David Galbraith has stuck his tongue firmly in one cheek and pointed out that CDs are a bigger threat to the music industry than MP3s.
Authorized online distribution of digital music files, Apple music store style, will enable copy protection within the files. Hardware devices such as iPods will continue to use protection measures at the hardware level.
CDs and CD players don't have this kind of protection, because CD standards were defined before ubiquitous file trading, it will remain easy to rip a CD to MP3. Since a CD is a physical medium, it is too costly to provide protection measures such as individual unique watermarks or serial numbers per CD.
Initially, file sharing will have migrated from Napster to P2P to 'Sneakernet' sharing. If you share CDs with friends in the school yard, then they will be able to copy them. If you borrow a CD from a library, it will be easy to rip and there will not be the same fear of doing so over the net.
And don't forget "accidental file sharing!" Read the whole thing.
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