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

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

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

[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...?

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.

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.

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

[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.)

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..."

$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......

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

[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

[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/

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*

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.

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...

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!!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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?

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...

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).

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: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.