Verbatim clarified that these discs were advancements. The technical changes resulted in a different appearance and the ability for higher burning speeds, the changed media-ID was due to an adaptation with regard to other Verbatim products. Verbatim had already shipped the first modified media in early 2022. The data security of the new discs is not inferior to that of the old discs: Data should also last 1000 years, according to the manufacturer.
There must be an industry association which licenses the M-Disc trademark and disk identifier? If the Verbatim media is legit, they can be issued a unique, approved disk ID by the M-Disc trademark licensing body.
Edit: list of identifiers, https://blu-raydisc.info/licensee-list/discmanuid-licenseeli...
Afaicr, the writable optical media market has been race-to-the-bottom since ~2000.
But they're not fake - apparently they got bought out and the new media IDs belong to them.
Verbatim 25GB M-Discs are great. Have an archival copy of my files in addition to my NAS stuff. The important files are often small, so I use regular these smaller capacity M-Discs for them.