HyCD Inc and Xing Technology Corp have reaffirmed their faith in MP3, the people's audio compression format, despite the dark forces marshaled by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to crush the nascent industry. By the end of March, HyCD and Xing hope to release a product that combines Xing's Encoder with HyCD's Play & Record CD software. The result, they say, should be the fastest, easiest and best MP3 recording package on the market. And it is RIAA, not the MP3 vendors, that should be worried, executives say. "Unless the music industry reacts faster to the rate of change the MP3 industry is going through, they will find themselves on the short end of a strong emerging new market," warned Paul Ling, president and chief executive of HyCD. "HyCD has already lined up other MP3 deals that will improve the quality of recorded MP3 audio and also give MP3 internet distributors more power and flexibility to cut MP3 audio to a customer CD." As long as MP3 lacks built-in copyright protection mechanisms, that's exactly the situation the recording industry wants to avoid.

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