In addition, according to Don Shulsinger of Oak Technology, a CD-RW and optical-storage manufacturer, the sheer disparity in the technical specs of CD-ROM brands almost ensures that some CD-ROM machines will always be able to read copy-protected CDs. "There is no standard way in which the firmware inside of a CD-ROM drive is written," he says. "There's massive amounts of drives out there and the testing copy-protection firms have to do is simply enormous."

"We're of course aware of these issues," says Emanuel Kronitz, chief operating officer of TTR, which says two major labels are testing its software. "It's a major technological challenge, which is why we believe that what we've done -- mostly beating it -- is not trivial."

Even if the compatibility issues can be solved, the Slashdot crowd will protest that the very idea of copy protection infringes their fair-use rights. (The industry responds that fair use of music does not include the right to make entire backup CDs, and that consumers will still be able to make cassette copies.) More importantly, Internauts argue that copy protection is futile because it will inevitably be cracked by the Net's legions of amateur lock-rattlers. In their view, people will get around copy protection simply by running the output of their CD players directly into their computer sound cards and capturing the resulting music with stream-capture programs like Total Recorder. In addition, computer-game hackers have developed programs -- such as BlindRead, CloneCD and DiscDump, all readily available on the Net -- that duplicate copy-protected game CD-ROMs by ignoring the "errors" that manufacturers introduce into the data in an effort to stump typical CD-ROM copying programs. In theory, people could adapt them to rip protected music tracks.

More methods of beating copy protection will surely evolve, hackers argue, spurred on with the tacit consent of the computer trade. As chagrined label executives have often noted, an entire industry -- ranging from start-ups like MusicMatch to giants like Hewlett-Packard and Apple, which are touting their products as ripping machines -- has grown up around the CD-ROM and MP3. Will all of these companies just sit on their hands if copy-proofing becomes the norm?

Copy-protection firms mostly regard hacking threats as marginal. "It is always possible that somebody somewhere will break the protection," concedes William H. Whitmore Jr., SunComm's vice president of marketing. Acknowledging this, SunComm's promotional material promises only "to greatly reduce unauthorized digital copying of original content on CDs. "But it will be far too difficult for the average user," Whitmore says. "For them, the CD-ROM in their computer -- the nemesis of the recording industry -- just won't play our CDs."

But even in the best of circumstances, copy-protecting CDs is "not a long-term solution," according to Talal Shamoon, vice president of media at the digital-rights management firm InterTrust Technologies, which works extensively with Universal. Copy-protected CDs, he argues, inevitably remove possibilities which listeners now enjoy, such as the ability to rip songs onto CDs.

The industry will have to make a better tradeoff with its customers, he says. As an example, he points to the French techno act Daft Punk's second album, "Discovery." Released earlier this month by Virgin Records, the CD came with a plastic card that gave CD purchasers access to a special fan-club Web site. The site offered additional music that is, in theory, available exclusively to people who bought CDs. "The beauty of the Daft Punk model is that there's no real threat to consumers," Shamoon says. "Instead it's aimed at creating an affinity experience around the compact disc." He believes that putting such value in consumers' hands lessens their incentive to pirate.

Ultimately, though, affinity experiences alone will not save the industry, in Shamoon's view. "I've talked to a lot of people in the record industry, and they all are of the opinion that in the long run, the CD and the CD player, as they stand now, are basically a lost cause." At best, he says, protected CDs will be a "bridge technology" as the industry prepares itself for "the only real solution": replacing CDs with a new kind of music-playing machine, such as the forthcoming, quarter-sized DataPlay disc, which should be available by Christmas.

"You're going to need a new generation of secure devices," says Dan Lieman, one of the four mathematicians who co-founded NTRU, a rights-management firm in Burlington, Mass. "Ultimately it's going to have to be done in hardware, because hardware is a lot harder to hack than software."

Unfortunately, consumers have resisted past efforts to replace CDs with MiniDiscs, DVD audio discs and Super Audio Compact Discs. For now, the labels' technologists agree that copy-protecting CDs with software locks is the most practical way to go. "Some of the best and most experienced engineers in the world are working on this," says Samit of EMI. "It's near and dear to our hearts to get this right."

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