Music buyer beware: SunnComm announced last week the dubious milestone that it had shipped over one million restricted MediaMax audio CDs in March and expects to beat those numbers in April. The MediaMax M4 suite of "Digital Content Enhancement" technologies is built using the Microsoft Windows Media 9 Series platform.

When deployed at the mastering stage, the company's MediaMax technology can be used by record labels to control how buyers use the digital files on an audio CD. MediaMax's goal is to restrict consumers who share music with friends by only allowing the sharing of songs that can be downloaded and listened to for a limited number of days, a limited number of plays, or until a specific expiration date arrives.

Restricted CDs are accused of trampling fair use rights and have raised the ire of music fans around the world, but SunnComm claims its technology "allows consumers to share music with friends in the spirit of sharing as it was intended while respecting the copyrights of the artists by sending legal and licensed music tracks instead of unauthorized copies."

The company's Peter H. Jacobs adds that as SunnComm's technology evolves, "we are finding increasing acceptance among record company executives and consumers in the marketplace." SunnComm had experienced a setback late last year when it was discovered that holding down a computer's shift key could disable the MediaMax restrictions.