Although at first glance there would seem to be little overlap between Pride's audience and the "information wants to be free" demographic, the singer was disturbed to find his songs on Napster. "As I was negotiating with Charley, I learned that [protecting CDs] was important to him," says Bob Heatherly, head of Music City Records, the independent Nashville label that Pride joined in January. "He was especially concerned about the songwriters," says Heatherly, because, unlike singers who can tour, songwriters depend almost entirely on CD royalties. "I've seen songwriters myself who have been close to homeless before they finally got the two or three hits that let them survive. And so when I realized how important this was to Charley, I said, 'Let's find a way to make this happen.'" Read Inside's interview with Charley Pride.

Music City plans to employ patent-pending CD-protection software from SunComm, a Phoenix start-up. The software passed initial tests in late March and Heatherly believes that a copy-proof "Charley Pride: A Tribute to Jim Reeves" should appear on store shelves by early May.

Pride almost certainly won't be the last musician to use the technology. For years the digerati have mocked the labels for putting out what are, in effect, perfect rip-ready copies of digital master recordings. "The CD is the root of all of our problems with the Net," says Jay Samit, senior vice president of new media at EMI, which is testing various copy-protection technologies. "If CDs were as hard to copy as DVDs or VHS tapes or even books, we would not be going through anything like what we're going through now with Napster or Gnutella."

Prodded by the explosive growth of Napster, and the difficulties of blocking copyrighted material on any file-sharing service, the labels have been actively examining methods of copy-protecting CDs. Indeed, Inside has learned that at least four of the five major labels are seriously evaluating the technology -- and that at least three have begun or are about to begin testing it. Although label executives stress that their companies have not yet committed to copy-protecting their releases, they are unanimous in their belief that someone will try out the technology commercially within months.

Unfortunately, every CD-protection scheme faces a crucial obstacle: making CDs unrippable onto CD-ROMs also makes them unplayable on some CD players -- a feature guaranteed to anger customers. The risks were demonstrated clearly in June, when BMG trial-released in Germany a version of "Razorblade Romance," the second CD from the Finnish tattoo-metal band HIM, that used copy-protection software from Midbar Technology of Tel Aviv. Despite apparently extensive testing, about 3 percent of buyers could not play it, forcing a chagrined BMG to recall the CDs and reissue the record. The label is continuing to test copy-protection systems.

"Nobody wants to make things difficult for legitimate purchasers," says Cary Sherman, general counsel of the Recording Industry Association of America, which is helping the labels examine the new techniques. "But if piracy continues to spiral out of control, [copy-protecting CDs] will become more and more attractive an option -- even if it has some negative impact on some listeners."

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