customers were encouraged to sign their name on the longbox as part of a petition in support of the Motor Voter Bill to ease voter registration. As a result, the participating activist group Rock the Vote received 10,000 signed longboxes and presented them to the US Congress in support of the bill, which was voted into law, although Presidential approval had to wait until the Bill Clinton administration. Some merchants resisted this disapproval of the packaging, as longboxes theoretically made it harder for shoplifters to hide the items as well as avoiding friction with retailers. Several proposals for new types of packaging that served the display-size of the longbox and theft-prevention goals were developed. A common replacement consisted of locking plastic frames (security keepers) containing anti-theft detection strips, designed to roughly meet the same dimensions as the longbox to fit into the same racks in a record store, and removed by the cashier upon purchase. Eventually, as LP-sized sales racks were phased out, these frames were reduced to a size only slightly larger than the disc boxes themselves. Longbox packaging was phased out officially as of April 1, 1993, due to the controversy. At the same time, major retail stores were no longer selling vinyl records and had converted their displays to accommodate shrink-wrapped jewel cases, meeting the rising consumer demand for CDs while eliminating the need for longboxes. A further inducement came when Jeff Gold convinced Warner Music's distributors that they could save $25 million by eliminating the expense of using that packaging form and placate retailers by passing on half the savings to them to help ease the conversion to the proper display fixtures. Aside from the occasional box-set or vanity CD packaging, longbox packaging is largely obsolete. However, longboxes are still occasionally used by warehouse clubs such as Costco for both CD and DVD packaging, though the boxes are typically generic and not produced by the media distributors. Most original longboxes were discarded upon purchase, and they have since become desirable amongst music collectors. A compact disc is worth more if it is accompanied by its original longbox. References See also Compact Disc Optical disc packaging Compact disc Retail packaging Music controversies