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MPAA Finds First Actual DVD Copiers in U.S.
MattW writes: "Yahoo! is reporting that the first pirate DVD bust has occurred. Funny, isn't it, how the pirates don't need to crack any encryption to make copies of DVDs, but we have to ban DeCSS anyhow?"
1 down, 39,000 more illegal DVD burning rings to go. Aw, well, it was worth the effort. Face it, trying to shut down these things is as pointless as trying to stop music piraters.
now the MPAA will have extra justification for any suits against DVD copying. Takes a greedy pirate to ruin it for the rest of us :-(
its so GD simple, just capture the music/video/ etc. right of the lead!!! route it to your audio/video card and of you go! even better if you can use a digital IO with a "pirate" operating system that you can modify without permission *gasp* *choke*
Sig you!
what i meant to say, was DVD recording, not copying. Not to say that i have a problem with copying, as long as it is genuinly used for a back up copy.
Anyone out there know anything about movie-> DVD schedules? They mentioned in hte article that there were 3 movies yet to be released on dvd and that these were "wholly inferior products"... Its my guess that unless they were burning these dvd's onto cheese wedges(mmm edible DVDS) that thses were just high quality rips burned onto a dvdr... which would explain the inferior product. Again this article is lacking in details ...
"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.
Could someone please explain to me how a digital copy could be "wholly inferior" to the original media?
Not that I condone the actions of these people, but honestly...it's not like we're talking (S|X)VCDs...
DeCSS *IS* used for lots of DVD pirating. Just not through garages full of burners. And the article says that lots of the DVDs weren't released on DVD yet anyway, which means they were just a bunch of guys using Cams or Screeners from the 'net and burning them onto DVD. Lets face it, DVDs are incredibly easy to rip, and movies are even easier to rip without ever even touching the DVD format, thanks to the internet. What the MPAA needs to do is... Well, I don't know. There aren't any simple answers!
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
From what my younger brother says (he went to uni for a while) there's plenty of pirate DVDs that can be downloaded from the web too. Are they going to close down all those as well then?
Video Game cheats, hints a
i'm curious. does anybody have any info on the status of DeCSS use in europe?
Whose law? Surely not God's law! God has said he who shareth the bread wreaketh of wine and spirits. That is the single greatest factor in promoting DVD copying!
I'm actually glad they caught this guy. I agree with the MPAA and RIAA that piracy is bad (although I don't agree with their digital piracy campaigns), and the more actual pirates that can be shut down, the better. If they actually start going after the pirates rather than the consumers, it would be a nice start.
A quick question about quality of pirated DVD's. If it is a digital copy of a released DVD how can the quality be deminished? I thought the whole digital bit per bit copy guarenteed perfect or at least near perfect copies. As far as software goes it only takes one bit gone bad in a copy to fubar a program.
I mean I know it's technically a "bust" but come on. We're talking about two tower computers full of DVD-R burners from the story details. This sounds more like Uncle Joe's moonshine stand than the serious copy operations I saw overseas. I'd put this one on the same level as Johnny downloading music and burning all his friends a copy. Admittedly the amount of cash on hand leads one to beleive that it was a commercial venture, but the lack of "we've been investigating these fellas for quite a while" also makes me wonder if they didn't have a nice snortable sideline business as well and it was THAT business that got the whole shebang busted. When meth labs get busted locally there's usually a whole storm of other sideline illegal activities that also crop up... just my thoughts. .
Find out about my new childrens book: SS Death Camp Criminal Batallion Go To Monte Carlo For The Massacre
Movie studios tout first DVD bust in U.S.
Sun Mar 24,12:37 AM ET
John Borland CNET News.com
A rogue DVD-burning lab was shut down by law enforcement in New York on Friday, the first time that's happened in the United States, according to the movie studios' trade association.
The Motion Picture Association of America said it helped the New York police department shut down an unlicensed DVD-copying operation based out of a Bronx apartment.
These types of raids and closures have become increasingly common in the past several years when it comes to videocassettes and illegally distributed CDs. But this was the first such raid on a DVD-production operation in the United States, the MPAA said.
"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement. "We are grateful to the NYPD for their outstanding police work."
The movie industry has ratcheted up the pace of its complaints about online video piracy in recent months, as analysts report that hundreds of thousands of copies of feature films are traded or downloaded every day using file-swapping applications or other means.
But much of the industry's efforts are still dedicated to physical piracy. The MPAA estimates that the industry loses about $3 billion to non-Internet piracy per year. Much of that has come in the form of illegally copied videos, DVDs and video discs in Asia.
The New York raid caught a relatively small fish in its net. Police said they confiscated two computer towers, 15 DVD burners, 1,208 copies of pirate DVDs and about $5,200 in cash. Only one person was arrested.
While many pirate operations do operate on this limited scale, authorities have shut down some many times larger. One of the largest found last year was in England, where police closed a lab containing more than 1,100 videocassette recorders making duplicate copies of movies.
Some of the movies found haven't yet been released to video, including "The Lord of the Rings," "Training Day" and "Ali."
"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.
Hm... This is an interesting statement. I wonder if the people who they busted were actualy copying existing DVDs, or whether they were instead videotaping movies in theaters (or from other sources) and burning them onto DVDs. In the latter case, I don't think that CSS would be involved at all.
Excellent point that copying the disc encrypted isn't a problem. Its like a cabinet we all have a key to. Any DVD player can just unlock it. Which raises the question is it possible to ever secure mass media from reproduction? Any schemes or ideas I've heard of ruin the ability to play the media in computers. Like the audio CD's that started popping up last summer. Look at the standards battle that unleashed with phillips saying they couldn't use the compact disc logo on those...
I somehow doubt that straight DVD piracy is truelly viable because of the current cost of blank DVD media, especially once all the other costs are added up.
Give it a year or 2 though & it definitly will be.
"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.
[emphasis mine]
Funny... I thought the whole reason the MPAA was scared of digital data was because it could be copied perfectly and not create a wholly inferior product. Or maybe it's inferior because Jack doesn't make lots of money off of it.
