A California woman has filed a lawsuit against an independent record label for embedding technology in CDs that blocks people from listening to songs on a computer. The suit, filed in California Superior Court in Marin County, alleges that Denver, Colo.-based Fahrenheit Entertainment misled consumers by failing to include an adequate disclaimer on CDs encoded with digital copyright-protection software. The suit also cites SunnComm, the Phoenix-based software company that created the protection program as a preliminary measure to prevent people from distributing digital copies of the songs over the Internet.

The lawsuit said the protected album, "Charley Pride: A Tribute to Jim Reeves," does not offer a disclaimer that it will not operate on computer CD players. It also requires a consumer to register personal information in a proprietary Web site before downloading the songs onto a computer, raising privacy concerns, the suit says. "The law requires companies who are selling products to give the consumer material information that is relevant to making decisions about whether to buy the product or not, and Fahrenheit did not do that," Ira Rothken, the attorney who filed the suit, said Friday.