Yip yip, know what you mean, that why I think CD's will not fade out. Plastic covers with print outs aren't really the same, but I'd say you could get a work around, but other covers, like special editions (Radiohead's Hail to The Theif, Sigur Ros' Von and Takk...) can't really be reproduced. There are other albums which the covers and inlay cards have been deadly and adds to the whole package, example: SFA's Phantom Phorce whereby you make up the sleeve to be like an old style Arcade game and you can put you're portable CD player into it and listen to it from the Arcade Machine - class. Jaysus, that was a bit of waffle and off topic wasn't it, sorry. To answer you question - no, no original Idea.

It's an original idea, but not exactly one that makes economic sense for two reasons. First, the artwork probably costs more to produce in terms of manufacturing cost (not taking royalties into account) than the actual CD. Second, it aids piracy, not simply what the music industry often refers to as piracy like copying a CD from a friend or downloading a few tracks from the net, but proper, wholesale, large-scale criminal piracy where masses of counterfeit discs are sold. What's to stop enterprising scum from buying huge amounts of genuine CD covers, filling them with counterfeit CDs and passing them off as the real thing? Ironically though it would mean that record company actually recoups some money, normally totally lost through piracy! Maybe it would work for SE asia? Rather than fighting the pirates, see them as an alternative distribution network?