I bought the new Kasabian cd at Criminal Records and got kind of annoyed that it is not actually a cd-rom at all. It looks like a cd-rom and played in my car cd player like a proper cd. But it has special software on it by SunnComm called "MediaMax" that is designed to prevent "unauthorized copies" (it also prevents authorized copies too).

Of course, the first thing I wanted to do it rip it into iTunes. Since I have autorun disabled, their stupid software never launched and I was able to rip it properly using iTunes and cdex.

I found this decent site that explains it all http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jhalderm/cd3/.

It's rather annoying that a record company would attempt to screw up our fair use rights to create backups and use the music as we wish. It's only humorous now that BMG would pay good money for this marginally useless technology, but one day they will get it right and it will really suck.