The legal quandry of high tech music

["Andy Gough, x4-2906, pager 513, CH2-59" <AGOUGH%FAB6@sc.intel.com>]

>> I'm waiting for DAT to settle down, so I don't have to waste any
>> money on over-priced Read Only CD's.
>
>Why do you think that waiting for DAT's will help you any?  First of
>all, erasable, recordable CD's will probably be here before DAT's get
>cheap.  Secondly, it's going to take a long time, if it ever happens
>at all, for pre-recorded DAT's to be ramped up as a typical form for
>music purchase.  CD players can now be gotten for as low as $50!  And
>you can purchase CD players that will output the digital information
>and let you record it on a DAT recorder.  If you wait long enough to
>buy CD's, the government may muck their fingers in things and madate
>that CD players look for a certain code on the CD, and if it exists,
>not output the digital information.  Of course, CD's already
>manufactured do not have this code on the them.  Then again, CD's will
>almost certainly come down in price someday...  Then yet again, maybe
>not.

Hey wait a second.  If the CD contains the code, the CD player would 
certainly have to still output digital information--what else are CD
players good for?  Instead, I'd expect the DAT to look for the code coming
from the CD player's digital outputs, and then not record if it sees the
code.  But if the code is a fixed length, then a simple digital circuit
placed . . ..

-andy