The Boston Herald reports this morning of a several-months-old copy protection scheme that was quietly rolled out by Sony BMG and EMI, which prevents iPod and iTunes users (and apparently no one else) from loading the music onto their iPods. From the article:

iPod and iTunes users will find that CD copy protection does more than limit CD burning. So far, Apple has refused to license its FairPlay software to Microsoft or record labels. As a result, music transferred from protected CDs through a PC won't play on iPods and iTunes. "It's an issue with Apple,'' said [Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG president of Global Digital Business]. "We can't do that much about it.''
...
Bill Werde, Billboard senior news editor, believes consumers should not have to deal with such inconveniences. "Customers . . . just want to play music where they want to play music,'' he said. "And music fans shouldn't have to care about (the standoff between Apple and record labels). That's a back-end music issue that should have been resolved before this (technology) was released to the masses.''

And FreeiPodGuy says amen to that. A rapidly increasing number of listeners are buying CDs to exclusively on their iPods, and the record companies are producing music that can't be easily used for that purpose. Apple, meanwhile, provides listeners with another (cheaper) option: the iTunes Music Store.

My guess is that the record companies will blink first.