A Nanterre court has ordered the music label to refund a woman who could not play her new Alain Souchon CD on her car CD player. Alternatively, EMI is to provide a full-working copy. The ruling applies to all people who have bought CDs which they cannot play on some CD players, computers and Walkmans.
and a setback for the rights of consumers in Australia:
A consumer who petitioned the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission about the problems he faced in trying to play music discs with copy control technology marketed by EMI has had his complaint rejected.
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He pointed out to the ACCC that Philips, the developers of the CD standard, had expressed the view that the EMI music discs did not fit the Red Book definition of a CD. In the article referred to Philips representative Klaus Petri had told the Financial Times Deutschland: "Those are silver discs with music data that resemble CDs, but aren't."
Waters made this comment in response to the ACCC's listing of the criteria that a product had to meet to ensure that it did not violate the Trade Practices Act - it said a product must "match description or sample - goods must match any description or sample given to the consumer whether face to face, on the labelling or packaging, or in any promotional material."
Waters asked, with reference to this: "What is the ACCC's stance on this, as the discs I purchased are marketed as though they are genuine CDs?"