(not that I support this sort of copying -- this guy was obviously a parasite, trying to live off the work of others)
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
In related news slashdot tries to break the world record for the number of acronyms in one headline.
Video Game cheats, hints a
The only way to stop stuff like this is to put a few of the individual users in jail. The only ones getting in trouble are the big groups. If the indivual user is scared of getting caught, he/she will be less likely to do it.
Hacker Media
When I went to this article, I got a flashing red banner ad with the words "COPY DVD'S!!!!" in big white letters.
Now that's what I call targeted advertising. Did anybody else get this, or was it a fluke?
I think the MPAA like to call them inferior even if they're not - just to try and stop people from buying them. Then again the ones that aren't copied from DVDs - but are somebody with a small camcorder in the cinema are inferior.
Video Game cheats, hints a
Like whom has 15 dVd burner's anyway? I know they, I mean the one guy, are going down like a HELLIUM BALLON!
Thanks
Yeah, right.
Anyone who's been on IRC or Gnutella or... lately knows that DVD rips are everywhere. While DeCSS might have started out as an innocent project to get DVD playback working under Linux, it has been thoroughly corrupted. This site doesn't suggest that the code is being used for "Interoperability," but rather piracy. YMMV, of course, but face it - people are ripping DVDs and transmitting free copies over the 'net.
BTW, everyone blasts the DMCA, but that act really only brought the US in-line with WIPO treaty requirements. If you want to blame something, blame the right thing, and know that all signatory countries will be enacting similar legislature.
Funny, isn't it, how the pirates don't need to crack any encryption to make copies of DVDs, but we have to ban DeCSS anyhow?
It doesn't state any such thing in the story. Where are you getting your details?
Maybe DeCSS is being used for lots of pirating -- but so are ReplayTVs, VCRs hooked up to each other, photocopy machines, etc. The fact is, you don't ban photocopiers because they can infringe on a book copyright, and you shouldn't ban DeCSS because it can infringe on a DVD copyright, because it has a legitimate use. And again, DeCSS doesn't enable any real pirating you can't do anyhow. bit-by-bit rips of DVDS, still encoded, can be transferred and burned out, and digital copies can be ripped after decoding by reading the video output.
What does the MPAA need to do? Obviously, they need to donate a lot of money to Senator Fritz Hollings, so he'll try to make american consumers pay for extra technology to police us. After all, it's worth assuming that every American is just a criminal waiting to commit so we can get more content online and encourage broadband adoption, right?
Yes, I suppose the market for watching shit-quality VCDs and DivX rips is a huge one. Certainly a major threat to the movie industry. After all, when you can watch a low quality illegal rip, why would you ever want to shell out the collossal $3 it costs to rent the damn thing?
.. that if they are busting guys with only 15 DVD burners, then they really aren't reclaiming much money. They must be making ridiculous amounts of money on DVD's to want to shut down somebody so small. Maybe they need to lower their prices some?
As for the 'wholly inferior' comment, is it possible that the DVD's he was talking about had no special features? Granted, I know he's trying to make it sound like pirated DVD's are ripping people off (they arent if they're getting movies out faster...) but it's difficult to imagine that they were able to also get the extra footage that often accompanies DVD's.
"Derp de derp."
The proper attribution is clearly written at the top of the article as seen on Yahoo. The story originated from John Borland at CNET News.com. That is who should be given credit for the story, not Yahoo. And you might have actually linked to the original article so that the originating site - a source of many /. discussions - could have realized a little revenue from the referrals. Nothing wrong with Yahoo, it's a very convenient place to find stuff from all over, but very little of the written content there is original to them.
Here is the article at the original publisher's site. Ironically, as I am looking at it right now, the accompanying advertisement is about a CD Burner sale at Gateway.
And of course, the article fails to mention that the LOTR and Ali bootlegs were videotaped in the theater, and that is why they were available before the movies were released on video or DVD. It always amazes me that the MPAA chicken-littles allow us to assume that most of the piracy problem is due to their own insiders bootlegging stuff before it is released. You'd think they'd want to make sure we all knew that this stuff was bootlegged with a camcorder in the movie theatre, not ripped off the production line by one of their own.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Chances are that the MPAA isn't lieing about the whole inferior product comment. I highly doubt that the piraters were making 1:1 copies of the unreleased DVDs.
Remember that these guys are distributors and not "releasers". They've never actually had their hands on the original DVD. They download the DVD-RIP from a releasing group and burn it. Personally I've seen the LOTR rip and the quality is excellent, but I wouldn't call it DVD Quality.
BTW, the LOTR rip was 3 CDs long.
Man: I'm here about your DVD's.
Female Sales Clerk: Are you here to buy some of our adult DVD's sir?
Man: No, ma'am. Agent Frank Dreben, MPAA-squad.
Female Sales Clerk: Is this some kind of bust?
Man: Why yes, it's very impressive...
Sounds suspicious to me...
This very small fish just happens to get busted when the --AAs are trying to brand us all as thieves.
How much was his gear worth? Maybe a tax-deductible hour or tow of Valenti's pay?
I smell a rat.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
They are just trying to get publicity.
This is the only anwser. ;) They have to put a huge tax in this type of media to make the MPAA\RIAA happy. I think Canada is already doing it. So now it will be like $50 for a DVD-R and $80 for a DVD-RW.
So when is this tax going to come? Any comments?
atto
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product,"
.sig ;-)
Indeed.
People, don't be duped by inferior hollywood products! Buy Japanime! Buy Hong Kong action flicks! Buy the original french movies instead of their inferior US remakes!
(and yes, I know about my
You can't take the sky from me...
"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product," MPAA Chief Executive Jack Valenti said in a statement.
Well, when you copy a wholly inferior product, you get the same thing out, right?
Jagoffs.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Unfortunately the MPAA, RIAA, and all those intelligent Record/Movie companies just keep shelling out money to stop piracy. The MPAA and RIAA scare the companies about piracy.
