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Microsoft and its domineering copy protection ways strike once again.

A few months ago I wrote about the new Media Center version of Windows XP, a bit of technology that makes video recording, audio/video playback, and picture viewing much more plausible in a home theater setting. It introduced a specialized remote control that worked with the OS and dedicated menus that look more like something from a TiVo menu than a computer program.

Great, so immediately they hit us with the news that programs recorded on a Media Center PC would only play on the specific computer on which it was recorded. Bad idea … and Microsoft even realized that they wouldn’t make money doing this because no one would want a Media Center PC, so they relaxed the rules back in October, instead creating special tags that would identify video recorded with MC PCs.

This would have been a good place to stop, but that would go against Microsoft’s desire to have its hand in everything. So this Monday, they announced that major recording companies Universal Music Group, a unit of Vivendi Universal; and EMI Group, as well as MPO International Group, a large independent CD maker, have adopted new copy protection schemes. These schemes would incorporate the windows media file compression technology into “second session content” on CDs and DVDs.

Don’t gasp in confusion, let me explain. When you compress a CD to mp3 format, you create a non-copy protected file that can be shared and transferred anywhere. However, when you make the mistake of uploading your CD in “wma” or Windows Media Audio format, you’ll find that a multitude of copyright and identification schemes are woven into the file. You can’t transfer the files to your iPod, and you may not be able to play them on another computer or transfer them to your portable music player depending on what options are chosen.

Now with the adoption of the Microsoft copy protection, our CDs will already have the wma files burned onto the second session of the disc. In other words, we will not even have the option to compress the CD in mp3 format; the only format available will be wma and it will be intimately tied into Microsoft’s new Windows Media Player 9.

In some ways this is better than what could have been, but it still sucks. What could have been is what we started seeing last year where CDs wouldn’t play at all in a computer. In fact, if the music was played straight from the CD, the computer could crash.

Under the new scheme, the content provider – EMI for instance – could specify in the copy protection of a CD that the files cannot be transferred to a portable device but can be burned to a CD five times. Or that for a fee of 25 cents per track, the files can be “bought” (even though they are already on the CD) for free reign to transfer them to portables or burn them to CD mixes … but these privileges would only be allowed on your specific computer.

The only unarguably positive aspect about this announcement is that the data contained on the second session of the discs might also contain special content such as music videos or interviews with the artists. I am looking to online subscription services to be the alternative to second session wma content.

Remember the movie “Demolition Man” with Sylvester Stallone and Sandra Bullock in which all the restaurants were Taco Bell because all the others had been whipped out in competition. I recall that in the movie they freaking outlawed salt as a condiment. The same thing could happen to the digital media industry if we aren’t conscious of which technologies we support. And that would just be a future too bland for my tastes.

E-mail Esposito at resposito@media.ucla.edu