I just baught the new Depeche Mode 3 disk set and disk 2 & 3 can not be read by my pc(I think disc 1 reads because you have to have it to get to the secret site to get extras). They work on my cd player. Is there some kind of protection for pc I am not aware of to prevent ripping? I own it and want to transfer it to my minidisc player.
I'd check for any labels on the discs that specifically say they are protected. There's almost certainly a way to get around it. I heard that holding the Shift-key while inserting the CD in your drive prevents it from loading something at startup that prevents you from copying, but who knows if they've fixed this.
There is Microsoft DRM protection for CDs that gives CD-Rom drives a bogus table of contents to read. This makes the CDs play incorrectly on your pc but has no affect on analog players like your stereo or car system. Also, like DogBomb said, they should be something on the back of the packaging (cd case) that says this is true. There are ways around it though. I read a news article on this site that said that the protection scheme for DRM for CDs is so weak that some one actually used a Sharpie to prevent the fake table of contents from being read by the CD-Rom drive defeating the protection DRM.
