Public CD Copying Machine in Australia

kanad writes: "With all the news of banning cd burners, taxing blank CD-Rs, DMCA, and whatnot in the U.S., here's a breather from Australia. Some stores have installed coin-operated CD copying machines. Basically it's very simple: put the CD to be copied and a blank CD in two different slots and drop your coins and Presto! In 10 minutes you get a copy. It even bypasses some anti-copying measures. ... Obviously the burden of not violating copyright rests with the user under Australian law, which is the same as that applied to photocopiers. Today evening I saw the machine and it's really cool. Wonder what would happen to this machine in U.S. and Europe."

Comments

are they available INSIDE supermarkets ?

[dario_moreno]

then it would be a pleasure to pick
a music CD or a game, make a copy, and
go out...

by the way, this would be an
interesting use of a laptop with a Cd-RW,
when I think of it !

Re:are they available INSIDE supermarkets ?

[jd142]

it's like photocoping a magazine in the newsagents, then putting it back

Except here it costs at least 7 cents a page to photocopy. For magazines that isn't bad because you can skip the ads, but I've photocopied entire out of print books before and believe me, it isn't as cheap as getting the Dover Press version.

The trappings of fame...

[Gerv]

Zac Kingston of Adelaide folk duo Linus, which is about to record its second album, said the new machines threatened to destroy smaller acts.

Wow! Linus has a tribute band...

Gerv

Copy protection, eh?

[gpinzone]

I wonder if this device is anything more than just a CDR connected to a 486? I'd love to know if you're able to make copies of CD-ROMs, especially copy protected ones like Playstation games and PC cds using SafeDisc.

Re:Copy protection, eh?

[Junta]

I would imagine that it is nothing more complicated than that (except perhaps a bit more horsepower than a 486..).

I would imagine it could probably copy playstation discs (presuming they use disc-at-once mode, and if they claim to bypass some copy protection, it most likely is). Of course you would still need a modchip (can't put the information into the CD hub that is needed. I don't know what safedisc is even :)

cdrdao works great for PSX backup... I'll never have to open my Lunar box sets to play ever again.

Re:Copy protection, eh?

[gpinzone]

The reason you need a modchip for PSX discs is because the checksum for the "bootsector" is deliberately encoded to FAIL on original PSX discs. No CD burning software can instruct your burner to deliberately encode all zeroes instead of the properly calculated error-correction value. I have heard stories of people hacking CDR firmware to forcibly encode the bootsector like a PSX disc to eliminate the need for a modchip, but I never actually have seen any "pirate" firmware floating around the various PSX sites.

If this device doesn't use a standard CDR drive, then maybe their copying system CAN make perfect copies.

Well, now that the cat is out of the bag

[zangdesign]

You can bet your ass that Hillary Rosen and her crew and Jack Valenti and his crew will do everything short of murder to get that machine and all related technology banned.

Re:Well, now that the cat is out of the bag

[the_2nd_coming]

you think that they are above murder?

please Jack even LOOKS like a mobbster. I am sure that he has connections.

Re:Well, now that the cat is out of the bag

[zangdesign]

I usually try to stop short of libel and/or defamation of character -- you know, things you can get SUED for?

Re:Well, now that the cat is out of the bag

[FFFish]

The Valenti name has plenty of mob associations:

"In the wake of the infamous Apalachin Conference in November 1957, the New York State Crime Commission began an investigation of the individuals from New York who attended the meeting. Constenze "Stanley" Valenti, the recognized boss of the Rochester Family, and his brother Frank were jailed for civil contempt after failing to answer the questions of the commission members."

"By 1920, the Morello-Terranova-Saietta rule was being seriously challenged by Guiseppe Masseria. The challenge would not last long. Vincent Morello was murdered on East 116th Street and later powerful ally, Umberto Valenti, was ambushed by Masseria gunmen."

"Uno "sgarro" commesso in ambienti criminali: ...Filippo Musica, e della sua fidanzata, Elisa Valenti, di 24 anni, assassinati l'altra notte con colpi di fucile davanti ..."

"[Raymond] Valenti ...told her that he belonged to the Mafia. Valenti poked Ricker in the chest and warned her that if she talked to the IRS, she would be in trouble, too..."

A "James J. Valenti" is/was a member of the Tampa mob family.

"Ucciso a Scordia Gaetano Valenti, secondo gli inquirenti affiliato al clan Di Salvo."

As you can see, the Valenti name is well-established in the mob circles.

Now, can anyone trace ol' Jack's family tree...?

Re:Well, now that the cat is out of the bag

[Technician]

They will have to drop the tarrif on music CDR's. The tarrif is pre paid royalty in my book. No copy, no copy royalty. Copy royalty pre-paid, ok to copy. They can't have it both ways. What I see is instead trying to get royalties on a per copy on the supermarket machine of about $15 per copy. It would be legal to copy but not pratical.

Re:Well, now that the cat is out of the bag

[molo]

Neat info about the mafia. May I inquire where you obtained it? I'm of Italian descent and some of my distant relatives of years gone by have been involved in such activities. I don't know any specifics though, so I was hoping you could help me out.

Thanks.

Re:Well, now that the cat is out of the bag

[WNight]

Those only apply if it's reasonable that someone could see/hear the statement and believe that it represented reality.

If I say that you are a "cock gobbler" it's unlikely people will think that you actually perform fellatio. However, if I say "I saw Zang sucking some guy's sick behind that gay bathhouse" it is believable and thus probably is defamation.

It's also (in all civilized countries - ie, not the UK or Australia) a defense if it's true. If I saw you doing that, I could say it, assuming I could prove to a judge that it is true.

Further, stating an opinion rarely is defamation. Saying "I think Valenti looks like a mobster" isn't defamation. It's part of that believability test. If I say "I think he sucks cock for money" it's clearly my opinion, which means people probably wouldn't accept it as truth.

Thus, the original poster stopped short of defamation. (Assuming he lives in a reasonable country.)

Re:Well, now that the cat is out of the bag

[FFFish]

Er, you make me an offer I can't refuse...

The secret, friend, is Google. Search for "Valenti mafia OR mob" and you get lots of information on that well-established family.

To paraphrase the consiglieri:
"Now we have the unions, we have the gambling; and they're the best things to have. But entertainment is a thing of the future. And if we don't get a piece of that action, we risk everything we have. I mean not now, but, ah, ten years from now."

Re:Well, now that the cat is out of the bag

[Thing 1]

Now, can anyone trace ol' Jack's family tree...?

Sure. As you stated in a previous reply, it's all about the Google search. Mine was "free genealogy".

I found the site awt.ancestry.com . The previous link goes directly to Jack Valenti's info page.

Did you know he's married to Mary Margaret Wiley , who was President Lyndon Johnson's secretary? She may have provided some important connections in the RIAA's formative years.

Then I clicked on "Trees". To get his family tree, I had to provide birth date and place, so another Google search ("jack valenti biography born") found the following biography with all I needed (Born: September 5, 1921; Birth Place: Houston, Texas).

Also from that bio page, we learn the following:

After serving as a bomber pilot in World War II, he opened Weekley & Valenti Advertising in 1952 and later became a top aide to fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1966, President Johnson appointed Valenti as the third president and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association, a post he has held ever since.

So my assumption was slightly off; he most likely met his wife while working with Johnson.

Plugging the data into the tree search page , I am frustrated to find that this is to create your own family tree, not to provide one for you based on your initial person.

So I clicked on the "Ancestry Family Tree" and got here . This is a program you need to download (closed source, spyware leaps to mind) but I'm running Ad-Aware so I boldly go.

I had to register to download, so I used a throwaway Hotmail account. (It's really tough to create a unique username!)

It's a 4.5 MB download and appears to be an ActiveX control; waiting for it to finish (slow modem in Brazil).

Well that was entirely too frustrating; the program is also for creating a family tree, not for automatically generating one.

I tried a couple other sites and had my hopes dashed for finding a quick solution. I spent a good bit of time on this (thinking it would be a bit easier) so I'm posting this anyway; even though it's not as Informative as I would have liked, it could at least be considered Cautionary. ;-)

Of course, if anyone knows how to do this, please post! Would be neat to find potential "influences" (actually, I already found one -- a former president).

Re:Well, now that the cat is out of the bag

[FFFish]

Potential influence? Hell, LBJ handed the creep the job. What's your throwaway login to ancestry? I'd like to go digging there.

"Weekley & Valenti... was in charge of the press during the fateful visit of President John F. Kennedy and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson to Texas in November 1963. Within an hour after the assasination of President Kennedy, Mr. Valenti flew on Air Force One back to Washington as the first Special Assistant to the President"

Actually, when you start reading his biography, it looks like Jack is a bright boy who worked really hard as a kid and young man.

One suspects he's operating from an Leave It to Beaver mindset, though. Hasn't quite made the intellectual, technological, and social leap into this decade. He was one of LBJ's right-hand men, and it looks like LBJ was a real driving force for race equality. Jack hasn't come to understand that just as there were long-term social benefits to equality, there are long-term benefits to reducing copyright ownership and providing consumers with 'portable' data.

