The way the music dies Tanyia Johnson and Steven Neuman Illustrators CD rot renders compact discs unreadable, causing users to lose data permanently By Steven Neuman News Reporter May 21, 2004 They were supposed to last for 100 years. They were supposed to become family heirlooms, allowing home movies and pictures to literally defy time and keep memories as fresh as the day they were made. But the compact disc, as it turns out, may not exactly last forever. In fact, some CDs undergo "CD rot," the slow, gradual destruction of the data they contain. In manufactured CDs, the...