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

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.

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

[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.)

$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

[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/

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...

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

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.

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).