuit to ban the sale of mousetraps, or they could simply choose not to walk into them again and again. DivX DVDs failed "naturally" in the marketplace under competitve pressures, and these "protected" CDs will suffer the same fate without legal intervention. If customers feel cheated in the absence of a pre-sale advisory notice, they are likely to change their music-buying habits. When sales drop 20% in a single quarter, the "record companies" (Ha!) will respond out of necessity. In fact, CDs in general will suffer this fate sooner rather than later, if you believe David Bowie. Again, this time with feeling: Bart: Speaking of CDs, I don't care about CDs. I'll meet you laggards back here in ten years. By that time, Bart will be walking around with a $10, 150 GB rewritable storage device that is the size of watch battery. And the logo on the device will be that of IBM, not BMG. Lawsuit Challenges Copy-Protected CDs | 