Limited use

[Anonymous Coward]

The poster doesn't mention that it only works on Kylie Minogue CD's. Which renders it fucking worthless for most everybody.

Re:Limited use

[PinkStainlessTail]

The poster doesn't mention that it only works on Kylie Minogue CD's. Which renders it fucking worthless for most everybody.

It certainly won't have any applications outside of Oz, that's for sure...

Where to find one...

[fifthchild]

I can tell you, there's one in the Union Building of the Clayton campus of Monash University where I study. It costs AU$5 and you have to BYO blank. I imagine that it's there under the pretext that people will use it to copy their own data files...

I've never used it, so I don't know if there's anything it won't copy, but I also have never seen anyone else using it. I have severe doubts about its popularity. I'm not surprised that it was allowed because as a potential form of income I'd bet the Uni jumped at the chance. But that's just Monash I guess.

digitally identical copies of CDs . . .

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

I can see it now. Setting up shop right across from CompUSA and BestBuy . . . "I need 55 copies of Warcraft III. . you know. . just in case I lose a few. . oh yeah and a dozen Calagari TrueSpace 5.0 backups while you're at it."

popping noise

[abe ferlman]

That giant popping noise you hear is Hilary Rosen herniating herself when she reads this article.

Xerox machines were to the publishing industry are what the Boston Strangler was to a woman alone, to paraphrase Jack Valenti. Given that no one bothers to write books anymore since perfect copies can be made inexpensively, I'm sure we'll wise up this time and stop this reckless sharing of information in its tracks.

Re:popping noise

[pogen]

Except copying a book with a Xerox machine is slow, time consuming, and does not give you nearly as easily readable a version as buying the book itself would. CD copying machines give you perfect copies with very little hassle.

Indeed. And to point out another flaw in the photocopier analogy, there is only one real-world "fair use" defense for this machine (in the U.S.): The purpose of the copy.

The "character" of the copy cannot be used as a defense, since it is effectively identical to the original.

The "nature of the copyrighted work" cannot be used as a defense, since we are almost invariably talking about for-profit, commercially produced CDs (no one who could create their own original CDs would need this machine to help them make copies.)

The "relative amount" cannot be used as a defense, since the CD is copied in its entirety.

And the "effect on the market" cannot be used as a defense, since even legitimate backup copies take sales away from the industry.

The only legitimate "purposes" that I can see for using this machine are backups and space-shifting (though I don't know what legal standing these have). When was the last time you "backed up" a book with a photocopier?

So let's stop clouding the issue with this ridiculous book/photocopier analogy.

(IANAL)

Re:popping noise

[brunes69]

Indeed, let's continue it:

• The "character" of the photocopy cannot be used as a defense, since it is effectively identical to the original.
• The "nature of the copyrighted work" cannot be used as a defense, since we are almost invariably talking about for-profit, commercially produced books (no one who could create their own original printed material would need this machine to help them make copies.)
• The "relative amount" cannot be used as a defense, since the printed material can be copied in its entirety.
• And the "effect on the market" cannot be used as a defense, since even legitimate backup copies of books take sales away from the industry.

What is the difference between this and photocopiers? I see none. And I am a university student. I cannot even count the number of people I personally know who photocopy their entire textbook collection from the library. And they bring these copies to class. It is not hidden. It is common practice.

You don't see the publishing industry going bankrupt because Xerox came into play. Nor did you see laws come into play regarding the use of photocopiers - the same old copyright laws still held. The USER is responsible, not the manufacturer.

Re:popping noise

[raresilk]

I'll call the analogy and raise you one. Textbooks (at least here in the USA, and last time I was in school) cost anywhere from $75 - $150 a pop new. Every professor who has enough pull writes his/her own expensive text and assigns it in every class. The texts range from brilliant to useful to crap but you still have to have them because the professor will make sure something on the final comes straight out of them.

It does not take a genius to figure out that "$150 a textbook" or "$15 a CD" is not the fair market price, nor does it take a genius to figure out that such price gouging depends on the active collusion of sellers to the customer's disadvantage. I submit that when customers know they are being gouged, whether through overpriced textbooks sold to a captive student audience or overpriced CDs sold by a cartel with a large proportion of the musician population under long-term contractual captivity, they are highly likely to attempt to turn the situation around on the gougers.

Antitrust law enforcement is supposed to prevent such anticompetitive pricing from taking place, but with a few high-profile exceptions, the authorities have abdicated their role. What we see in the copying wars is old fashioned vigilante justice, and it's going to continue until the Justice Department regains its guts and goes after the publishing/music cartels.

(thank you for indulging this rant.)

Re:popping noise

[AlexCompy]

"And the "effect on the market" cannot be used as a defense, since even legitimate backup copies take sales away from the industry."

I agree with the rest of your comment, but I'm not sure how legitimate backups take sales away from the industry. If I had to buy another copy of, say, Windows in order to have a backup, I'd just learn to live without a backup. Let's face it, people are generally pretty poor at backups when its free - I can't see a lot of people buying two of every album/software/etc just to have a backup available...

Re:popping noise

[pogen]

I'm not sure how legitimate backups take sales away from the industry. [...] I can't see a lot of people buying two of every album/software/etc just to have a backup available...

Of course not. The second one would be a replacement, not a backup.

This is probably what kept "Dark Side of the Moon" on the charts for ~15 years. Vinyl wore out quickly, and needed to be replaced. I don't think this would have happened if consumers had had the ability to create perfect backup copies.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with making backups, just that they do affect the industry.

Re:popping noise

[raresilk]

Your analogy is illogical by its own terms and factually insupportable (and those facts are not disguised by the vehemence with which you present it.)

First, let's say you break your foot at your job. You can look in any metro phone book and find about 500 lawyers who will take your case for a percentage of whatever you recover (usually 10% - 30% depending on whether the case settles or gets tried.) If you lose your case, you pay exactly nothing to the lawyer. This "contingency fee" arrangement is extremely common. The equivalent, in music terms, would be a CD that you don't have to pay a cent for unless you like the music (which is what MP3 swapping effectively accomplishes for many people). There is no company I know of offering this option for any form of media.

Second, no one is required to hire a lawyer, ever, for any reason, in the United States. Law libraries at public universities are open to all, and well stocked. Many state and local bar associations also provide free public law libraries. And it is perfectly lawful for a layperson to represent himself in defense of a lawsuit or criminal charges, or file a lawsuit on his own behalf against some other party. In short, they can "decide to go without" the lawyer without fear of any DMCA-equivalent from the legal profession. The "restrictions on who can provide legal services" do not, as you incorrectly suggest, prevent any person from acting as his/her own lawyer - rather, they preclude people who fail to pass an exam demonstrating a minimum degree of legal competency from holding themselves out to others as a qualified lawyer. (Apparently you're against such minimum standards of competency, so don't let me catch you complaining about the proliferation of MCSEs.)

The quality the individual obtains from such "pro se" representation will, of course, depend greatly on how much effort he/she puts into learning the relevant legal issues. However, this is true of all professions -- the fact that your momma got her Windows box hacked into because she did not inform herself about basic computer security does not imply that computer security experts are a "cartel."

Re:popping noise

[jesterzog]

It does not take a genius to figure out that "$150 a textbook" or "$15 a CD" is not the fair market price, nor does it take a genius to figure out that such price gouging depends on the active collusion of sellers to the customer's disadvantage.

Maybe I've had different experience, but on some occasions I think it is reasonable to expect a large amount to be charged for a text book. Mostly because they're so often specialist books that cost a lot to produce (not just authoring, but layout, general publishing and organising, etc), and in the end there could be very few copies sold. The most successful textbooks are the ones that get chosen as course material, meaning lots of people suddenly want it. I won't comment on the professors writing their own texts, since I mostly agree with that bit.

But anyway, having said that, the mass marketed popular books that lots of people buy sell for anything from about $9.95 up. So by this analogy it should be reasonable for mass marketed popular CD's to sell for about $2, whereas less common niche market music might sell for a bit more.

Re:popping noise

[Hektor_Troy]

I have to agree 100% with you on that one. Writing books for 20 cents a page is likely to give you a VERY expensive and useless book, and usually results in books that are, as a teacher of mine once described such a book, "about as usefull as toilet paper and far less comfortable".

Putting his money where his mouth is, he himself writes the book used in his classes. Being a fairly open minded guy and not some greedy dumbass, his book costs about as much as you are willing to pay for it - namely the price of downloading it off his webpage, or simply reading it online, as he continuously updates the book.

That's how it's supposed to be - teachers shouldn't be bleeding students for money for crappy material just because they can - especially not when other knowledgable people are willing to characterize their efforts as "about as usefull as toilet paper and far less comfortable".

Man I miss that teacher :-)

Re:popping noise

[Bronster]

And it is perfectly lawful for a layperson to represent himself in defense of a lawsuit or criminal charges, or file a lawsuit on his own behalf against some other party.

A person who represents themselves in a court of law has a fool for a client - or so I have heard somewhere. Similarly a doctor who treats themselves or their immediate family - you need detatchment to dispassionately view the facts and work out the best way to handle the case.

