lainestump@rcn.com (Laine Stump) was right that it was the
new policies in place at Gracenote.

> Can it be reconfigured to use freedb (http://www.freecddb.org)?

Yes, this was a pretty trivial manual change after "make patch"
in pkgsrc/audio/cdd.  Probably someone should update the package.

(Alternatively, if one fusses around with nsswitch.conf,
one could temporarily work around this for all affected
applications by using /etc/hosts entries which lie about
the addresses of the relevant servers.  But I didn't
suggest that.)

> An alternate method might be to make cdd untruthfully report itself as
> some other, licensed, application.

DMCA issues for Americans?

        Sean.