My Plextor drive has the "Compact Disc" logo on it. This means that it complies to the Philips/Sony Red book standard for CD-A (Audio CDs). There is a similar one on my CD player, and various other bits of kit I have about the place.

In the past, this meant that a) it was a certified compliant device b) the manufacturer was paying a royalty to Philips/Sony. These days it just means a royalty, since Philips relaxed approvals a goodly number of years ago.

In the case of the Imbruglia disk (I'd love to hear her views on her music being used for guinea pigging), it also carries the logo. Since it does not play on my CD player, and all my others do, it implies to me (as a mere thicky) that her disk is at fault, and therefore should not bear the logo. Philips is unlikely to do anything about this, but they should. Someone should mount a legal challenge from the big electronics conglomerates to protect the value of the base standard, but it's also unlikely; it has been left to a private individual in California to make the attempt. Ridiculous.

The only way that this can be dealt with is by returning the album (assuming you are actually interested in buying it in the first place Yuk!) as many times as it takes before you get a good one. Irritate the shops selling the disk, not the music publishers. If this happens enough, the returns rate reported to the publisher will go up and if there are enough complaints from the music shops, then they might wake up and pay attention, since it will hit their bottom line. Also, writing letters of complaint directly to the artist (again, not the publisher) may get a two sided attack going if you get their interest due to the number of letters received.

Think about this for a second though. I hear no protests from Philips, or Sony, or any of the major makers employing the logo; shops all over the Netherlands are dumping cut-price back catalogue at half the price they were a few months ago, including some recent stuff that I bought full price over the summer. Weak evidence, but given the complaints over CD pricing in the EU for years where no action was taken and with floods of protests from the major publishers, how come they are now doing it voluntarily? (and no, it was already taking place well before September - it was around the start of the year when it started).

Could it be (let's be really cynical here) that for the last two years or so, there has been an unannounced industry agreement which means that recent new players have been modified to play these damn things without a problem, and people have been buying them unawares for that time? Does the industry now believe there is a sufficient installed base of new "tolerant" players out there to ensure that there will be a smaller than expected (and still decreasing) number of players intolerant of this protection, thus reducing the number of returns made by consumers of protected disks? Does this mean that by making it public that they are now starting to mass-market protected albums, they are confident the greater mass of consumers will simply accept this out of ignorance or the "Well, it plays OK on my player!" effect?

I may well be a suspicious old git with conspiracy in mind, but from my past experience working on the hardware side of the players, I wouldn't put it past the buggers....