IANAL (thankfully)

Here in Canada..

[unorthod0x]

Some of our Internet Cafes here in Ontario offer CD burning on the premises for a reasonable fee. The same rules seem to apply; the copyright infringement is up to you not to break. Granted, these aren't some kind of coin-operated specialized burning solutions, but it's still the same. Of course these same outfits (or the slightly more savvy of the bunch) add a heavy dose of temptation in to the mix by letting you run amok with file-sharing software already installed on the machine in question before you get to burning your CD.

Not just in stores

[Mattygfunk]

I saw one of these machines in a bakery/coffee shop. I asked about it and as it turns out the owners are taking commission on the machine and making a killing selling blank cd's.

Maybe we'll have a USB port on the next models for easy burining from your laptop.

$70 million a year loss?

[Ioldanach]

Music Industry Piracy Investigations spokesman Michael Speck said illegal copying already cost the Australian industry $70 million a year.

I'd really like to know the source of this number. This number implies something like 7 million illegal copies being distributed per year. (This assumes, for argument's sake, an average of $10 per cd retail.) I'm not sure there are that many blank cds being sold per year in Australia. Did they just take the number of blank cds being sold, multiply by the cost of some of the more expensive cds, and assume every cd was used to make a infringing copy of a music cd? To top that off, did they assume that if the recipient of that music cd hadn't gotten the infringing copy, the album would've been purchased instead?

Personally, I have just as many data cds as music cds, and most of the music cds I have are copies of my own music for travel and taking mp3s of my music to work.

Re:$70 million a year loss?

[ryanvm]

Music Industry Piracy Investigations spokesman Michael Speck said illegal copying already cost the Australian industry $70 million a year.

I'd really like to know the source of this number.

Well, it probably includes $65 million worth of legal fees.

Re:$70 million a year loss?

[Proaxiom]

Source? It's what they call a SWAG.

Scientific Wild Ass Guess.

"Well you see we looked at the numbers of CD-Rs sold, and figured that every one of them is used for music piracy, and guessed that if no one had access to pirated music they would all purchase legitimate CDs instead, at a cost of $130 per disc, because we could milk them for whatever price we want, and they would purchase two of each CD because people like to have backups, and then we did some multiplication..."

Re:$70 million a year loss?

[Cam Wheeler]

Don't forgot that they are using AU dollar value, most new music cds here are around $25-$30 Australian.

They are probably estimating closer to 2.5 - 3 million illegal copies each year. Still sounds fairly unrealistic, but probably closer to the mark than 7 million.

Another note, when it says it costs $5 to use, thats closer to $2.50 american, so it's cheaper than other people have been pointing out.

Re:$70 million a year loss?

[Hooya]

Well, it probably includes $65 million worth of legal fees.

And the other $5 is for lobbying.

Re:$70 million a year loss?

[Technician]

I too think it's an assumed value to exagerate a point. Most CDR's I use are for storing my digital photos, data & mail backups and tax records. I still have a much greater stack of retail CD's than the few copies I use to travel in the car.

Re:$70 million a year loss?

[John Sullivan]

If you account for software piracy

Given the quote is from a music industry guy, it seems reasonable to assume the figure given applies only to music. But since when has this sort of propaganda been reasonable.

Re:$70 million a year loss?

[curunir]

Ummm...the way the sentence is worded, he could mean that the Australian music industry spends $70 million a year illegally copying music.

Re:$70 million a year loss?

[ColaMan]

Hmm.. lets look at some facts.

There are only about 20 million people in australia. I can get CD's (if I wanted to - *snort*) for around AU$25. Dividing into $70M gives approximately 2.8 million CD's a year.

Does that mean that a tenth of the population (that's *2,000,000* people) copied a CD or two last year?

Or a hundredth of the population copied 15 CD's last year? That's still 200,000 people. That's a lot of people with access to a burner and the inclination to copy a CD that they already have in their possession somehow. I'm unsure if the music industry these days has enough interesting content left for 200,000 people to do this.

So,

It would appear from this that it's not really the "normal" people, it's something (or somebody) else - the people with 75 CD burners in the garage going wholesale, the tonnes of pirated CD's being imported etc, hell, they still might be mad about the
$1M slap they got from the ACCC about the threats and standover tactics they used on music shops legally importing CD's. The problem I have with soundbites like that is whilst the guy with the garage full of burners is illegally copying for sure, the Industry is (in this case) implying the total, present $70M-a-year loss comes from the everyday person, and also implies that this will go up from all those criminals who come across a vendo-CD-Burner and decide to copy a CD.

Yes, the piracy figure will probably go up. But when you're throwing $70,000,000 figures around, it's very easy to for the general public to go, "Wow! seventy million! That's a lot! And there's going to be more piracy? So it's going to be what, a hundred million when these things become widespread?", when in all likelyhood, it'll be something like $75M or so. (Five million dollars is 200,000 CD's, remember)

It's just the usual FUD - plain and simple.

Re:$70 million a year loss?

[nihilogos]

Thats $70 million Australian dollars. About $7000 US.

$7 bucks......

[FXSTD]

According to the article it costs $7 to make a copy.....($5 for the burn and $2 for the blank, I assume you can't bring your own). If the record companies would sell their "music" or other products for that price, instead of $16.95 for a new CD, maybe it would not be an issue......Maybe instead of wasting money developing anti copy techniques that just make everyone angry, they should sell their "products" for a reasonable amount......

Re:$7 bucks......

[Fizzlewhiff]

According to the article it costs $7 to make a copy.....($5 for the burn and $2 for the blank, I assume you can't bring your own). If the record companies would sell their "music" or other products for that price, instead of $16.95 for a new CD, maybe it would not be an issue.

We all assume we are being screwed when it comes to buying a CD for $16.95. Is this because we can buy a stack of 50 blank CD-R's for about the same price?

Besides the cost of the media there are other costs involved in making CD's. Recording studio time, editing, cover art, packaging costs, marketing costs, distribution costs, and I am sure the list goes on. Considering CD's cost me about $16 at record stores in 1986 and they cost $16 in record stores now just how am I being screwed? I can buy them in discount and department stores like Target for about $2 less than a record store in the mall or online for about $2 less than at the mall. But still, considering the end cost to the consumer hasn't really changed in 16 years how can you complain? In most cases they are even cheaper because there are more outlets and certain stores can take less of a markup.

Re:$7 bucks......

[nathanm]

We all assume we are being screwed when it comes to buying a CD for $16.95. Is this because we can buy a stack of 50 blank CD-R's for about the same price?

I don't assume, I know we're being screwed. Not because of the price of CD-Rs, I don't rip or copy my CDs or make compilations out of them.

Besides the cost of the media there are other costs involved in making CD's. Recording studio time, editing, cover art, packaging costs, marketing costs, distribution costs, and I am sure the list goes on.

Sure there are other costs, but of all the ones you listed above, packaging and distribution are the only ones record companies pay for. The rest comes out of the royalties that would get paid to the artist. The artist doesn't see a cent until all the up-front costs are recouped. For a pretty good explanation of how this works, see this article by Steve Albini, a producer you may have heard of.

Re:$7 bucks......

[btellier]

You're equating US dollars and Australian dollars. Your post should read:

---

According to the article it costs $3.50 to make a copy.....($2.50 for the burn and $1 for the blank, I assume you can't bring your own). If the record companies would sell their "music" or other products for that price, instead of $16.95 for a new CD, maybe it would not be an issue......Maybe instead of wasting money developing anti copy techniques that just make everyone angry, they should sell their "products" for a reasonable amount......

---

Though it only probably costs a dime to make the CD, you still have to compensate the stores, the producers, the artists, etc. etc. IMO $3.50 is a bit lowball. I think a fair price for a CD, considering that they're far easier to produce than tapes (which are less expensive in the store) would be $10.00 USD.

Another completely far wing article

[tomstdenis]

NEW machines installed in Adelaide convenience stores make the illegal copying of the latest CDs and computer software - which costs artists and software designers millions of dollars - as easy as buying a loaf of bread.

You can buy knifes at stores. That makes murder as easy as 1.2.3.

Duh. Why do people think they are original when they take item X and immediately point out it can be used for crime Y.

I mean if we sold bullets at corner stores than you'd read a news article that says something along the lines of "new store makes kids with guns a ready proposition." etc...

Did it ever occur to those people that business people put slide shows on CDs now? Maybe they will use the public burners [although I couldn't imagine so] for copying their own work!

The point is these lines of thinking have got to stop. Anything can be used to comit a crime and it isn't very intelligence to insight people to be against technology X for that reason.

Tom

Re:Another completely far wing article

[Sc00ter]

Hell, you could use that copy machine to kill somebody.. just get a couple friends, lift, drop on victim, repeat until dead.

Re:Another completely far wing article

[linzeal]

Thats the reason I don't use coke machines. They always have a picture of a coke machine killing a human on front of them.

Re:Another completely far wing article

[Erasmus Darwin]

"You can buy knifes at stores. That makes murder as easy as 1.2.3."

On the other hand, I have a much easier time thinking of everyday legitimate uses for knives (cutting food, opening packages, spreading butter) than I do for a machine that can only do exact CD duplication.

