Thomas Shaddup writes:

As a welcomed side effect, not only we'd get a device for circumvention of just about any contemporary (and possibly a good deal of the future ones) optical media "protections"

This is only for the minimal forms of "protection" which are designed to work with existing CD/DVD players. If you look at the new audio formats like SACD, they use encrypted data. All your lasers won't do you any good unless you can pry a key (and the algorithm!) out of a consumer player, which won't be easy assuming it is in a tamper-resistant unit. And you can bet the industry won't make the mistake again of allowing software-based players, as they did with the DeCSS affair. In short, you're fighting yesterday's war. Try looking ahead a bit to see where the battlegrounds of the future will be contested.