Any importer who has battled with the incompatibilities between the Label Gate Copy Control CD (CCCD) copy protection and the regular CD standard (myself included) have reason to rejoice. A couple weeks ago, Avex announced that they had abandoned CCCD for the following reasons:

• The copy protection kept customers from enjoying their music on their iPod or other portable HDD music players.
• The company believes that CCCD has largely served its purpose, and is not as necessary, and
• The company speculates that widespread adoption of the SA-CD (Super audio CD) and DVD audio formats is right around the corner.

Sony Japan joined the bandwagon yesterday, announcing that all their CDs would be shipped in the regular CD audio format, and no more would be made using CCCD. Sony cited largely the same reasons: the future SA-CD adoption and that CCCD has served its purpose - now that customers have been better educated about piracy.