According to News.com, the labels are backing off on making copy-protected CDs.  Their fear is backlash among customers in the United States, which is their largest market.

The article points out that the use of computers to playback music is more widespread in the US than in other regions.  Further, the futility of these schemes (think black marker), fair use issues, and potential lawsuits have tempered their zeal for copy protection.

However, this doesn’t mean that copy protection has gone away.  It just means that they’re doing more study and planning before trying to ram this down our throats at some time in the future.  I know that I’m going to keep a watchful eye on them.  I don’t trust these bastards at all.

As someone who owns about 300 CDs and who generally purchases 15 or more of them a year, I will just quit buying if I can’t copy the CD.  Let me be clear:  I do not steal content nor do I want to.  I am perfectly willing to pay for the music to which I listen.  However, I absolutely refuse to be treated as a criminal because I want to choose the technology that I use when listening.  If I can’t copy a CD to MP3 files, I will not buy it and I will consider such a CD to be defective.  Further, if copy protection makes a CD unusable in a computer, it’s likely that the CD won’t work in my vehicle either, since I have a combination CD/MP3 player.

I consider the ability to choose how I listen to a CD as a non-negotiable item.  The labels certainly have the right to try to create new technology, but I have the right to take my business elsewhere.  In a capitalist¹ society, the customer is always right, because any business that fails to please the customer will no longer be in business.

¹  This supposes that the market isn’t distorted by non-market forces.  Which is exactly what the big media companies are trying to do by lobbying for atrocities like the DMCA.