Celine Dion CD Tops Charts, Frustrates Europeans

NEW YORK – After a five year "retirement" from the music business Celine Dion has returned with a chart-topping album.

Dion's A New Day Has Come debuted at number one and sold more than 527,000 copies during the week ending March 31, according to industry figures released Wednesday.

But not all of the disc's owners are singing its praises, though, and it has nothing to do with the Canadian diva's voice.

Sony Music Europe has copy-protected the disc, using Key2Audio technology that doesn't allow the disc to be played on a computer. Some claim it even makes their computers crash, won't allow the disc to be ejected, and causes internal problems.

Only discs put out under the Sony Music Europe label are copy-protected, said a Sony Music spokesperson, adding, "We have never put out a copy protected CD in the United States."

Sony Music Europe has put out about 70 copy-protected releases, meaning they will not play in a PC or a Mac.

"The discs are clearly marked on the back and front cover — the warning is on the actual art work, it's not just a sticker and it won't peel off," said the spokesperson. "It is also printed on the disc that it will not play on a PC or Mac."

Mac users are claiming on German discussion boards that the disc will not eject using standard methods and that "the intentional corruption of the disc's session data could unpredictably affect the drive's firmware — a combination of hardware and software instructions that are permanently embedded in the hardware's controlling chips, such as with a computer's CD-ROM, and altering it could cause permanent damage," reported The Hollywood Reporter.

While Sony denies the disc can cause internal problems, it is possible that the computer will crash if you put it in your computer after ignoring the warnings.