Sony has stated that it will
replace all of the approximately 2.1 million "rootkit"-infected CDs sold. I really hope this fiasco will teach some top Sony executives a lesson, but I fear it will only make them switch to a DRM solution from a different company (First4Internet Ltd is obviously clueless, though who could have possibly guessed with a name like that?!).
The music industry is incredibly depressing at the moment. Just a few years ago going into HMV for my weekly CD was something I looked forward to; now I feel dirty giving the Big Four money and spend most of my music money on second-hand vinyl. The first CD I remember refusing to buy because of DRM was
Absent Friends by
The Divine Comedy, an astonishing work of art from a band that I've been infatuated with for an uncommonly long period of time (eight years). Neil Hannon is probably the best living song-writer and I wish I could support him, but I won't while his label thinks it's okay to fuck with my listening experience. As for Apple's iTMS: ha!
To actually answer your question, the CD doesn't know how many times it's been copied, of course. Software automatically installed on your computer keeps that record. It's more than likely a Mac will allow you to do whatever you want with the CD (a useful side-effect of owning a Mac these days). In that case you can import the music into your iTunes library, copy the AAC/MP3 files directly from your iTunes music library folder in the Finder onto a CD or USB drive, then add them to your mother's iTunes library from within her copy of iTunes. There are other ways of copying between computers but this way preserves all the metadata.
Please also take fifteen minutes to write a hand-written letter to the label in question. Do not send an email: as Sir Bob Geldof recently said, emails "give a feeling of action, which is a mistake".