It will always be a game of cat and mouse, they come up with one thing, someone breaks it, and they come up with something else.
The marker thing did work for a while, but I'm sure that method of copy protection is no longer being used.
The music companies had to insure the cd's play in all cd players, but are not rippable by computer readers. I wonder how the home audio cd recorders will fare in all this?
And if they play in normal cd players but not cd burners, then the issue is some hardware difference, I'm sure we can count on hardware being available which will mimic the cd players but allow ripping. Each player must still read a digital stream off the cd. We may have to buy seperate cdrom's and cd rippers, I can live with that.
I do emphasize with the music companies. They know (we all know) that the music is being pirated, which reduces their sales. And musicians don't work for free, just like I won't develop software for free. Just because it's possible to steal music without penality, does not mean it's okay to do so.