From: prp17 at adelphia.net (Phillip R. Paradis)
Subject: overburning edit of molded cdroms feasible?

Saber Taylor wrote:
> Scenario: chinese agent buys molded cdroms from stores
> in Washington D.C. and overburns new data along the
> same spiral with a specialized cdrom drive. Returns
> the cdroms to the story which then re-shrinkwraps and
> puts back on the shelf. 1.) Is this possible? 2.)
> Could firmware automatically do a quick check for
> this?

1. Recording data on a pressed CD is physically impossible. Such CDs do 
not have a "burnable" photosensitive layer; the data is physically 
imprinted into the plastic, and the reflective layer is applied directly 
to the molded plastic.

2. Most retailers will not accept opened software, movies, cassettes, 
etc. for return, unless exchanged for the same item; since this is 
generally only useful to the purchaser if the originally purchased media 
is defective; the returned item is generally returned to the 
manufacturer rather than being resold. Many retailers adopted such 
policies at the behest of the publishers, who were sick of being ripped 
off by pirates. It's also illegal in many places to resell product that 
has been previously used without informing the customer. Retailers are 
even less likely to resell returned software it today's era of software 
activation schemes; if the prior purchaser had installed the software, 
any subsequent purchaser would be unable to do so, as the license code 
would have already been tied to the first purcahser's hardware. (Also, 
most software is sealed in a tamper-evident manner, and customers tend 
to be very fussy about purchasing product that has obviously been 
opened, whether it be software or Scotch tape.) Any retailer that DOES 
resell previously sold, opened software should be considered suspect anyway.

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