The machine is limited or fails in many of the traditional legitimate uses of a regular CD burner:

• Personal file backups -- This obviously won't work, as the machines only duplicate existing CDs
• Commercial PC software backups -- I have to concede this one, though PC software CDs (which generally sit in a box or in your machine) don't incur as much of a damage risk as music CDs
• Music CD backups -- This is reasonable at $1 or less per pop with a regular CD burner. But when someone has to pay $7 per CD and stand around while it burns, I think they'll be more likely to replace the occasional damaged CD unless they really abuse them.
• Fair use mix CDs -- Since it only does an exact duplicate, I can't even combine my favorite tracks for 8 different CDs that I already own onto a single, convenient disc.

I think overall, the majority of usage of the machine will be of a copyright infringing nature. And unlike a photocopier, which manages to prevent many improper uses through cost and inconvenience, this machine would be a casual music/software pirate's dream.

Re:Another completely far wing article

[brunes69]

I can think of one right now. Say this machine is damn fast. Also say you are Joe Sixpack businessman, who hadly knows how to use Google let alone burn a CD, who just payed some WebTwerp 200 bucks to make you a flashy presentation for your big meeting. You decide you want to give each of the 20 execs a copy of the CD, and you need it within the hour. What do you do? run ove rto the machine, amde a quick 20 copys (I assume these things are fast). You can liken it to OfficeDepot's copying service. Sure, most large companies have photocopiers at their disposal. And alot of people have CD burners at their disposal. but whne you need a bunch of copys fast, you go to the copy place. That's how it works. Who ever needs a bunch of CD copys fast? I sure as hell I'd never use one of these things to copy a CD. Like I even use CD players anymore anyways.

Re:Another completely far wing article

[Quixadhal]

NEWS FLASH!

Discovery of Fire will enable thousands of cavemen to commit arson! Our neolithic future is now uncertain! We must STOP THEM!

Re:Another completely far wing article

[Erasmus Darwin]

"For starters I'm not about to goto a public place to go and pirate music. Specially when I can do it from the comfort of my own house."

That's great if you have access to a CD burner or only use mp3s. I suspect, however, that the machine will get a fair amount of use from friends who're hanging out together and decide to play the distributed cost game. (Following values are AUD.) With a $30 CD and two $7 copies, it boils down to only $14.67 (or roughly half price) per person if 3 friends use it to get a CD.

Furthermore, there are many people who own music CDs but who don't own computers. There are also many people who carry part of their CD collections in their cars.

Finally, I seem to recall Australians complaining about some of the bandwidth costs associated with home internet access. That could make using a P2P service an expensive proposition.

Re:Another completely far wing article

[hubie]

And unlike a photocopier, which manages to prevent many improper uses through cost and inconvenience, this machine would be a casual music/software pirate's dream.

I fail to see how $7 a copy agrees with this statement. I can copy CDs for far less than $7 a copy and in a much more convenient setting than doing it from this machine. In fact, I would argue that what the machine charges as well as where it seems to be located would "manage to prevent many improper uses through cost and inconvenience."

Re:Another completely far wing article

[Odinson]

Not to mention copying Linux distros for friends.

Somebody should tell Glenn A. Baker that some copright holders like that kind of copying. They have as many moral and legal rights as he does, he is very inconsiderate.

http://www.openmusicregistry.org/

http://www.fsf.org/

Re:Another completely far wing article

[Erasmus Darwin]

"I can copy CDs for far less than $7 a copy and in a much more convenient setting than doing it from this machine."

First, I was comparing the piracy convenience of the machine to the extreme piracy inconvenience of a photocopier. Doing fair use(?) copies of two pages out of a book using a photocopier is cheap and easy. Attempting to photocopy an entire book takes quite a bit of effort and usually exceeds the cost of purchasing the book.

Second, a CD burner carries with it quite a bit of overhead -- especially if the person doesn't already own a computer. Compare that to $7/copy, which is approximately 25% of the cost of a CD in Australia. Furthermore, if you're already at the mall or the convenience store with friends, it's not a particularly inconvenient setting. And the actual copying process is convenient in the sense that it requires no on-going user interaction to facilitate the copy (as compared to photocopying the individual pages of a book).

Re:Another completely far wing article

[circletimessquare]

HAHAHA

I love gunheads. They are so reliable in their old tired arguments.

I also forgot hunting, skeet-shooting, shooting in the air for effect on New Years, quickly deflating tires, opening locked doors in a hurry, etc.

And your point? I'm sure I could buy a copy of Hustler to use as kindling, or swat flies, or practice origami, but THAT'S NOT SAYING MUCH, NOW IS IT DOC?

The fact is gunheads are a small minority in this country that hold us all hostage. Buying a gun is like inviting the devil into your home. While that thing sits under your bed, or locked in the basement, or wherever the heck you put it, it is far more likely to be used in anger in a domestic situation, or found by a kid, or stolen, or whatever else, than it is ever going to be used to deter any crime whatsoever while you snore away at 3 AM.

Are you happy gun owners so omnipotent that you can guarantee the safety of yourself and everyone around your gun? Are you a demigod? Of course you can't! Why do you think it guarantees your safety? As soon as you own one, your safety just went down a few notches, can't you see that?

Fact: guns invite terrible consequences in situations where no access to guns would mean the situation would end with much less bodily harm: to yourself, an enemy, to anyone! How can you possibly deny that logic? Are you that naive? Turn off the old black and white Western there cowboy, justice does not flow from the barrel of a shiny six-shooter like the fires of righteous judgment. Bullets fly from the barrel of a .38 special and hit whatever is in front of them: the owner's foot, the onwer's son, a mugging victim, etc... use your dang imagination to figure out the real majority of gun usage.

Real life is far too frail and fickle for one good man to control with his trusty sidearm. It's a fantasy. And a fantasy we are all paying with statistically with unwanted deaths.

Do guns stop home break-ins? Of course they do! Is that tiny miraculous percentage worth the much larger percentage of unintended consequences and purposeful criminal use of guns? Do you need the question repeated?

"Outlawing guns won't change anything except give them to the criminals." Guess what there cowboy? I agree with you! But not anywhere near as close to the extent criminals already have guns now! Not by a long shot!

NO way... could I actually be saying that easy availability of guns means more guns are used in crime?! Whodathunkit! Could this possibly be true! Please...

This is common sense here genius. And in a hypothetical future where guns are outlawed in this country, gun ownership would be a red flag for the criminal behavior they usually are involved in, rather than the mythical, I've been watching-too-many-John-Wayne movies behavior most people with delusions of omnipotence think guns are involved in.

Are you Judge Dread? Didn't think so cowboy. Do this country a favor and lose the Beavis and Butthead fascination with things that make loud noises and save this country thousands of lives each year, ok?

Want to be a man? Get that gun away from yourself and your family and save yourself from an evil in your life. Your manhood is not defined by how many piles of shiny gunmetal you collect and show off to your friends. Buy a motorbike instead if you are feeling like shouting out some testosterone, ok?

I absolutely hate gunhead morons. Time and history is against you. Just you wait.

Confidential to the asshole who marked me flamebait: go ahead and mark me flamebait again, I've got 49 more karma points to waste and a big chip on my shoulder.

Re:Another completely far wing article

[Erasmus Darwin]

"Can anybody explain what is wrong with copying/pirating music."

That's a whole multi-gig flamewar in and of itself.

But the short answer is that copying material in violation of the copyright means that you're enjoying the fruits of someone's labor without contributing anything toward the initial cost that went into producing the information content of the item.

Re:Another completely far wing article

[Erasmus Darwin]

Your implication that you were going to mod me down over this two issues makes me even more wary of Slashdot's moderation. I'm glad you chose to post your concerns, instead. Having both potential sides listed in the thread allows readers and other moderators alike to get a more well-rounded picture of what's going on. Anyway, on to the points...

First, I'm not sure what relevance your original CD comments have. Even assuming the system will only copy an original, store-bought CD (a claim which I can't find supported in the article), I don't see how that changes what I wrote. I even posted an example of using the system to pirate an original CD in this comment.

Second, my educated assumption (which I admit is a bit of a guess) that the machine doesn't do mixes is based on the descriptions provided. It's possible the article just fails to mention it, but everything I read implied it's operation consisted of "Insert CD X. Insert blank CD-R. Insert money. Remove two CD X's."

Re:Another completely far wing article

[Erasmus Darwin]

I'll concede the home software point (and that's what I meant by commercial PC software -- software that was commercially produced, not necessarily software used in a commercial environment), but I think you're missing the point on the photocopier issue.

Even paying $.10 per page is a lot if you're thinking in terms of piracy. That's $20 for a 200 page novel that maybe retails for $7 or $8. Furthermore, even with a home copier, it's pretty damn inconvenient to photocopy every pair of pages (assuming you can fit both on a single sheet). If, on the other hand, you're only photocopying a few pages out of the work(such as an important passage for a research paper), that generally falls under fair use provisions.

