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.

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-tomic