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Comparisons often given between traditional media, such as
paper, and optical discs are mindnumbing and usually not very useful, since traditional
information is not what the discs hold. CDs aren't just used to hold pages and pages of
text (although some do); they hold multimedia content. In a span of just a few
years since the first CD-ROM encyclopedia, multimedia software now routinely fills discs
to capacity--and CD audio, which was the CD's first and still primary content, easily
fills discs. The point is to recognize that it is not enough to think of a CD or a DVD as
simple a lot of cheap storage--it is also an enabling technology that makes
distribution of multimedia content possible. While the cost of mass-manufacturing an optical disc is trivial (well under $1 per copy), the cost of generating content which appears the disc is not. Fortunately, until recently, the optical disc worked like the book: because the content was tied to the medium, and the medium was read-only, it was difficult to use a disc in more than one place simultaneously. Control of who had paid for the content was accomplished by controlling who had the disc. |