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Alternate Technologies - A World Without CDs

Nice article there from @RyanF .

One thing that vaguely occurs to me is whether CDs could have been killed or limited by the US Congress and/or the European Commission deciding it was dangerous for lasers to be mass produced, and ignoring people pointing out that they're infrared lasers by saying it would be a slippery slope. Which would be objectively stupid, but plenty of other media formats have been killed by equally stupid political decisions (Ryan brings up the DAT tape, video technology update was impacted in the EEC by tariffs on VHS and Betamax attempting to protect Philips' Video 2000 system that nobody used, etc.)
 
I was just reading about how CDs created an unsustainable profit bubble for the music industry, so this article has good timing.
 
Interesting food for thought there- perhaps we end up in a situation where music ends up in a similar situation to books at the moment- vinyl sticking around partially from inertia and partially from the fact that there are people who still prefer a physical medium and don't trust digital storage long term, but where there's increasing use of an 'e-listener' for on the go high quality music?
 
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