Music industry eyes 'casual piracy'

MercuryNews.com: "The record labels are in pursuit of a new class of music pirates -- not the millions who download bootlegged songs over the Internet but those who copy music CDs for their friends..."

Could going down this path finally mark the official death spiral for CDs as a popular distribution format? For example, I considered buying the new Foo Fighters physical CD rather than getting it from iTunes (so that I could have highest quality sound, a printed jacket etc.). However, the standard CD release is copy-protected, so I couldn't import into iTunes for my own personal digital listening. So it made more sense to buy the download format, because at least then I can burn a CD or include songs in a Mix. And iTMS offers it with a printable book and bonus video. Why would I want a CD version then...?

The only people who will increase revenue via this latest scheme are the third party developers licensing the useless copy protection to the record labels. The labels will then continue to increase their overhead costs, which will come back and hit consumers. Give up and sell downloads at $.25/ea already! Sorry felling a bit miffed about this I guess...