You know, I was reading a recent article that discussed the issue of “The Death Of The CD And Optical Drives.” Actually we can add the old standard HDD drives that will also become obsolete very soon. From the standpoint of being music collectors, I think this is an important discussion we should have (especially people who are non-technical). While the article presents valid points, there are some issues I’m worried about that doesn’t seemed to be addressed.
The Eventual Extinction Of Backup CDs.
A lot of people may not care about making backup CDs, because even back in the 90s, almost no one made them! Then people would get mad because they had to pay a $150 fee for a Geek Squad employee @ BestBuy fix their computer. Backups were so important because if you did not take the time to create the backup CDs, if your HD died, the manufacture would charge you about $125 for the OEM discs. In fact, some of the lesser expensive laptops/netbooks were not designed to create backups. They were literally “as is.”
So, having said the above, here’s why I think this is relevant to music collectors. Simply put, eventually there will no longer be any mechanisms to digitally archive our personal history. Not just music, but our family photos, or artwork you don’t want uploaded anywhere. People are increasingly relying on cloud based systems. The problem with that is, the legal aspect! The legal aspect of saving copies of your purchased music on the cloud (your possible liability); and from the standpoint of you saving your photos on a cloud service, and it gets hacked (company liability, but there is no company liable to you, because when you clicked “I Agree” before using it, you freed that company from any financial responsibility). There are so many companies and third party entities tracking your habits, collecting all sorts of browser data on you, and then profiting from you by selling that information to other companies; I think it’s worth it to fight for the continued existence of optical media. Optical media is the only permanent storage that is least likely to malfunction. When and if CD media do become extinct, the law should require manufactures to have OEM recovery available on line for free download. Which probably means you would have to save it on a USB drive (hopefully that will still exist). All of this adds to the very real reality that we are facing a significant loss of our music and cinematic culture.