In contrast, the CD duplicator requires less human intervention (insert entire source, insert blank destination, insert money, wait), and it lets you make duplicates at a cheaper cost than the retail price of the mass published work.

Re:Another completely far wing article

[Saeger]

And to answer the next logical question: "Can anybody explain why it has become so socially acceptable to violate copyright en masse?"

Many reasons (pick your favorites):

1. It's a hypocritical kind of boycott to stick it to the copyright-hoarding middlemen who charge way too much and pass little of it to the actual artists.
2. Information wants to be free, regardless of production cost.
3. It's still about 100 times more convenient to "steal" than it is to buy; you can't legally pay for that kind of convenience yet.
4. Human animals are inherently selfish and will try to get away with whatever they can if they think no one is watching; it's the rare person who has the integrity to do the right thing when he knows no one is watching.
5. So far, only the "contributory infringers" like Napster (gun maker) have been punished; individuals (gun users) abusers are still untouchable and have nothing to fear.
6. There are insane economies of scale of here, but there's no micropayment system in place to make it easy to pay your tiny fair share... but 0 is closer $0.001 than it is to $20.00.
7. ...insert more rationalizations I've forgotten here...

--

Re:Another completely far wing article

[Erasmus Darwin]

I did some quick searching, and I came across fairuse.stanford.edu, which seems to have quite a bit of information on the subject. I admit that I haven't dug too deeply into the subject, but I did follow their link to the US Code relating to copyrights.

Under Title 17 (Copyrights), Chapter 1 (Subject Matter and Scope), Section 107 (Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use), they describe the criteria for determining fair use. Two of them are "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole" and "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."

Under the substantial portion criterion, you could argue that there's a big difference between in how much is copied when you compare the two cases. 3 pages out of a 120 page magazine is only 2.5% of the material. 2 songs out of a 12 track CD is 16%.

Under the potential market criterion, we could point to CD singles. Music companies sell individual tracks from albums, so there's an existing market for the entire entity that you've duplicated.

Still, I'm not a lawyer, and it's impossible to understand how the law really gets applied without looking into all the case law and judicial opinions that've arisen afterward. But I lack the time and interest to make this into an entire research project.

This should be legal in Canada...

[FreezerJam]

...because you are making your own copy of an original, and artists are supposed to get reimbursed from a per-blank-disc levy (which is a topic of some discussion on its own).

It would be most cool as well.

I can tell you

[the_2nd_coming]

Wonder what would happen to this machine in U.S. and Europe

RIAA Lawyer: we are sueing this store's ass off for contributing to the theft of music

Defence Lawyer: Ummm Dude, they have the rights to make back up copies of their CDs.

RIAA Lawyer: no they don't, back in 98 we had a party where the US congress and the entertainmnet industry whiped out our dicks and pissed on all the US copyright law. Now we get to piss al over the consumer, see. *whips out dick and pisses on the defence lawyer and onlookers*

They have one of these at a CD shop in town

[qurob]

Its one of those places that buys and sells used CD's.

For $3 you can copy any CD in the store.

in the U.S.

[llamalicious]

The machine would be monitored by a surveillance team, and SWAT squad 24x7.

The RIAA/Senate approved team would use high-powered digital binoculars to take pictures of those copying CD's and the label of the CD they are copying. Hooked to a RIAA central database of copyrighted labels, the team's computer system would alert them to possible copyright infrigement and the SWAT would be activated.

Surveillance: We've got a Metallica copy in-progess. Mobilize SWAT Unit Charlie Omega Papa Yankee

SWAT: Ok, Sectors 2 and 3 take the rear of the copy device. Sector 1, you're with me, we'll provide coverage from the lingerie aisle. On 1 we go, 3... 2... 1... Swarm Swarm Swarm !!!

Well, maybe I'm just being paranoid...

Re:in the U.S.

[cdrudge]

"But really officer, I'm just, um, ah, archiving it. Yeah, that's it, I'm archiving it just in case my friend's copy gets destroyed somehow."

Re:in the U.S.

[scruffy]

In the US, this machine is a national security threat, and anyone who buys or uses one is a terrorist, and anyone who suggests that we legalize them a terrorist sympathizer.

Re:in the U.S.

[Reziac]

I don't think you're being paranoid at all -- it would be dead simple to incorporate a monitoring device that would flag certain data structures and filenames, and when it finds "restricted" data, the gadget phones the cops while you're waiting for your CD. Assuming it doesn't just refuse to copy it in the first place.

This isnt only in Adelaide

[lord_ashaman]

I Live in Sydney, and i've seen one of these machines bout 3 months ago outside a really crappy little supermarket in Frenches Forest. It is about half the Size of a person, the one i saw was blue and red. It had two CD Drives, top one is the reader, bottom one is the burner, only does CD-R no re-writeable.i was bored and had money to play around with so i gave it a go. worked fine.

The only bad thing is you have to stand there for ten minutes while it burns, i think they should have a little screen with something to do like a version of pong even!!

Australia is hardly a haven for freedom

[leereyno]

With all of the censorship^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hanti-obscenity laws and legally enforced political correctness going on down there, I hardly see how this is anything but an exception to the rule. Don't even get me started on what has happened to the right to own guns down there.

Lee

Re:Australia is hardly a haven for freedom

[leereyno]

I'm all in favor of gun control. When firing a gun it is very important that you have control over it. Otherwise it is difficult to consistently hit what you are shooting at whether it be a carjacker, a burglar, or a grunt within your government's gestapo.

What I'm not in favor of is legislation designed to curb access to firearms by honest citizens. Guns in the hands of your average honest american or australian keep people safe. Guns in the hands of criminals are what create danger. Laws that seek to limit or eliminate the right to keep and bear arms are only going to apply to honest citizens since criminals don't obey the laws anyway. So in the end you've got a situation where the enemy is armed and the rest of us become easy prey. Then there is the issue of tyrrany. Its rather hard for tyrrany to exist in a country where the citizens have real power in the form of firearms. When the sheep have claws and teeth the wolves keep their distance. I'm glad I live in a country where the socialists and closet communists haven't been able do dismantle one of our prime guarantees of justice and liberty.

Lee

Re:Australia is hardly a haven for freedom

[leereyno]

Actually you do have the right to own a gun. That right is being suppressed and denied by your government, but that does not destroy it as a right. Here in the US our constitution lists a certain set of rights that are acknowledged to exist for free people. The right to own guns is one of those rights. The existance of this right is independant of whether it is acknowledged or not, its just that we're lucky enough that our constitution does list it. Our constitution is also not meant to be an exhaustive list of every right we have. The ninth amendment specifically states that. Many people in the US don't seem to understand this, which is sad.

What kind of a constitution Australia has I don't know. I know that in Britian what corresponds to a constitution there is made up of a whole series of charters and laws starting with the Magna Carta.

As for worrying about whether people can buy or own powerful weapons, just remember that the government can. This same government can use those weapons to enforce censorship or political correctness. Last time I checked a government that used force to suppress and eliminate political dissent was on its way towards facism.

Lee

Re:Australia is hardly a haven for freedom

[leereyno]

The laws of the US are not what protect me from having you kick me in the balls. What protects me is your understanding that should you try, I will beat you within an inch of your life and most likely neuter you.....dude.

Re:Australia is hardly a haven for freedom

[leereyno]

"Amendment II: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Anyone who has to any degree studied the works of Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, just to name a few, would clearly understand that the purpose behind the second amendment had as much to do with preserving liberty as it did with defining the role of militias. Washington called firearms "the people's liberty's teeth." The language of the second amendment itself is very clear. It states the the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Had it said something like "the right of militias to keep and bear arms..." then that would be something something different. In those days a militia was made up of volunteers from among the people who were expected to bring their own weapons. It was not today's paid professional army where the weapons are provided by the state. Militia's have not been seen in this country since the Civil war for the simple reason that we have not been threatened by a foreign invasion. If Canada were to invade you can bet that the armed citizens of the US would very vigorously defend their nation.

As for whether Australians want guns or not, that is not really for me to say. I will say however that here in America we have a choice as to whether we own a gun or not. If we want one, the state does not try to interfere. If we do not want one, no one can force us to have one. If you don't want a gun then that is your right and your choice to make. What isn't right is for the state to try and deprive you that right to choose.

Lee

If this machine were in the U.S......

[hillct]

[W]hat would happen to this machine in U.S.?

I can see it now. An angry mob of greasy little MPAA/RIAA lawyers would drag the machine into an empty soccer field, and in a fit of rage, take out all their frustrations upon it, taking turns kicking and beating it until it relented and agreed NEVER EVER copy another CD, even for archival purposes.

Re:Books too

[Ioldanach]

I also think books should be decommercialised. Imagine being able to just walk up to a machine like this one and be able to have it print out a book for you, or make copies from a file saved on a disc.

You mean Books on Demand? Been done, but no reason to call them 'decommercialised'. I haven't seen it mainstream, yet, but it would be great for out of print books. It would mean going to the bookstore to look for a book and finding it no longer in print wouldn't be such a bad thing. It might be on index, and you could just print up a fresh copy.