Just imagine if Mc Donalds, Burger King, Checkers, etc had there own Association, BurgerAA. Now come these little burger joints that copy their recipes. So the BAA goes after the small time burger joints and the prices go up on Mc D's, BK's, etc burgers. So of course small time burger joints will keep popping up. They fill that gap where people that can't or don't want to pay so much for a burger. In the end, it isn't about the product, but the service and how much it costs. Enforcement is a waste of time and money, it is not a solution. If movies and music costed as much as it took to produce, distribute, and still make a fair profit, people would buy more and all of a sudden pirating would become a thing of the past because it would cost them more time and money to make copies than it would for companies.
The biggest problem is that our politicians do not understand the problem nor the solution. They, like the companies, are brought to fear piracy by organizations like the MPAA and RIAA.
Question everything.
Look at the titles: "The Lord of the Rings," "Training Day" and "Ali."
Most likely, these are screeners, or some sort of other illegitimate copies from either a promo video or the distributed film. The quality is --not-- the same as a truly produced DVD, (though it is pretty damn good.)
Overall, I have no qualms about them arresting these people. This isn't just casual piracy. This is fairly serious bootlegging which, as much as I hate to say it, does impose an adverse effect on the studios' bottom line.
Imagine, would you rather pay $10 for a pirated DVD or go pay $7/person to go see it in the theatre. For those people that have surround sound systems and large tvs, there's not really much argument.
Just last week I commented to my dad about how there must have been a major bust of pirated DVDs in the Bronx.
Being that I'm a traveling salesman, and everyday I'm traveling from one side of the Bronx to the other, I noticed that the DVD hawkers don't "carry" them in stock any more. From Fordham Road, East Tremont Ave, Jerome Ave, Kingsbridge Ave, Southern Blvd, Westchester Ave and a few other hotspots they just blinked out of site. One day I went to meet a couple of distributors in the commercial neighborhood-less area called Hunts Point, and there they were, the piraters themselves, with cajas y cajas del los DVDs.
Of course I stocked up, but that was 3 weeks ago. I havent seen them since.
I sig, therefore I was.
There is no way I am gonna read that entire paragraph. Seems like a real hoot though (*cough*).
Hm. Yeah, in re-reading, it does strike me as having come from one of those inner spirals where I didn't realize just how far I'd wandered from the herd.
Ah well. I guess you can go pirate a Pauly-Shore DVD if you want some cheep laughs which don't require any input energy whatsoever.
Weirdly enough, I just found in the last five minutes an article which talks about how Alzheimer's is much less prevelent in those who actively use their brains during their lives. You have lots of medical insurance, I trust?
-Fantastic Lad
"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product,"
I thought the entire purpose of DVD Burners was to make an exact copy? So what exactly is inferior? You don't get the 2page leaflet or the colorful keep-case? Or is it that you don't get the barage of unwanted advertisements telling you to
BUY THIS DVD
and
BUY THAT DVD
and
BUY FORTY WARNER BROTHERS DVDs AND THE FORTY-FIRST IS HALF OFF!
Never argue with an idiot, he'll just lower you to his level and beat you with experience.
Funny statement from Jack, "Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product." I thought the whole purpose of encrypting them is because the copies are indestinguishable form the originals.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
Quote, J. Valenti MPAA Chief Executive:
"Pirates seek to profit off the enormous popularity of DVDs by using the latest in technology to illegally manufacture DVD copies of Hollywood films, and again dupe consumers into purchasing a wholly inferior product,"
How is it wholly inferior? Are they skipping every 64th bit? Are they failing to copy the FBI warning at the beginning of it? Maybe they're disabling the commercials that you can't fast forward past.
See, I've ALWAYS been against people making copies, and selling them. But damned if this asshole doesn't make it impossible for me to have any sympathy.
umm, do you consider less than 40 nationwide "a lot" ?
You make it impossible to play on a computer, all you have to do is have a "legitimate" player convert the signal to analog for viewing, and put the analog output in to a computer input, and voila, any protection scheme has just been cracked. They just think we're too stupid to realize this...
BlackGriffen
Valenti then considered for a moment. "That's our job."
The ______ Agenda
If this involved no future followup whatsoever then the answer to your question is yes! [grin]
When new bill is being introduced CBDTPA suddenly we hear and read a lot of stories about pirates,busting etc.
I wonder how long this bust been put on hold,to make strong statement by arresting individual in the
"right time"
Same situation applies to Valenti when he has started crying about all the losses caused by pirates.
You make it impossible to play on a computer, all you have to do is have a "legitimate" player convert the signal to analog for viewing, and put the analog output in to a computer input, and voila, any protection scheme has just been cracked.
Fast forward three years into the future. CBDTPA-compliant hardware says: "Watermark detected. Recording denied." And your pre-CBDTPA hardware has worn out after years of use. Now what do you do?
Will I retire or break 10K?
...because if CBDTPA passes I will seek out DVD bootleggers to obtain my movies. I'm even willing to pay more on a bootleg than on a "legit" disc just on principle.
Of course, I'm sure that the regulations imposed by the CBDTPA will insure that no more illegal DVD copying ever happens.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Yet another insane crusade by some american organization/government/law enforcement agency/special interrest group..
They are crazy those americans. just look at the insane projects they have started :
- a crazy "war on terrorism". (why not help solve the problems that cause terror instead of using millitary might?)
- An insane crusade against digital copying. (why not try lowering prizes so people don't have to pay for record company exec's luxury, that would probably help sales and lower piracy).
I just hope that the rest of the world eventually figures out that USA is not ever going to be a fair player, and shuts them out of the global community.
Could the MPAA's lawyers effectively kill broadband providers (and thus broadband itself) for transporting this content over their networks?
Discuss.
www.lonseidman.com
"Police said they confiscated two computer towers, 15 DVD burners, 1,208 copies of pirate DVDs and about $5,200 in cash. Only one person was arrested" Yea...I'd say he's capable of producing at least 1 billion out of the 3 they claim to lose each year. The movie industry sure needs Congress and a Gestapo to protect themselves from this guy, don't they? Ironically, the 2001 Oscars are on tonight...and it's been the most profitable year in movie history...
