Music Industry Unveils New Piracy-Proof Format:

A Black, Plastic Disc With Grooves On It

Music bosses have unveiled a revolutionary new recording format that
they hope will help win the war on illegal file sharing which is
thought to be costing the industry millions of dollars in lost
revenue.  Nicknamed the 'Record', the new format takes the form of a
black, vinyl disc measuring 12 inches in diameter, which must be
played on a specially designed turntable'.

"We can state with absolute certainty that no computer in the world
can access the data on this disc," said spokesman Brett Campbell. "We
are also confident that no-one is going to be able to produce pirate
copies in this format without going to a heck of a lot of trouble.
This is without doubt the best anti-piracy invention the music
industry has ever seen."

As part of the invention's rigorous testing process,the designers gave
some discs to a group of teenage computer experts who regularly use
file swapping software such as Limewire and gnutella and who admit to
pirating music CDs. Despite several days of trying, none of them were
able to hack into the disc's code or access any of the music files
contained within it.

"It's like, really big and stuff," said Doug Flamboise, one of the
testers.

"I couldn't get it into any of my drives. I mean, what format is it?
Is it, like, from France or something?"

Invention: Teenage computer hackers struggled to access the new disc.

In the new format, raw audio data in the form of music is encoded by
physically etching grooves onto the vinyl disc. The sound is thus
translated into variations on the disc's surface in a process that
industry insiders are describing as 'completely revolutionary' and
'stunningly clever.'

To decode the data stored on the disc, the listener must use a special
player which contains a 'needle' that runs along the grooves on the
record surface, reading the indentations and transforming the
movements back into audio that can be fed through loudspeakers.

Even Shawn Fanning, the man who invented Napster, admits the new
format will make file swapping much more difficult. "I've never seen
anything like this," he told reporters. "How does it work?"

Pirates: Their days are numbered.

As rumours that a Taiwanese company has been secretly developing a 12
inch wide, turntable -driven, needle-based, firewire drive remain
unconfirmed, it would appear that the music industry may, at last,
have found the pirate-proof format it has long been searching for.