this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Are you sure those CDs couldn't be re-used? I've got some promotional DVD that could still be re-used. It only had like 70MB written. You could just format it, and use the rest. I did that stuff multiple times. (But not all of them are recordable)
Once you get into serious quantity, getting a "plain" (Read-only) CD or DVD manufactured is much cheaper than rewritable. AOL was junkmail-bombing the entire country.
At the time, CD writers were not a common thing. Supposedly, CD-RW that could be rewritten debuted in 1997. AOL wouldn't have been giving those out. You paid a premium for them compared to the write-once CD-R, which is what most people I knew who burned CDs at home were using. AOL just sent mass-pressed CD-ROMs.
It would be interesting to know how much waste their CD mailing campaign produced. I think it would be a nice gesture to recognize their accomplishment with a monument: the Steve Case Memorial Landfill.