The New York raid caught a relatively small fish in its net. Police said they confiscated two computer towers, 15 DVD burners, 1,208 copies of pirate DVDs and about $5,200 in cash. Only one person was arrested.
Boy... some people just have it all, don't they.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
The blurb linking to the article makes a reference to DeCSS and how it didn't have to be cracked to copy the movies... says who?
:) hehe.
There's nothing in the article about HOW the movies were ripped. If you visit a site like vcdHelp you can get all the information and software you need to blow past DeCSS and make VCDs, SVCDS, and DVDs at all kinds of quality levels. As long as you have the media to burn to, you can rip and convert those movies easily (but you're still breaking through DeCSS).
In fact by reading the article and seeing reference to movies that are stil in theatres or haven't been released, if we knew the source then it would be easier to divine the method of duplication.
If it leaks from the studio pre-copy-protection, I guess copying would be a cinch. If they taped it at a theatre, then you go back to vcdhelp, and with Vdub, TMPGEnc, and other tools you could custom create the dvd easily. Same with if it was post-copy-protection.
So unless they got it before protection was implemented, I think it would be safe to assume DeCSS bypass tools were used. But then again, assumption got us this story
Is that a reason to ban DeCSS? Of course not. As we all keep saying, just 'cos you can kill someone with a baseball bat doesn't mean it should be banned.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
A rather strong word to describe people who copy copyrighted works.
It's a little hard to pay $35 (in an extreme case, RoboCop Director's cut was about that much...) for a DVD when you know they cost pennies to make.
Okay, CDs and DVDs are not cheap to produce. Everyone seems to think that the only money studios spend on discs is the actual manufacturing costs. Think about all the extra things that go into a DVD. And the insane amount of money it costs to have a top-quality video and sound studio. Also, the packaging, printing and advertising costs. And the retail markup, which usually doubles the cost (it does with CDs, anyway). Then think about how the people who would watch Robocop is a niche, and the people who would buy the director's cut on DVD is a niche of that niche; and you'll have some idea of where the $35 comes from. I'm not saying they're not making a lot of profit, or they wouldn't make more if they halved their prices, but movie and music studios aren't price-gouging as much as everyone thinks (I do think they're price gouging, for the record, but not as much as everyone thinks.)
c-hack.com |
(not that I recommend going in to this business...)
3 26050 for $4k. Buy one.
v 47gb.html for $250. Buy ten of them.
In traditional Slashdot fashion, I will now pull some prices out of my ass (sorry, that would be the Internet) and will "do the math."
The entry cost is not high. Less than $7k to profit.
Here's a DVD dupe machine with a 100-disc hopper: http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.asp?EDC=
Here's a spindle of 100 DVDs http://shop.store.yahoo.com/spectraimpex1/100pacd
Now load your dupe machine once a day for ten days.
Pick up the DVDs when finished and sell them to your dealers for $700/spindle. (they will then be resold at $10-$15/each, a very healthy profit for a street vendor.)
You have just paid for the DVD dupe machine and have made $500. You probably invested twenty hours in buying the hardware, setting it up, testing, and smoking pot with your dealers.
From now on, for every 5 hours you invest in buying and burning another 100 copies, you'll make $450. Not bad, eh?
The getting busted and going to jail part might suck, but you can get around this by doing the duping in a friendly environment. Of course friendly environments sometimes take a little away from the bottom line, but booze is cheaper in those places anyway.
Cheers,
JB
And of course, the article fails to mention that the LOTR and Ali bootlegs were videotaped in the theater, and that is why they were available before the movies were released on video or DVD.
I've seen a LOTR bootleg DVD (probably not the produced by the guys busted in this article), and it wasn't from a camcorder in a theatre. See this post for the details.
copy of the movies, but I bet they never paid the DVD licensing fees either. Oh dear, what about the children...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
One would think that they knew about this for a while, they probably know about more rings than that one, saving them for perfect political opportunities such as this one to support their stupid, stupid laws. Could we get them for withholding evidence, if this is true? : )
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
I think that's two bad arguments rolled into one. They are going after individual lawbreakers, which is futile as long as there is a profit in it. They are using the government to rubber-stamp legislation to shackle technology and innovation without understanding it. And, in your own words, like the drug war, it's all for nothing.
You've got to admire the logic you are espousing,
I mean, imagine it: someone hears one day that you can cure a mild cold by shooting yourself in the foot. He figures, 'what the hell,' goes out and buys a gun, blows a couple of toes off and the bullet misses the neighbors head by inches.
The cold persists through it's normal course and eventually the bandages come off. Despite the lack of favorable results (and the hole in the neighbor's cieling), the next time he gets the sniffles, he reaches for his revolver...
Something about this is wrong.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
From the article:
/me snickers at the fact hes ripping Training Day as he types this. Screw you MPAA...you'll never take me alive! Muwahahaha!
Some of the movies found haven't yet been released to video, including "The Lord of the Rings," "Training Day" and "Ali."
Wholly inferior in what way ? No spam insert ? No nice picture on the cover ?
Someone please correct me, but isnt the whole point of copying a DVD not to lose quality in the process ? What ? Are counterfeit burners going to drop a few 1 ans 0's in the process ?
I think the only thing inferior here is the money going into Valenti's pocket.
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
Why are there so many messages on Slashdot containing "*cough*"? Do all of you people use ViaVoice and have colds or something?
The number of good quality screeners floating around must be immense. To keep security on that lot would be impossible. Individual identification isn't really going to be possible once the VOB is lifted.
That's all this MPAA and RIAA crying is about plain and simple. Greed. They want more money your hard earned money, for you just to find out after buying the original DVD its a crappy movie. Especially when they charge $25 for a movie that's from the 1980's and can be bought on tape for about $5. That's why they wanted DVD's to become popular just to make idiots go out and buy their movie collection over again on DVD. And I don't support people selling pirated movies for money, but for free or for personally use is another thing. Also if the MPAA and RIAA think they could ever stop pirating of material they are just as big of morons as the people who started prohibition(cause you know that worked hmph!).
DON'T STEAL. The government and Microsoft hate competion.
