Lawrence.com

Say hello to the latest technological breakthrough to hit the music business � the copy-protected compact disc, yet another attempt by the record industry to thwart the efforts of Internet pirates. But it's not the major record labels making the first move. It's an artist.

No, it's not Lars Ulrich, the outspoken drummer of Metallica, whose initial lawsuit started the anti-Napster ball rolling. It's country legend Charley Pride, whose next release � "Charley Pride: A Tribute to Jim Reeves," coming out May 15 � will be the first copy-protected release in the United States. So why has it taken so long? Why now? And, even more puzzling, why Pride?

"When I signed Charley, he had specifically asked if there was a way we could avoid people taking the music," said Bob Heatherly, head of Music City Records, a Nashville indie label he founded in January. "He was talking about the ability to file-share and allow thousands of people to share your music without any regard to the songwriter or the artist.

"I was kind of thinking about the label, myself," he said and laughed.

But with Napster under legal attack by the nation's largest record producers, why is this breakthrough coming from a 3-month-old independent country label?

"Having worked for major labels the better part of 30 years, (I can say that) sometimes you just get to where the money's so big that you don't want to rock the boat," Heatherly said.

"I felt this at Time Warner, that we were behind the eight ball, where we had waited too long to work on the technology of the Internet. So I think they're playing catch up right now."

Heatherly contacted Phoenix start-up SunComm, whose work on the technology has come into demand recently. SunComm's John Aquilino tracks the industry's newfound interest to factors such as the affordability and availability of CD burning and ripping technology, the rise of peer-to-peer networking such as Napster, and improvements in broadband and compression technologies.

"They came together all about the same time, which really created a problem," he said.