[media-credit name=’JESSE BLOCH/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Members of the city's Vending Oversight Committee briefly discussed the issue of selling compact discs on the State Street Mall and Capital Concourse Wednesday.

Previously, the Committee discussed amending vendor regulations to declare CDs are not handcrafted goods and thus cannot be sold on either State Street Mall or Capitol Concourse.

However, members did not vote on the issue after they agreed they did not have sufficient information to make a decision.

During the meeting, some members argued books can still be sold in the area, and this complicates amending regulations of CD sales.

Committee member Diana Housein-Salaita said vendors who sell books are essentially in the same situation as up-and-coming artists looking to promote their products.

"CDs can't be sold because they're mass-produced; but books are also mass-produced and they are allowed," she said. "That's not fair."

According to Housein-Salaita, the amendment currently allows vendors to sell books provided the work is original, the author who wrote the work is present and the seller wrote the book.

Yet even if all these conditions are true, the book still might be mass produced, Housein-Salaita argued and said these conditions should be the same for musical artists.

Housein-Salaita also said in order to approve the amendment, the Committee should define the term "mass produced."

But Committee member Rosemary Lee said literature is considered hand crafted, where CDs are technology and, therefore, are not hand crafted.

"To me, hand crafted means you use your hands — beading, painting or anything creative," she added.

However, Committee chair Warren Hansen said even if the amendment was reworded, allowing for certain CD sales would only open doors to allowing all CD sales.

"What we don't want is a big company to come in and sell an artist's CDs," he said. "People now are selling CDs that aren't even their own music, and I'm opposed to that."

Hansen said the Committee should explore some exceptions to the mass production rule, possibly creating the same exception for CDs that are given for books.

"There certainly can be some exceptions," Hansen said. "But in general, we really need to prohibit most mass-produced goods."

According to Hansen, the Committee will discuss the issue separately and in detail at the next meeting, scheduled for either March or April.