The artical didn't mention DeCSS at all, but it did mention computers. How do you know they wern't using it?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I understand the crack comment but marijuana?
What are they going to die of obesity after eating to much or are they going to fall asleep and never want to wake up?
Marijuana is about as harmful as drinking Coke every day.
My friend in NYC bought a bootleg of Vanilla Sky on DVD. The quality was as good as screener or Telesync copies, but the bootleggers went all out with the rest. Since it is a DVD, they added a ridiculously long hi-res intro, menu with scene selection, plus some "extras." I was surprised to see so much work go into a bootleg. All in all, it was of typical quality, just fancier packaging.
And the movie sucked.
- jiggity
Here in Victoria, Australia we have regular `computer swapmeets' on Sunday at various town halls. Most of the hardware and software sold is legit, including most of the DVDs, but some are obviously pirated through Asia - the case and disc art looks a little different, they typically have chinese / bahasa indonesia subtitles, and they might occasionally be missing a couple of extra features. Sometimes its done quite well, sometimes, they haven't be able to get good cover art for the movie so they've made their own, with often hilarious results. They also occasionally try and reencode films to fit on lower capacity disks, which is pretty nasty.
But if the movie industry won't help me by allowing alll the real DVDs I've brought to be played on my home and work computer (which happen to run Linux), I won't help them by doing their detective work for them.
"You analogy is flawed. Instead of attacking it I'll just just point out that if fair use applied to digital media (which it should), you could make as many copies as you please and distribute them for free, legally. "
Where do you get this idea? Fair use has only ever meant either redistributing small portions, for review, commentary, or criticism (I think use in new artistic works might be debated, although most people doing so don't attempt it), or archival copies for your own personal use.
These uses are under heavy attack, and need to be defended.
What you are talking about is NOT fair use, and it has been illegal as long as we've had copyright.
Seriously...Slashdot needs to have an explaination of what Fair Use is right on the front page, above the banner ads.
I am glad that they caught these guys. Pirating is stealing whether it's videos on DVDs or videos sent over the internet or music traded on-line.
All of the excuses I've heard for doing so is bullshit. Is the entertainment industry gouging the consumer with high DVD prices? Yep. Does that justify stealing their intelecual property? Nope.
Everytime we violate a copyright by illegal traiding we make the MPAA and RIAA arguments for built-in hardware copy protection more justifiable. It's going to be a hard enough fight without giving the corporations additonal ammunition.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
well i logged out for this one because well... anyway i DO have a bootleg copy of one of the movies listed at the bottom of the article and i will say that it ISN'T a camcorder copy. they DO have an internal problem. I understand that this IS indeed illegal but i wanted to say that there are far larger operations using NON "wholly inferior products".
So if they want to samp out the REAL problem they need to work it out themselves. There will be no police to the rescue here.
This just proves that they arent interested in stamping out copies they are interest in getting some excuse for the SSSCA or whatever it is now.
-Coward, Anonymous
I DARE YOU TO MOD ME DOWN!! I have nearly 50 Karma and I may not go into troll mode!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"Everyone seems to think that the only money studios spend on discs is the actual manufacturing costs."
Um, no, I was including that. Check out this site: http://www.moviefxmag.com/ I bought one of their 'mags', it's really a DVD. They charge $10 per disc and it includes 60-90 mins (lost track of time) of behind the scenes footage of a few movies. I find it hard to believe these guys could be in business if it cost more than $1 per DVD to make.
The simple fact of the matter is that the cost of making one DVD disperses across millions of copies being out there. It's a case of the DVD's costing pennies to make is a bigger issue than the cost of producing the content for the DVD.
The MPAA would have little problem selling DVD's for $10 each. If that would prove inprofitable (yeah right), then they'd need to tighten their belts a bit. It is not that hard to make quality content. The reason that a DVD costs say $25 on average over the $17 VHS format (I'm pulling numbers out of my head, I bet I'm not that far off) is that the DVD has higher resolution than the VHS counterpart. Therefore, it's worth more money. They make no mention of the discs being far cheaper to make. Yet VHS stuff has gone down in price as of late.
Trust me, the MPAA seriously inflated the price of their content.
BTW, if you are interested in movie making at all, go to Barnes and Noble or Borders and get this mag, it's called MovieFX I think. Here is the URL, you can find out more there:
http://www.moviefxmag.com/
I was totally shocked when i got one of these guys, gonna subscribe to them.
"Derp de derp."
"We are grateful to the NYPD for their outstanding police work."
Since DVD's have been out for a while now, you'd think they would of busted more than one copying operation by now, especially in NY.
From the Article: "The MPAA estimates that the industry loses about $3 billion to non-Internet piracy per year."
So that's what, 15 or 16 DVD's? Maybe if the MPAA weren't charging an inordinate amount for DVD's, people wouldn't be so interested in pirating them. Keep in mind that I am not condoning piracy, but if the MPAA is truly interested in preventing piracy, the only way it will ever do so, without huge losses of freedoms for the law-abiding citizens, is to lower prices.
Does it mean "most number of dollars" or "greatest amount of income relative to the GNP" or some other number? Is this figure before or after expenses? Does this figure count non-US movies or only movies made by large US companies?
I agree, the fair use definition is a bit misunderstood here. But we have to stay focused in that they are trying to take it all away forcefully. For example, today I have the right to rip a DVD to my PC and re-edit the movie. I want to do this in order to pick up valuable editing skills. Imagine if I could make Lost in Space into a good movie! I can show it to my friends here at my place, but I can't distribute it. But that's okay! I get my education that way.
They want to forcefully prevent me from pursuing this education. This seems a bit unconstitutional to me. First off, taking my rights away is similar to putting me in jail. Therefore, I'm being punished criminal before commiting any crime. This is not what 'innocent until proven guilty' means.
Secondly, it intrudes on my ability to make a parody. I can't take a scene from a movie, or a sound bite, and use it in a parody of any sorts.
Third, it totally destroy's fair use. It's not fair use anymore. It's their rules. Scary, isn't it?
"Derp de derp."
People keep saying "hey, it costs lots of money to produce a dvd." But look, no-one asked for all the Bullshit(tm) extras you get.
