Sony Gets Caught With Slipped Discs.

Byline: Steven Levy

Benjamin Franklin once remarked that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In that case, someone should immediately dispatch a cadre of psychiatrists to the headquarters of Sony. Its efforts to protect the music it sells have resulted--again--in unmitigated disaster. After infuriating its customers, alienating its artists and running afoul of the U.S. Homeland Security Department, Sony recently announced a recall of 52 CD titles--everyone from Dion to Celine Dion--protected with a flawed scheme that left customers' computers vulnerable to viruses and vandals.

Sony has been here before. The company invented personal entertainment with the Walkman, but has failed to gain traction against Apple's iPod in part because the initial versions of the Digital Walkman were hobbled by limitations based on fear of piracy. When Sony launched an online music store to compete with Apple's, a similar defensiveness and tough "digital rights management" (DRM) software contributed to a poor start. Since Sony's new CEO Howard Stringer is a smart guy, one might have assumed that he cautioned the company's music division, which recently merged with Bertelsmann's BMG label, that future efforts should not turn off customers by erring on the side of protection.

To the contrary, Sony BMG now is apparently focusing its anti-piracy efforts on the paying customer. The industry has gained some traction against Internet file-sharing services, so the label decided to take on the commonplace practice of friends' making copies of songs for each other. The idea was to lock down music on CDs, just as legally downloaded songs have limitations on how many copies you can make via computers, among other restrictions. (Those who simply played the discs on CD players would see no change.)

On one hand this sounds ...