Won't Last

[Amigori]

As cool as it might seem to have these installed in 7/11's across the US, I'm pretty sure that the music industry won't let it happen. Legal fees and court costs will cause this company to go under, because the RIAA will just throw some high-cost lawsuits at them in the US, and I'm sure they, or their Australian counterpart, is trying similar legal tactics there in Australia.

Wait a minute, you say, I purchased the media and should have fair use to it, I totally agree with you, but almost everyone that I know that copies music, for whatever reason, has access to a CD burner either in their computer, or a friends computer. So what's the point of this machine? Convenience. But it won't happen here, too many corrupt politicians...cough...Hollings...cough... and media barrons.

Amigori

Re:Won't Last

[Polaris]

I have to agree. When I was at Disneyworld Orlando in August I bought a picture of myself and my son on one of the rides, for the exorbitant sum of $12. Since I wanted him to keep the original, but wanted a copy for myself, I took the pic into the local Walgreens in downtown Kissimmee, where they had a color photocopier, and asked them to copy it. They refused, citing copyright. WDW obviously polices these guys pretty heavily. Still, I have a decent scanner at work, and a color laser...

Re:Won't Last

[Amigori]

That's must be coincedence then, not the Walgreen's thing, but that I worked for Disney last August and lived near Kissimmee next to a Walgreens. Go figure...But yeah, when I did work there, we charged alot of money for everything. My cast discount brought the prices down to normal prices for most things there, but its still expensive.

Does it do the label too?

[bill_mcgonigle]

That would justify the cost / inconvienience. The article is mum on the subject.

Ten minutes seemed pretty slow until I remembered these are stationed in convienience stores. Right next to the candy aisle, I bet. You'd think a dedicated machine would use a buffer and read/write at the same time, making 10 minutes too long on a 24x writer, but they probably agreed to slow it down in exchange for floor space.

Pictures, and more info:

[viper21]

Can be found at this website

It actually looks kind of neat. That article will give you the lowdown of how it works, and what kind of profit you can expect. Neato.

I think that I'll stick with my Pinball Machines or to writing Movie Reviews

It is already paid for

[Vspirit]

They tax CDR to cover monetary compensation to the artists.
ahh nice, then its already paid for, no more complains.. no problem.
lets copy.

Today is the day.. not my first post, but registered post number 100 after coming here day in and day out since dec97.

Don't forget prices in Aussie dollars

[Anthy]

Which means in US dollars the price for the burn + CD is US$3.50.

Old news in Perth...

[BrokenHalo]

These machines have been installed at the student guild offices in Murdoch University for at least a year.

I've actually used one of these... not so good...

[swagr]

My CD came out upside-down. And although I was making a copy of Slackware, the copied CD was Men at Work.

Stealing the invisible

[jimharris]

I find all this glee surrounding stealing very odd. And be honest, people are stealing, even the older generation has gotten into the act. I'm 50, and I see all kinds of people just copying CDs right and left. No one wants to buy them anymore.

And I think it's a kind of gutless thievery. People will rationalize this because they aren't stealing anything tangible. But future economics will be based on the intangible.

This shows that ethics is directly related to what people can get away with. People are more than willing to steal if it's easy, but they don't have the balls to steal the CD player to play their stolen CDs in.

Jim Harris

Re:Stealing the invisible

[(void*)]

But future economics will be based on the intangible.

Which newsletter is it you subcribe to, and how may I subscribe, so that I too, may know the future?

Re:Stealing the invisible

[Havokmon]

If some kind of Star Trek replicator was invented so we could copy a Mercedes as easily as a Nellie Furtado CD, we'd still need to sell them. Our world is based on jobs. Anything that destroys jobs is bad for the world.

The U.S. has been moving towards a "service industry" for YEARS, as our imports have greatly outnumbered our exports.

I see it as, "If you don't have anything to offer, you've only screwed yourself."

Music and Publishing are not service industries. Like you said, just look at trends. I saw this coming before I got into High School, the service industry (not just waitressing) is where the future is. Not the resale of physical property.

Jobs aren't "Lost" they're merely transferred from production to service. This is why there are so many 40yr olds going back to school. Someone working in a 'plant' for 40 or 50 years is rare now. Career changes are expected.

Eventually, the concept of owning an Idea forever will go away, and you WILL be able to replicate a Mercades legally (via Star Trek). But not until after you've purchased the rights to it.

There would be no product on the shelf as you invision. Only the plans would need to be sold.

Only the uninformed think that copying computer data is any different from Xeroxing a book. No, it doesn't take much longer to do OCR a physical book than it does to copy an ebook. I did that for a living 10 years ago (legally OCR'ing manuals for companies). Burning a CD now takes just as long as OCR'ing 500 pages 10 years ago (on a 286).

You're almost there, you realize the future is coming, and there are legal issues, but you havn't let go of classic manufacturing...

Is it so hard to see the trend that stealing digital copies of music, movies, books, etc will hurt the economy, and destroy jobs?

Actually, yes. Stealing in the digital age is not the same as it was 100 years ago. You envision Star Trek repliation of a Mercedes. If that car is stolen, who loses? The owner? They'll replicate another one. The seller? Maybe, but please, a little common sense here: the person stole the car beause they didn't want to pay for it. It's digital, there is no materials cost lost by the 'creator' (Now, the buyer is producing the vehicle in his replicator - some energy is lost), just a potential loss of another copy that could have been purchased - which costs zero to produce above what has already been spent on creation.

Sure, it's easy to copy music. What's being stolen? The same thing that's played on the radio? So I press record on my PC, and record the radio. Have I stolen? Or maybe I bought the CD version of a tape I already bought. Now who's stolen (Some think the RIAA)? I already own the content, it was placed on a CD for me as a service..(See where we're going?)

All the hubub about piracy is mostly because the industry is seeing an end of the line of upgrades (8-track -> record -> tape -> CD). With digital content, they're revenue is fixed. No longer can they get revenue for the same material (original cost) over 30 years, reselling it in different formats. They will need to adjust to the new SERVICE industry that has been coming for YEARS, or someone else will take their place.

If I could see the trend from production to service industry coming before I hit High School (I'm 28 now), and big business did not, that's pretty pitiful. I'd be willing to bet they just didn't WANT to see it coming.

We're "Losing" jobs over this supposed "piracy" as much as we've lost jobs over automation in manufacturing. Remember when those robots were going to put all us humans out of work?

Even in this 'recession', and those pesky robots building our cars, unemployment has not reached critical mass.

Re:Stealing the invisible

[PeekabooCaribou]

Here's a hypothetical situation: I need to use, say, Adobe Illustrator to finsh my homework for a graphic design course. I'm a starving college student, taking home about $50-$75 a week working part time. I have expenses like school supplies, gas, food, etc. I'm obviously not going to buy Illustrator because of the high price tag, even though I would like to support the developers and their wonderful program. Even the educational pricing is prohibitive. Instead, I have two choices: use the school-supplied computer labs, or download a copy and use it from the convenience of my home.

In either case, I don't have the means to pay for the program. I could go without having the program on my own machine. I could pirate, which in other hypothetical situations might mean the difference between finishing and not finishing the work. If I pirate, you say the company is losing money. I say the money was never headed in it's direction anyway. It "lost" money it never had any claim on.

I believe these two things: people buy good software, and pirates grow to be consumers. Piracy has the potential to be harmless, and it has been in most cases that I've seen. Don't knock the 19 year old college student that pirates a copy of Word. Go for the computer consultant installing free copies of Office XP on every machine that comes through his door.

Re:Stealing the invisible

[rudedog]

First quote: But future economics will be based on the intangible.

Second quote: you are ultimately destroying jobs ... truckers, cashiers, store owners, warehousemen, and so on

So, in this future intangible economy, exactly what are the truckers, cashiers, store owners and warehousmen going to be doing?

The fact is that economic models change. Business that don't change their business models to adapt to changing economic models will go out of business.

If the typewriter industry had the lobbying clout of the entertainment industry, general purpose wordprocessors for computers would not exist, and printers would have a surtax of $1 per DPI capability, adding $600 to the cost of a 600 DPI printer.

It's time for the entertainment industry to change their model or go out of business like the typewriter industry.

Re:Stealing the invisible

[(void*)]

Is the wind you are experiencing turning into a full force gale, or will do nothing but stroke the green grass of the fields?

There is an old Chinese saying: bend as the wind blows. If the trend is the service insutry as it were, why is the RIAA "fighting the future". If they were publicly held company, I'll sell their stock right away.

Re:Stealing the invisible

[(void*)]

Here's another question: why jobs?

Pay the artists a cut

[mgkimsal2]

If there was a way to identify the content (aren't there some nifty headers some place with a specific ID for many commercial CDs?) one could fairly easily track which commercial music CDs are being copied and collect royalties on behalf of the artist.

IIRC, a CD costing $18 at a retail store ends up putting about $2 in the pocket of the artist. I'd happily give $2 directly to an artist for a copy of their disc. The other $16 is to cover overhead of distribution, marketing, etc. Well, the marketing is being done via WOM (or via ads which I'd already seen, causing interest in the music) and the distribution is being handled by the CD copier itself. I can do without the packaging, and the arist gets their $2 from the CD copying machine company.