/. .. ok, um just ignore that bit.
Lets start with the menus. These menus are mostly made by idiots, and are possibly some of the most irritating user interfaces in the world. Ok, so they sometimes look cool, the first time. But after going backwards and forwards and seeing the same stupid transport 20 times, it can get kinda f*cking annoying. I click on something, i make a mistake, no, i don't want to see that menu, so don't start loading it. Just give me a list of the stuff on the DVD, in a plain text form. if i really want pretty colours, i will by a player that renders the text in fun and annoying ways. This way, i can actually look through a list and choose what i want in seconds, and save the producer months of work. Most DVDs have the same format - film, trailers, out-takes, music, documentaries. You don't need to re-invent the wheel with every single disk.
The next thing is the restrictions: the whole DVD format is a bloated mess of stupid protocols that serve no purpose - CSS has been cracked, why continue to encode it and pay royalties to the dicks who invented it? same goes for macrovision - I have a legitimate reason for plugging my player into my VCR: My TV is so old it doesn't have scart/composite sockets, i need to send it modulated. But can i do this? no, i just get a messy picture, so i have to plug it into my TV card instead. Why restrict people from fast forwarding? what are you trying to prove? The player decides if its gonna process these restrictions (no-fast-forward flag) anyone can design a player that ignores them. But of course, no-one can design a player that ignores them - thats not allowed. DVD is a closed format. Why did the people choose such a restrictive system? because it's the only decent digital system around, and its the only one that the studios want you to use. They invented it, they control it, they put their content on it. Its a monopoly, simple as that.
Now don't tell me that putting some out-takes and behind the scenes bits costs allot of money. If you want to interview people, make documentaries or expensive music videos, fine, just make a cheap 'lite' version of the disk with out these bits.
What gets me more than anything, is that the average person loves DVD, they have no clue about the crapness of this format. Its not like they did anything special, AFAIK they didn't even design the compression codec or the disk, and making a menu system is hardly a nobel prize.
I'm just a loony shouting in the street. I can see all you people reading this "ok... just walk away, hes obviously slightly mad.. keep going" I'm just gonna get ignored or modded down. Just like when I threatened the president and got my comment removed from
Ahh, screw you guys, i'm going home to watch my dvd
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Is it just me, or does Jack Valenti come off as the video equivilent of a raving religious fanatic?
The cult of the RIAA / MPAA...
Fortunately, it isn't possible to yet copy hard work.
So, if hard work is legislated to be IP, and the DMCA places prohibition on copying IP, then no one will be allowed to work hard...
Ah, now I get it! So those RI/MPAA are pretty slick after all.
I do believe, however, that they are preaching to the choir, IMO.
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Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
My mirror's been here since I read the original story on Jon Johansen's bust here on Slashdot, in late 1999. Along with tens of other people I posted the mirror URL to the story, as you do. I also subscribed to a deCSS list at (IIRC) the EFF. I set up some clumsy rules to filter stuff into a separate folder, and took my three weeks Y2K holiday. When I got back (as the world had failed to end), it took me a while to go through the mai backlog, and it was IIRC two or three months later that I found what appeared to be a writ, served on me by mail, announcing I was "John Doe #13" in the DVD/CCA case (the Californian case, not the 2600 NYC case.)
... with the source on, and haven't heard anything more about it. As I'm a UK citizen, and my mirror physcially resides in the UK, I don't reckon I ned worry until they start throwing Brits into jail... so far, so good. But as they must have trawled my URL from the Slashdot story (the only place I posted it), perhaps they'll read this and order a 6am raid.
Well after I stopped laughing, and found my humble vanity URL listed in the official legal docs on the web, I wondered for a while whether I should pull it. Eventually I bought a couple of Copyleft T shirts (hey! where did they go - the site's gone!)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Then we have these learnèd scientists who claim it all happened because Mars was in the house of Venus at the time, or something, but even this evidence was not sufficient to sway the Egyptologists.
However, all Egyptologists have turned out to be crazies.
hehehe, that's a very strange piece of literature you have found yourself! I hope you can confirm my understanding of it. Where did it come from? Are you taking a course on Egyptologists or Mediterranean History?
ciao,
Aur
--
--Aurorya, Sun Goddess in training
The DeCSS is a none issue. There are so many DVD ripper program out (all of which is free) there that there is no way the government or MPAA can do about it. The genie is out of the bottle and no one can put it back in. To be honest it is their own making. The MPAA will never come close to winning the war.
/
http://www.anti-mpaa.net/
http://www.doom9.net
The problem is that the pirates in question (and most of them) had a DVD burner or array of them, whereas overseas pirates have actual DVD manufacturing capabilities. Therefore, they must have used DeCSS or a modern equivalent.
1:1 copying of course is what allows us to copy CD-ROMs whether they are encrypted or not because they simply copy all the data blindly. Right now it is impossible to copy a modern DVD using a 1:1 copy because most of them use a DVD-9, which has two layers and a maximum capacity of 8.5 Gb. If you do any DVD ripping at all you know that a typical 2 hour movie uses 6 Gb.
How do you 1:1 copy a 6Gb movie on 4.7Gb CDR? You don't.
So, you use one of Smartripper or one of the new DVD rippers (all of which are evolutions of DeCSS and break the DVD encryption) and copy the VOB's to your hard drive. You then transcode the DVD using Cinemacraft Encoder or a like industrial MPEG-2 encoding software to a smaller size. The picture quality hardly suffers at all because you use smart bitrate encoding.
Voila, a 6gb movie on a 4.7gb DVD-R. But impossible if you didnt transcode the DVD in order to recompress the video. And how do you rip the encrypted video in order to transcode it? DeCSS.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but THIS IS ILLEGAL. Not to say we shouldn't be doing it: we are being ripped off by the MPAA and RIAA. And those of us who do own the media should be entitled to replacement media. On the other hand, those companies do have a right to make a profit and the artists deserve to earn royalties for their work.
