Sony BMG's XCP bypassed with a bit of tape

Sony BMG's XCP copy-protection technology was
already down, and now it's getting the bugeebas kicked out of it. Gartner analysts revealed today that Sony's XCP is "stymied by sticking a fingernail-size piece of opaque tape on the outer edge of the CD." In other words, a bit of Scotch tape causes the PC to treat the disc as an ordinary music CD. Not that this really matters now what with Sony halting the production of XCP CDs and
replacing them for free. Nor should this exploit be surprising — remember the shift-key or black-marker DRM workarounds? What's important here is this: as Gartner rightly points out, the recording industry has yet to come up with a workable DRM solution in more than five-years of trying and will never do so as long as CDs must be playable on stand-alone CD players. Damn straight.