Dataplay: a product without a market

CNN talks about the new Dataplay media format, which is a 1-inch disc housed in a small plastic cartridge. The advantage of Dataplay is that it is considerably smaller than a 5-inch CD. The disadvantages are: the discs hold a total of 500MB when using both sides (compared to 650MB on one side of a CD), the music is stored in a compressed format so it is not of as high quality as a CD, the music has copy controls so you can’t rip it and play it on your computer, you have to get all new players for them (which, of course, cost $300 since they’re new technology) and the price of prerecorded music on Dataplay is the same as prerecorded CDs.

The music industry loves it because of the copy controls. When will they understand that copy control is not a desirable feature for consumers? This product makes me think back to the heady days of 1999 when all ideas could be brought to fruition, even bad ones.