The logic on both sides of the issue is equally irrational. My real point is the DeCSS is an integral part of a DVD burner based pirating system. Unless you possess actual DVD pressing/manufacturing capability, you have to break the DVD encryption to either recompress or split the video in order to fit the smaller capacity of a DVD-R.
And isn't it ironic that when I click on the link to the the Yahoo story about a guy busted for copying DVDs, a Yahoo Advertisement pops under my browser with an ad for software that allows me to copy DVDs....
Does anybody else find this completely screwed?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Training Day has already been released on DVD.
I get thoroughly disgusted by all these reasonable types harping on about the "rights of the artists". Why do these people feel the need to write comments on /. about the need to balance the moral equation? Who cares about the rights of these so-called artists? I know I don't. And what difference does it make? Zilch. Do I copy less stuff because it rips off the artist? No. Do I copy more stuff because it rips off the artist? No. So what the fuck is with these people?
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
3-pack of DeCSS tshirts on the front page.
Jack "Chicken Little" Valenti says that DVD pirating is a $3 billion dollar venture that threatens the very motion picture / entertainment industry.
so, to make a dent in this insidious threat, they bust *1* guy, with 2 PCs, 15 burners, and 1000 illegal copies of videos.
so, Jack, the barbarians are at the gate. to combat this problem, you've taken out a garden-variety copier. Makes me think that either (1) internet copiers are way, way difficult to find, or (2) they're a red herring.
hmm... wonder what's more believable here...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
When I first moved to NYC I bought a couple of "still in the theater" VHS tapes from a illegal vendor on Canal street. Quality was horrible, videocamera from the back row horrible. I've since learned that these tapes, and now DVD's are just for the tourists and people that don't mind watching a video where you can't hear the sound.
www.bleepyou.com
By using a license, the media can essentially write any law they want. Why can't you make a backup copy? Because the license says so.
This problem could so easily be solved by satellite transmission of the videos to the user, similar to Pay-Per-View on most DSS stuff now, but in a format computers could understand that obeyed regular standards, like DVB.
They could easily send down 100 videos a day in full DVD quality on just one satellite.
Since more than one person can tap into the same stream at a time the bandwidth problem is solved.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Okay. So how do you propose we set up a serious fund that gets the politicians into our pockets? Consider:
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I had recently heard that the MPAA was lobbying WTO to reclassify movies as industrial, rather than cultural, products...
The acutally makes sense - since most modern movies don't qualify as having any cultural value whatsoever. ;)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Barring a black market (assuming the CBDTPA has somehow been passed and effectively enforced world wide), it will come down to analog signal processing and trial and error. Simply filter selected frequencies until I've hacked the watermark beyond recognition without effecting the music. Barring that, I'll do one of the following: move to another country that will let me keep my freedoms, run for office, and/or say, "Screw you guys, I'm reading a good old fashioned book."
Ugh. Does that mean we have to marry our representatives? They say politics makes strange bedfellows, but...
:)
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
In Malaysia, pirate DVDs are now available for between RM8 and RM10. The exchange rate to the US$ is US$1=RM3.8 since Mahathir pegged the Ringgit during the Asian currency crisis.
At that price, very few people in Malaysia are paying full price for original DVDs.
Somewhat OT...
<suspicious look> Is this a troll, or just an honest (mis)understanding? As far as I know, fair use does apply to the software industry. And yes you can take a GPL'd piece of software and use it any way you wish. This is probably the most misunderstood / overlooked clause in the GPL:
Does that settle the matter? Copyright law treats use (or fair use) much differently from duplication, aka redistribution.
Don't be fooled by commercial EULAs, or "click-thru" licenses. They do not fall under copyright law at all - they fall under contract law, and as such, it is unknown if they are actually valid or enforceable, since you never actually signed them. Of course the software industry will say they are legal, but think about it - that's what they would say.
Actually, the GPL is also a contract, but note that in that case it doesn't matter if you sign it or not, since it adds to the rights you already have (fair use) by giving you certain rights of redistribution. If you disagree with it, you haven't lost anything - you just don't get those additional rights. By contrast most EULAs take away rights you should have - the right to use the software in any way you see fit, on as many computers (that you own) as you wish. So the question of whether you enter the contract or not is important in that case.
(Go ahead, mod me offtopic, you know you want to. (: )
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
People who sell copied movies should be thrown in jail.
It's one thing to swap a movie with a friend for free, but a *completely* different story when you start charging your friends $10 a copy... or go into "business" selling bootlegs.
On a side note...
The RIAA knows it's in trouble after the round of lost growth it took over the past quarter. I wholeheartedly attribute it to the closing of Napster. They won't start to act until it happens once or twice more. Fortunately for artists and consumers... the revolution in the music industry is in full swing.
As for the MPAA... I offer word of caution.
They should look at Sony and the SDMI-crippled NetWalkman, and how it failed to sell. Nobody buys them. Whereas Apple has sold the free-for-all iPod in numbers totalling thousands.
I am the full picture, dammit.
:)
Accept no substitutes.
Since they dislike pirates so much now, do you think they'll finally unburden us with that horrible Peter Pan sequal?
A few weeks ago I was stunned to see a shop in a Mall here in South Africa selling DVDs at R100 a pop (US$8). When going through the titles I got very dissappointed: A lot of the DVDs was movies that was a) not yet released here in the cinemas or b) not yet release onto DVD here or in the US - it was clear that these were fake. All the subtitles were a combination of English, Mandarin, Spanish and Bahasa (?). No encryption were put one these (zone free).
A friend of mine bought a copy of "The One". The quality was clearly VCD but the media was in DVD format. About four times a message appeared saying that this is the property of the MPAA and should not be rented out or sold...
Since then I saw a lot of these shops. The problem that I have with these shops is that these "DVDs" are sold as the real thing and when you buy it you end up with quality that is not DVD. It is anyways cheaper to download the movie from the net.
I hope these dvd outlits are closed down - not everone is clever enought to spot a counterfit...
No but they do need to find writable DVD blanks which can be used. All commercially available DVD blanks must have a 'dead-area' on them which cannot be written to (much like the vendor ID area on CD-Rs). Unfortunately this area corresponds directly to the location of the encrypted disk-keys on a DVD so even if you did a bit-for-bit copy, you would have an encrypted disk but no encrypted keys.
