Slashdot Mirror
Unique ID Codes for CD / DVD Manufacturers
terrymr writes: "The movie & recording industry are lobbying hard for the European Union to require all CDs & DVDs to carry unique source identifiers to aid in combatting piracy. They are also demanding tougher penalties for infringers. It seems the only people who would be hit by the ID code requirement would be the legitimate manufacturers as the pirates simply wouldn't bother."
The next step will be placing a chip in all audio devices to detect copyright watermarks. The next step will be to make it illegal to create any device which can copy sound. Then it's Big Brother time.
soul daddies in a firewire tumble dryer
Their 'encryption' was easily defeated.
I could see hax0rz just putting in random id's to get normal viewers in trouble with the naz^H^H^HRIAA/MPAA.
Maybe I'm cynical, but again, what's the point? An ID on the disc can be manipulated, same as on the hardware. Hell, the hardware can have all manner of juicy goodness soldered to it.
Well...I guess this could also give Microsoft some ammunition with their claims about not being able to release the source code of certain Windows components (including the Intellectual property protection stuff) due to threats of national security. Seems that copying and file sharing really is terrorism.
Anyone have any solid facts (or at least a little more substantial than these whisps of smoke) about music and movie piracy supporting terrorism and terrorists?
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I dont get it.. anyone would think that they were LOSING money because of piracy, but everyone knows thats not the case.
No matter what they do, piracy is always going to happen - always has, always will. The manufacturers are gonna get annoyed soon enough with all these proposed rules & regulations which interferes with their business.
Surely the hardware vendors have some kinds of rights against what groups like the RIAA and MPAA propse, if it is deemed unsuitable to bundle what they 'demand' into products, or must they comply?
Grrr....
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
"feeds a growing black economy in which criminal networks use piracy to fund other activities such as drug dealing, arms trading, money laundering and terrorism."
What's next? A claim that Osama Bin Laden is making money from the FastTrack network?
Yes, that is why all those movies are out on Usenet and IRC, to fund terrorism.
When I read last Friday's story about watermarking on all ADCs, I went and joined the EFF. People have a lot of inertia with these stories, they disapprove but find it hard to get worked up. At some point it will become so anti-libertarian, all in the name of protecting the exploitation of artists by a giant parasitic maggotlike managerial structure, that you will feel the cold restrictive hand on your shoulder day by day.
Consider joining the EFF or a similar organization today, to help them keep our freedoms on our behalf.
This is just a silly, stupid idea.
Why ask the law makers? Shouldn't they be asking Philips (and Sony) and Toshiba (Sony and more) anyways? They are the ones who own the IP.
Why is it they can dictate the market...? Just because of piracy?
Can I make a statement without asking a question?
So let me get this straight. I come up with an idea and patent it (sorry guys). It really helps an industry for years, they make billions of dollars. Suddenly my patented idea is one part of a ten step piracy process and they come along and make me change it?
Fuck them... come up with your own idea ??AA. Considering that Philips and Toshiba (Sony and more) came up with technology they should dictate the terms... but that isn't happening.
??AA needs to just die or come up with their own methods of selling us their crap.
Get your Unix fortune now!
They will put these unique IDs somewhere on the edges of the disk. Where's my sharpie? :)
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
It seems Philips dislikes this type of activity, and has gone so far as to disallow copy-protected CDs from using the "Compact Disc" logo. Given that they're based in the EU, I suspect they have a pretty powerful lobby there as well. I sincerely doubt that the EU would risk losing the support of one of the biggest electronics producers around - after all, one of the selling points of the European Union is that it is "business oriented". Losing the support of a major player like that is a bad business decision.
Current damages are based on how much money people make on selling the stuff. However they want that changed to the full retail price... which allows companies to set there own damages by overinflating the value of their software then giving everyone a discount.
Have a copy of 2000 Enterprise server, your why not just give your house to Bill!
James
if waterproofing is able to survive, say,
a MP3 192 kbit/s rip, I suppose that the
waterproofing of CDs can be heard on
normal Hifi gear. Let's go back to vinyl or tape then...
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
Whats the point in a bunch of geeks sitting around debating this? The average joe doesnt care and no amount of complaining on these forums is going to make a difference. At least try to educate the "non-geeks" about the dangers of giving up rights to the corporations. Maybe then the politicians would take notice
on the first of June, everybody boycott star wars II in protest of the MPAA's evil tactics.
You know it's time some country, any country, smacks the living hell out of both of these organizations.
