Replace Your Music....Again

sethadam1 writes "I was not at all surprised to find that experts are predicting the death of the compact disc in as little as 5 years. This article over at Ananova suggests the next format of music will be little fingernail-sized cards. As cool as these sound, is anyone else worried that sneaky industry folks might try to distribute all new music in DRM'ed WMA files?" Yeah, this description sounds basically like bigger Magic Gate, that wonderful situation where you can pay more than normal to get DRM. Update: 11/13 16:45 GMT by H : As RobertB-DC pointed, this is sort of a dupe - see our previous article.

Just in Case of /. ing

[Anonymous Coward]

CDs 'could be history in five years'

Compact discs could be history within five years, superseded by a new generation of fingertip-sized memory tabs with no moving parts.

Scientists say each paper-thin device could store more than a gigabyte of information - equivalent to 1,000 high quality images - in one cubic centimetre of space.

Experts have developed the technology by melding together organic and inorganic materials in a unique way.

They say it could be used to produce a single-use memory card that permanently stores data and is faster and easier to operate than a CD.

It's claimed that turning the invention into a commercially viable product might take as little as five years.

The card would not involve any moving parts, such as the laser and motor drive required by compact discs. Its secret is the discovery of a previously unknown property of a commonly-used conductive plastic coating.

US scientists at Princeton University, New Jersey, and computer giants Hewlett-Packard combined the polymer with very thin-film, silicon-based electronics.

The device would be like a standard CD-R (CD-recordable) disc in that writing data onto it makes permanent changes and can only be done once. But it would also resemble a computer memory chip, because it would plug directly into an electronic circuit and have no moving parts.

A report in the journal Nature described how the researchers identified a new property of a polymer called PEDOT.

PEDOT, which is clear and conducts electricity, has been used for years as an anti-static coating on photographic film. Researchers looked at ways of using PEDOT to store digital information. In the new memory card, data in the form of ones and zeroes would be represented by polymer pixels.

When information is recorded, higher voltages at certain points in the circuit grid would "blow" the PEDOT fuses at those points. As a result, data is permanently etched into the device. A blown fuse would from then on be read as a zero, while an unblown one that lets current pass through is read as a one.

Story filed: 18:07 Wednesday 12th November 2003

Re:Benefit of the upgrade

[16K Ram Pack]

But they kinda fall into the "not good enough".

In the UK, the large supermarkets started undercutting record shops by importing from other EU countries. The record company response was to start releasing "special editions" for the UK with video clips/a few extra crap tracks/remixes.

Most people won't pay the extra money for a few gimmicks. It was music quality and size that sold CDs. People have a replacement on the size front - MP3 players. They won't do much more about quality.

less dense than DVD

[morcheeba]

A DVD has a volume of 13.56 cm^3 [usbyte.com], and stores up to 17 GB (2 sides, each dual layered). That yields a density of 1.25 GB/cm^3, and I was being generous by including the hole in the volume measurement. Surely they can do better.

Also, seeing as this hasn't come out yet, it will compete with other future products, like blueray [tdk.com], which weighs in at 23.3 GB/side and 3.4 GB/cm^3.

Re:Already here in Montreal

[freeweed]

Toys R Us has been selling those things North America wide for many years now. So has Wal-Mart.

They're nothing like the posted story at all. Basically, you're talking incredibly low quality sound, and afaik not even complete songs. They use similar technologies to those talking Simpsons toys, or the Star Wars Commreader - basically, take the cheapest solid state storage medium you can find, cram as much as you can onto it by reducing the audio quality down to almost noise, hook up some cheap DAC and a 30 cent Radio Shack speaker, and sell it as a TOY for pre-teens.

Just slightly different from a 1 gigabyte storage medium intended to hold CD quality albums played back on actual stereo equipment.

Re:What?

[dasmegabyte]

Uh, sorry to say this man, but the per-client decryption fee for every method of DRM I can think of is WAY less than the licensing fees people paid to SONY for CD mechanisms back in the day. Those were around $5 a unit, if I remember correctly, whereas per-client decrtption licenses are generally under $1.

Licensing technology is the way we pay for research. I think it's unconscionable that you don't want companies to make money off the riskiest part of business.

Re:Except

[proj_2501]

which do you mean?

there are HDCD and SACD formats which have multiple layers and thus can have more channels of sound

or do you mean the cd with something like a video included, which is usually only used for singles anyway?

Re:DRM is a *feature*

[zootread]

No, I don't want machinists or truck drivers on grass or crack cocaine (or programmers, just look at the disastrous products from Redmond).
Repeat after me: drug tests at work are good.

You've gotta be kidding. First fo all, the cocaine users will be able to pass drug tests if they know in advance, cocaine does not stay in your system very long (2-3 days I think). So a business that drug tests is likely to have a few (or a lot) cocaine users.

Its the marijuana smokers who are the victims of drug tests. Marijuana use can be detected a month after your last use, sometimes more.

I'm a programmer. So you think I should not able to use marijuana when I'm at home on my own free time? Please explain why you think this. Thankfully, I work for someone who is pro-legalization of marijauna (and thus is strongly against drug testing). It doesn't matter what I do in my spare time, as long as I produce quality work.

I don't want truck drivers to be drunk. But its not illegal for them to drink when they're not working.

I hope you're not one of those people who thinks that marijuana use is harmful and that it should be illegal. Like I've said many times before, cook it in butter, and eat it, and its very healthy. Its very unfortunate such a harmless and useful drug is illegal.

Re:wierd dimensions

[alexq]

They're saying they store a gigabyte of information per cubic centimeter - but the devices they plan to sell are fingertip-sized and paper-thin -- and thus will hold (presumably much?) less than a gigabyte. :) Compact discs could be history within five years, superseded by a new generation of fingertip-sized memory tabs with no moving parts. Scientists say each paper-thin device could store more than a gigabyte of information - equivalent to 1,000 high quality images - in one cubic centimetre of space. So they are fingertip sized, paper thin, and a cubic centimeter? I'm having trouble forming a mental image of this...

Re:fp

[michael_cain]

why would they use drm wma?

One reason is that portions of WMA are covered by PATENTS. Until those MS patents expire, MS can absolutely control who can legally implement players for the content, and the terms under which they are allowed to do the implementation. For example, the license may include large monetary penalties for failure to honor the DRM flags. Unlike the situation under DMCA, which attempts to block reverse engineering on copyright grounds, and may be subject to overturn on the basis of fair use precedents, reverse engineering of patented techniques has always been illegal and the case law all supports that.

I can't find the links, but IIRC, at least one open source program for converting between different media formats, has withdrawn support for WMA because MS threatened them with a patent infringement lawsuit. The only real defense against an existing patent is to invalidate it in court, which can be a VERY expensive undertaking.

OT: Use of "sic"

[snilloc]

"sic" is used when quoting a source that contains a misspelling or other error. It's used to show that you, the one doing the quoting, are aware of the error and that you did not introduce the error.

Re:Since nobody said it yet.....

[Fjord]

Oh, it's been said [google.com]. Practically every time one of these articles come up...