Rich
Liberty and Justice for all... except some.
- Voice of Ambience -
Then we have these learnèd scientists who claim it all happened because Mars was in the house of Venus at the time, or something, but even this evidence was not sufficient to sway the Egyptologists.
Astrology? Wow. You're miles away. This was based on the supposition of a regular visitation of a possible comet cluster on a something like 3600 year orbit. The writer in question was looking at ice-core samples, tree-ring evidence, modern astronomy and similar to posit the theory. --Basically, using evidence from multiple scientific disciplines, something which seems to be often considered taboo.
In any case, after reading through a number of different studies similarly using data from different areas of science, including the well known rain errosion to the sphynx evidence which throws serious doubt on the accepted chronology adhered to by hard line egyptologists, I was easily able to recognize the writer's frustration. When scientists are so obsessed with being accepted by their peers that they are willing to pound round pegs into square holes, and basically not perform their actual job descriptions, it makes one more than a little frustrated.
-Fantastic Lad
I thought that the argument was that digital copies were of the same quality as the original, rather than "wholly inferior." I guess I haven't been keeping up with the MPAA spin machine very well.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
So you are arguing that:
:) ).
There's a fundamental difference between product and copy. Businesses have an incentive to produce good products which customers are willing to pay for.
Which would seem to imply that MS makes the best software. However, this result is not born out by experimental testing. They make software that is "adequately better" in certain areas, while ignoring other features almost totally. And I suppose that the same, or at least something similar, could be said for GPL software. It's just that different features get chosen for perfection or languishing in obscurity. Thus there is no GPL word processor that is as easy to use (or at least to start using) as MS Word. And it's also one of the least secure OS's on the face of the earth.
An interesting side note here: MS no longer makes as good a word processor as it used to make. The best word processor I have ever encountered was MS Word 5.1a for the Macintosh. Nothing else has been as good. The current MSWord has many more features, but they don't add any value. And they make it more difficult to use, even when you know what you want to do. (Details available on request
But products sell, partially, on features. So MS added features. And more features. Many of these appear to be solely marketing gimics, and of no use to anyone. (This doesn't mean that no one uses the features. Just that they'd produce better documents more quickly if they didn't (and didn't have to spend time learning this).
On a side note: Free oranges? If you live in the correct area of the country, have enough land with good lighting, good drainage, and good soil. And if you don't count the cost of watering them. Then yes, you can have "free" oranges. (The "free" is because you must also sacrifice other potential uses of the land that the orange tree is growing on. At least until the tree is tall enough to have it's lower branches high enough to walk under. And many orange trees grow more like bushes than trees (which has it's conveniences).
But you don't grow them for orange juice (or my mother doesn't). She grows them for decoration + oranges. And it sure isn't because the oranges don't make better juice. (We've done that for experiment). It's because it's a bit of work, and it's easier to buy a grossly inferior product. (It's not because it's cheaper, as she already has the orange tree) If she really wanted good orange juice, she'd squeeze it herself. But the orange juicer is gathering dust on the back of an upper shelf.
Money is not a prime motivator. Money is a way of getting something else. Since different people want different things, money is a convenient way to socially exchange values. And even with all of the various con-artists and thieves (I'm particularlly thinking of the legally approved ones here) it's still more convenient than barter, in most cases. But there are always limits to something like this, and sometimes things step over the bounds. I feel that the MPAA has been grossly transgressing those bounds. And I wouldn't usually even watch a movie for free. Usually you would need to pay me substantially more than the ticket price to get me to be willing to watch it. (My wife can manage it, when she feels like it. But it takes enough effort that she usually doesn't bother.)
People are only motivated by money when they want something, and they believe that someone else can and would provide it to them in exchange for money. And even then, for most people, there is the practical consideration of amounts. At one point I wanted to found a colony on the moon. This did not motivate me to acquire money, as I did not believe that there was any practical chance that I could accumulate enough of it to buy all of the required cooperation. Instead it motivated me to join certain political groups, e.g. the L5 Society.
If what you are instead arguing is that there will be someone motivated to provide the service that you desire in exchange for money, I will reply that this will get you something that is sufficiently close to what you require that you can't tell until after you have paid for it, but if it's money rather than craft's pride, or some such, that is the primary motivator of the supplier, then he will make sure that you need to apply to him for additional features, which he can sell you at an additional cost. And that this will be an unending cycle, until you run out of cash or patience. Not until you get what you need. It has even been known for the new "improvements" to be accompanied by the disabling of some previously working needed feature. This generates the necessity for the purchase of another version. etc. I've been on that treadmill, thank you, and would prefer to have nothing further to do with it.
This is not to argue that craft pride is sufficient. Merely that it needs to be a very large component. But it is definitely also true that the craftsman must support himself and his family. So there is a tension here. People who satisfy it best are those such as (to pick an extreme example) Linus. He is a paid professional, but also has great pride in professional competence. This is only possible because he is able to display his competence to peers who appreciate it. That is a requirement for sustaining professional pride. Which is one of the reasons that many closed source programs do not evince any pride in craftsmanship, but merely slick marketing glitz. And why some quite valuable features have been known to get worse between iterations.
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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That is not fair use. That is plagerism, and copyright violation.
well you know what they say, women control 60% of the spending money and 100% of the pussy...
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
I mean it obviously proves that DeCSS isn't needed to copy DVDs. I'm not sure where in the case 2600 is but they should be able to use the MPAA's latest press release against them.
You assume that the editors of Slashdot,
since senators and HR reps get paid such measily amounts, they need to keep up a good lifestyle, so they depend on their spouses to do it for them.
Of course! I feel silly for having forgotten about Pirate Radio. This gives me more reason to think that Websters really dropped the ball by not including a second definition of the word "pirate", in addition to the "naval highwayman" thing.
If they are duplicating the DVD's how is the quality becoming "worse"?
I see this as 100% advantage to consumers, they are getting same quality for less money.
Sounds like a winner to me.