I had just bought Dec, Jan, and Feb issues, and read the following (regarding transferring deteriorating cassettes of Larry Jennings to CD) in Genii Speaks, December issue:
"The process is permanent, and won't deteriorate".
From what I've come across, this may not be true. I'm searching now for information on this, and so far came up with the following statement in a post at:
<http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/cdl/1989/0049.html>
"3. HOWEVER: to the best of my knowledge, NO manufacturer of
polycarbonate/aluminum/resin digital media will assert a life
span of more than "ten to thirty years." They just don't know
enough yet to know whether CD is an archival medium; at the
moment, the assumption is that it is NOT."
If you are concerened about archival quality, don't assume you can record CD's and assume they will be permanent; there's room for caution if the long term data retention is important. Also, at the local Linux user group tonight, I was advised when asking about this issue, against using Maxell recordable CD's, due to improper protection of the recording layer.
I'm still researching this issue, which I think I first came across on Slashdot <http://slashdot.org/>