While not as openly hostile as the kind of stuff that Sony was doing with their active-rootkitting stuff, it’s actually not that hard to create a CD which many applications find unrippable: wander over to Ed Felton’s Freedom to Tinker blog for instructions on how to Make Your Own Copy-Protected CD with Passive Protection.

Note: this really only works for Windows. You can rip these CDs using Macs or Linux just fine. Way to go Microsoft!