If I'm copying a CD of my vacation pics, it's $5 to copy. If it's the latest Tom Petty or whatever, it's $7. Works for me.

Private Copying is legal in Canada

[Oniros]

In Canada you can legally borrow an audio CD from someone and make a copy for yourself. Hence the tax on blank media to compensate for that.

For more information: Articlde 80 of the Copyright Act of Canada

I don't like the analogy

[Mr_Silver]

Can someone come up with a better analogy than copying CD's with this and copying books with a photo copier?

I don't like it because:

1. If you photocopy a whole book it takes a lot longer than the 9 minutes it takes for a cd.
2. If you photocopy a book, you don't get a near perfect copy, whereas if you copy a cd you do.

What does worry me is that the people in the article might just be right, this could harm the music industry. If anyone on the street can make a near perfect exact copy of any cd then what is the incentive for most people to buy it in the first place? People don't go out a photocopy books because the methods that you use to copy it are so tedious and time consuming that it rapidly becomes a waste of time and money. This is different, you stick the cd in and wait 9 minutes, this is substantially easier than copying a book.

Many people who buy a copy of something they have on pirate do it either to support the artist or because their copy quality is rubbish. I'm willing to bet that the majority of people would even both to cough up would because of the latter and with this, there is no need to do that since the quality is already perfect.

Of course the industry shouldn't charge such exhorbitant prices for stuff. You think you're hard done by in the US? Take the price in USD and that is what it is in UKP, in other words, our CD's are 1.5 times more that yours!

Take a look at the Amiga. Ignoring Commodores own inabilities, the software market was utterly obliterated by the ease it was to pick up copies of anything released. It just because totally un-economical to write and sell anything for it.

Re:I don't like the analogy

[SubtleNuance]

If you photocopy a whole book it takes a lot longer than the 9 minutes it takes for a cd.

If you photocopy a book, you don't get a near perfect copy, whereas if you copy a cd you do.

This does, to any logical person, not matter a wit. Either the act is legal or it is not, why try and confuse the subject with this muddy it-changes-the-feeling-of-the-act-and-result.

Are you proposing Information Would be Free if it lasts longer than %arbitrary_time% to propagate and the result is sub-optimal by %this_much%?

Do you work for the RIAA? I cant see any-other reason to foist these non-sequitur arguments... outside of irrelevant FUD/propaganda to "change the subject" in a public debate.

Re:I don't like the analogy

[Jordy]

1. If you photocopy a whole book it takes a lot longer than the 9 minutes it takes for a cd.

You know... comments like these get me thinking that people haven't seen what an industrial copier can do. You do realize that they make 120+ ppm copiers with book scanners attached to them right? (though unbinding the book is better.)

Not only that, but some of these photocopiers have document binders attached to them and they will fold, stitch and trim your finished work.

I hope you also realize that since the bulk of the time is spent scanning, the second copy you decide to make doesn't take nearly as long.

2. If you photocopy a book, you don't get a near perfect copy, whereas if you copy a cd you do.

Actually, current photocopier technology is a bit beyond that office copier you use. Color is a bit harder and more expensive, but your average book doesn't typically have much color.

Say you are student and instead of spending $125 on a book, you decide to borrow one from someone and get it copied. At 800 pages, you are looking at roughly 10 minutes (with binding.) Your total costs (assuming you can use the high-end copier at-cost, ie. no kinkos) is in the $30 range.

The end result is similar to that of a copied CD. No cover art, slightly lower quality medium and one hell of a cost savings.

So the question becomes, why doesn't everyone do it?

First, it's somewhat hard to find Xerox 8900 series copiers (or equivilent) that can be used without questions by the attendant, though certainly not impossible. Most copy shops will copy whatever you ask them to using their industrial copiers instead of those dinky self-serve ones. I'm not particularly sure of the legality of making a 'backup copy' of a book, but the argument could be made in the face of a head strong attendant.

People like having the real physical medium and the average person has no problem paying for someone they feel is worth the money.

There is also the resale value to think about... copied goods being rather shady aren't an asset to be sold off at a later time.

All in all, the photocopy analogy is pretty accurate. The real difference is what you can do at home easily. While there are book scanner adapters, it takes quite a bit loner to print and then you have to bind it yourself, but the savings involved is substanially higher than what you get by copying CDs.

Re:I don't like the analogy

[Mr_Silver]

This does, to any logical person, not matter a wit. Either the act is legal or it is not, why try and confuse the subject with this muddy it-changes-the-feeling-of-the-act-and-result.

I'm not saying that copying a book and CD are any less different. What I am saying is that using them both as an analogy is slightly incorrect because of their relative complexity in going about it. Using something which is just as easy to make a near perfect copy which is currently available in the streets for people to use would be a better analogy.

From the article, you can now go into a shop cough up $9 (plus $2 for the CD) and in less than 10 minutes have a near perfect copy of your CD minus a cover case.

Now, you try and do the same with a book at, say, your local copier shop and you'll find the results are substantially different. Granted, if you have access to a profesional copying system then the results are better, but at the end of the day the result is much more inferior and time consuming.

This is why, at the time of writing, software piracy is more prevelant than, say, DVD piracy.

What I am pointing out is that one of the most important factors in piracy is ease of copying. If it takes a long time to do and produces an inferior copy then people are less likely to do it. If, however, it costs very little and produces a very high quality result, then there is greater advantage.

Do you work for the RIAA? I cant see any-other reason to foist these non-sequitur arguments... outside of irrelevant FUD/propaganda to "change the subject" in a public debate.

Had you read my posting you would have realised that I'm in the UK where we don't have the RIAA. But of course you were too busy screaming the typical "FUD" to someones comment that you didn't quite understand.

slightly OT

[SubtleNuance]

In Canada it is also (...for now... but stay tuned to properly oppose any pending legislation(!)) perfectly legal for a person to make copies of their own media. It is also absolutely LEGAL to copy ANOTHER PERSONS AUDIO CD.

What does this mean? (first see this faq) You can take your friend's CD and burn yourself a copy - and its legal. This is because Canadians pay a levy on CDRs which 'compensate' producers (et al). I dont agree that this is the best tactic, but it is a powerful one. If people were informed of this fact, and groups actively promoted this, you could eliminate the present distribution scheme in Canada (retailers/distributors/labels). The Library would be all that Canadians needed to have copies of all the music they wanted.

Now, why is this going OT? I would like to know, does anyone have links or Info to make a Linux based, CDR 'copy machine'? I would like to organize a 'Copy Your Friends CDs Party" at a library or some such (near the Uni in town would be good), but would like to be able to copy many-many volumes of CDs.

I also have thought about make such a device available on loan to local Libraries in order to 'promote' and 'encourage' the practice.

Can anyone provide a info to do such a thing? What would be really nice is if the device could be operated without a monitor - just insert discs and close the trays...

Re:slightly OT

[bakes]

What you should do is move levy-paid Canadian CDR's to the US, where they can copy as many audio CD's as they like.

Or doesn't it work that way?

self-fulfilling prophecy

[uslinux.net]

Does anyone remember when CDs came out? Records and tapes were $8-$10. Hell, records and tapes were $8 for YEARS. CDs came out at $15-16. The *excuse* at the time was that they were much more costly to manufacture, though truthfully, they were still cheaper, since there was a much lower rate of return for defective merchandise (after all, you don't get pops on CDs, normally).

Even if it *was* $6 more expensive to produce a CD then, *now* CDs are practically free (just look at how many AOL wastes). So why hasn't the cost of CD music come down? Because the music industry can get it. Piracy was far less an issue when costs were *half* their cost now.

My point? If CDs were $8 or $9, people would snatch them up and not bother to pirate them - after all, the amount of *effort* you need to put forth just to find stuff, download it, burn it, etc, isn't worthwhile. But, when CDs are now approaching $18+ at local stores - well, it doesn't take a genius to realize that it's *easy* to recoup your initial hardware "investment" (cost).

FWIW, I own about 150 albums and another 150 CDs. And yet I really haven't bought any CDs in probably 2 years. Why? Cost, and the level of crap which is being put out now (which is probably more a function of me being 25 and having already found a style of music 4 or 5 years ago which I like - which is now disappearing).

Re:self-fulfilling prophecy

[tswinzig]

probably more a function of me being 25 and having already found a style of music 4 or 5 years ago which I like - which is now disappearing

Crap-rock?

No...

Wuss-rock?

That's it!

Re:self-fulfilling prophecy

[btellier]

Woah there, oxygen thief. How come I can buy the tape of the latest Backstreet Boys album for $5 less than the CD?

Re:self-fulfilling prophecy

[elandal]

FWIW, I own about 150 albums and another 150 CDs. And yet I really haven't bought any CDs in probably 2 years. Why? Cost, and the level of crap which is being put out now (which is probably more a function of me being 25 and having already found a style of music 4 or 5 years ago which I like - which is now disappearing).

I'm still buying CDs. Mostly because I like the fluff that comes with them (copying yields a stupid-looking thing). And I don't know many people who'd have CDs I'd want. And most of the tracks are just too hard to find on the net - and if I find them, they're mostly badly encoded crap.

I buy Japanese import CDs over the net from USA - and I live in Finland. With S&H and taxes, I probably pay about USD 40-45 per CD.. It's mostly cheaper than buying straight from Japan, and the titles aren't found in Finland anyway. And yes, I could probably get china/hongkong/taiwan bootlegs for half the price, but I prefer the originals, as they have nicer packaging, and then I know I support the original artists unlike with the bootlegs.

When I get the CDs, I put them to the CD-ROM drive, rip and encode, and listen to. Mostly because I spend most of my time around computers (a job - a hobby, what's the difference? I don't know which one I'm really paid for, as I mostly can't distinguish between them).

Of course it's nice every now and then to pop the disc into the standalone player in my living room, and listen to the tracks in better (less noisy, better audio equipment) environment.

Yes, I do buy other CDs, too. Sometimes I copy a disc from a friend, and then start looking for it. Every now and then I find the original, other times I don't find it and give up.
Every now and then I do buy a CD without ever having heard any tracks on it. Mostly that happens when I have most of the recordings from some artist, and decide that I might as well complete the collection.

This is the way it should be

[famazza]

This is the way it should be. RIAA should learn how to avoid copying without changing laws, or even excluding technologies or breaking any copyright. If they try to add value to their products I'm sure that many will avoid copying.

I'll say it again, RIAA/MPAA must learn to adapt themselves to new upcoming technologies. When a robot replaces a worker there are no laws that avoid this, the worker must adapt himself, by doing a new job, or by doing it better then the robot.

No association should overcome the democracy or the liberty, let's avoid this kind of thing.

Of course you can

[Sycraft-fu]

You just need a quality burner and good burning software. Go to http://www.elby.org/CloneCD/english/ and have a look. Personally, I recommend getting a Lite-On burner. There is almost nothing the new ones can't copy. They read all the subchannels and so get copyprotections like the old safedisc and Laserlock and so on, and they even do all the EFM bit patterns correctly and so can get the new safedisc as well. This is legal, even with teh DCMA. Why? Simple, you aren't actually circumventing copy protection. You are just making an exact copy of the disc. All the copy protection will actually be intact on the copy, just as it was on the orignal.

Apparently the only point of contention is the ability to amplify weak sectors of Safedisc 2 discs. CloneCD will disable that ability if your Windows profile indicates you live in the US.

At any rate, get yourself a Lite-On LTR-24102B (24x burner) for about $110 off pricewatch and get a copy of CloneCD for $31 and you'll be able to copy more or less any disc out there.

Re:Breaking News "Photo-copier" debuts.

[letxa2000]

How long would it take you to copy a 200 page book, and how much money? Now how long and how much to copy a CD? See the difference yet?

While I personally would never be inclined to waste my time making a copy of an entire book, there are people who do.

Especially on college campus where books sometimes cost US$100+. A student will buy a copy of the book and then his friends and their friends friends will make copies of the book. Copy services are often offered at a discount and it only takes extra time to make the first copy; you can make subsequent copies of the copies really fast. And at $100+ for the book and discounted on-campus copy services it is not hard to believe that you'd actually save money.

Re:Rights

[JCCyC]

Exactly. Costs way more, takes a lot more time and hassle, and is not a "perfect" copy.

But if the book is out of print, it is the only recourse you have left. I have had this PITA lots of times in Engineering. The teachers just loved to select unfindable textbooks. Not nice.

This thing better have some weight to it!

[splume]

"Wonder what would happen to this machine in U.S. and Europe."

Well, depending on what part of the contry (USA) you put this thing in, I can see a couple of red-necks loading this baby on the back of their pickup and driving off with it (cough West Virginia cough). If people have tried to rip off ATM's, soda machines, and newspaper dispensers, what makes you think they wouldn't go after this thing? I really hope they load the base of this puppy with some lead or cement.

Re:you missed some

[Erasmus Darwin]

"I think you're a bit biased in your view. You look on information as something that is owned and controled. That is not its natural state, that is the state of information in the corperate age."

You present a number of legitimate, non-infringing uses. I'll even admit that I dropped the ball by not mentioning them in my previous post. The problem is that they aren't especially likely.

Most of the CD-based information people deal with is corporate or commercial in nature. I think it's great that we have garage bands, public access TV, and amateur films, but I don't think they'll ever compete with the level of permeation seen by pop stars, network TV, and Hollywood. Even Linux, with its many benefits, doesn't have the overall marketshare of Windows (even if it is holding its own in the server realm).

In short, I see this service being used similarly to how many of the popular music-based P2P services are used -- despite the occasional legit use, most of the traffic is Britney Spears, Linkin Park, N'Sync, and System of a Down.

Re:you missed some

[Kintanon]

For which I care exactly nothing. The fact that some other asshole wants to distribute bad commercial music around in his spare time has exactly no impact on me. And it shouldn't affect my ability to distribute amateur martial arts movies online, or any other creative work which is a product of my own effort. If I need to make 100 copies of a CD that I'm selling for 15$ apiece because it has my cool Amateur Wuxia movie on it then one of these things would be great to have access to. If they're really paranoid about it pay some kid 5.25$ an hour to sit next to the machine and check CDs to make sure they are legit.

Kintanon

Re:This is morally reprehensible!

[King_TJ]

Huh? Do I mod you down for stupidity, or up for humor? I'm not quite sure....

I suppose it's also morally reprehensible to have coin-operated soda machines in today's society, when everyone should have the technology of a refrigerator at home, and can chill and serve their own sodas!

All coin-op devices are there for one of two reasons. 1. convenience, and 2. entertainment value. If you decide it's more convenient (financially convenient, even!) to use a coin-op based service than to invest in your own system at home, so what? That should be a valid choice.

Great!

[sunhou]

Do they have these machines installed in music stores? That would be really handy.

Hmph

[ryanwright]

NEW machines installed in Adelaide convenience stores make the illegal copying of the latest CDs and computer software - which costs artists and software designers millions of dollars - as easy as buying a loaf of bread.

Nope - no bias in this article, that's for sure.

News flash: Photocopy machines installed worldwide make the illegal copying of the latest books and sheet music - which costs artists millions of dollars - as easy as buying a loaf of bread.

"These things are baaaad", said local idiot Glenn B. Aaker. "I couldn't imagine anything more potentially devastating for my web site than people copying pictures of myself and my farm animals. Those pictures are copyrighted, damnit, and they cost me a lot of, uh, money, to make."

Mr. Aaker said his goats would not take this lying down, but rather, standing up. "Hell no", he said. "We're not putting up with this. Besides, I get more pleasure out of it (fending these criminals off) when they're standing up."

Convenience store owner John Tsavrou said the photocopy machines were popular among strange looking people. "If people ask, we tell them it is sick and wrong to copy pictures of Mr. Aaker copulating with his goats and there are warnings on the machines - but what they copy is up to them," he said.

A spokesman from Xerox had no comment, although he did shoot milk out of his nose in a fit of hysterical laughter when told his machines were driving down Mr. Aaker's profits.

Legal? Maybe not...

[BLKMGK]

Except that as you noted software such as CloneCD will disable certain copying features if it sees you're living in a particular market. If it's not illegal or been put under pressure by someone why would the programmers have gone to that trouble?

I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be legal just that despite the common sense of it being legal someone somewhere has obviously applied pressure to the makers of this software. FWIW there are also ways around this crap (sigh).

Think about it this way - it's "copy protection" and the software copies it. Whooops, is that a DMCA issue or not? What a mess....

P.S. I use Plextor and so far have had no problems yet. The moment one of their firmware updates screws me up I'll be switching to another company and they will have lost a customer.

Re:Legal? Maybe not...

[Sycraft-fu]

I noted the disabled feature, it is the "amplify weak sectors" feature. That actually modifies data to circumvent copy protection and so is not legal. However making a perfect 1:1 copy does not violate the DCMA, as there is no circumvention. If you do a 1:1 copy of an audio disc that won't play in computers, the copy won't play in computers either.

The reason I no longer recommend Plextor drives is because they cost a good deal more than the Lite-On drives and also have trouble with some odd EFM patterns. Safedisc 2 and some other newer protection rely on (among other things) haveing data sequences that overload the EFM encoder on burners. Plextors can write most of these odd sequences fine, but not all. Lite-On drives handle all known cases.

Can't happen in the US -- Illegal.

[tweakt]

Obviously the burden of not violating copyright rests with the user under Australian law, which is the same as that applied to photocopiers. Today evening I saw the machine and it's really cool. Wonder what would happen to this machine in U.S. and Europe."

Yeah, right. It'll never happen. Could you imagine if the machine was within walking distance of the local music store? 1 kid buys a CD, 10 kids get copies. It's napster, but moved to sneaker-net.

Sure, it *could* be used responsibly, and thats why its legal in some areas, it would even be legal in the US as long as it didnt circumvent any copy protection (ie: PC Games, etc), but I still dont expect to see that any time soon, it would just get abused far too much.

It even bypasses some anti-copying measures. ...

That's a violation of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), which makes it illegal to circumvent any copy protection system.