In the US, the BSA seems to think it's a legitimate law-enforcement agency, Audits without cause, seizing systems without a warrant, just once I want to see these orgs get taught that they are not law enforcement, they have no power, and that they need to just shut the hell up and step the hell back.
You'll also notice that the article states that a raid on a DVD-R factory netted 10,000 disks and 31 burners.
So they guy had 10,00 DVD's, I've got about 100 blank cd's sitting around here, it doesn't mean they're going to get used for illegal copies.
How many of those disks had movies on them? Were they copies of some un-released digital version of the movies we haven't yet seen? Or were they copies of the bootlegs some yutz made with a camcorder?
Most people I know will wait for the film to come out on Rental if they don't want to see it in the theatre, not go download or shell out hard earned cash for some 2-bit bad visual, horrible sound camcorder job. Hell, it's not even worth the download time over a good broadband 'net connection.
Show me where drugs help fund terrorism.
Heroin yes, it comes from the region where our (USA's) enemies are from. They may profit from drug trading.
Coccaine - No! Coke profits go to... you guessed it! Drug lords. Their interests are greed and their enemy is their own government.
Pot - crazy! Much pot (that I've seen or smoked) comes from my own state. Grown and sold here. So who are these terrorists?
Geez, at least the right wing has someone to distract us from what they are really doing.
Get your Unix fortune now!
How about 'STUPID', 'MORON', and 'RETARD'?
'GREEDY', 'SELF-SERVING', and 'HEARTLESS BASTARD' are available as well.
I'm sure we can come up with more. Every one unique. Every one identifying these people for exactly what they are.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
To my knowledge, it is still possible to pay
in cash for a CD or a DVD
denomination euros banknotes carry identification
tags, and certainly not the coins !
How could they trace what happens next ?
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
So, I'm all for the BSA enforcing Microsoft's licensing rigorously. Together with the antitrust and un-bundling pressure on Microsoft, this may lead to a more competitive market again.
Do they really think that the pirates are operating out of legit CD / DVD duplicating buisineses? Making glass masters of WinXP and Photoshop, Silk Screening the Disks? They are NOT. They are using cd duplicator towers (insert original and 6 blanks punch button to burn) And the guys that actually do a good job, making the boxes, the holograms etc sure as hell aren't going to go into some sort of goverment building and register for a "Unique source identifier"
When Will They Learn? Piracy causes higher prices? Well higher prices cause piracy! Why don't they prove it to us by dropping the price of WinXP, Photoshop, 3DSMax, etc.. for 2 or three months and maybe I'll pick up some much needed software I normally couldn't afford..
RB
This is a tricky and dangerous detail. Right now, if Microsoft rips of a GPL program, they may get penalized based on the money they have made from it. Under these proposed rules, Microsoft could rip off GPL programs with impunity because their penalty would be nil (since the GPL retail price would be zero). This is clearly not acceptable.
If we are going to have penalties on copyright infringement, they should be based on a percentage of the net worth of the infringer, not on some imaginary retail value dreamed up by a marketing department. That way, the penalty is comparably painful to whoever infringes.
First of all we see that
Along with the unique code, called a Source Identification Code (SID), the groups want more powers that would enable them to demand information that would help them identify the original manufacturer or distributor of the infringing goods.
Then the article goes on to say:
Peets said the SID would be helpful in two ways. "First, it would be easier to identify illegitimate products -- CDs that don't have a code would raise a red flag. Second, would be easier to trace the source if each code is linked to the plant where it was made."
So the SID will only be used to identify where a disc was made, but they admit that discs without a SID will "raise a red flag" What good does it do them though? "Hey, this disc has no SID! Uhh...well, it has no SID..."
What does a SID allow them to do that they can't already do?
I really don't see what putting an ID code is going to do here. Sony music traces pirated CD key to Virgin records... what then?
The only way I think it could be useful is if you have readers/cd players which also keep track of the keycode, maybe are hooked up to the Internet etc.. and report you...
I think it's an interesting question, if you were the HEAD of a record company what would you do? If you embraced the Internet and mp3s, are you a visionary or are you just openning yourself to rampant piracy and going to get burned? Does copy-protection technology actually work? or does it only play into Orwellian fears? I've thought about it at times, if you had the intellectual property rights to all of Frank Sinatra's songs for example, what do you do??????
They have to legislate for something that CD/DVD makers should be doing on their own initiative, for their own good?
They can't track it back to the actual purchaser, instead they'll just know that Best Buy Store #768 sold it to an anonymous pirate?
In the EU, you don't have to be a law enforcement organization to carry out a search order?
The courts will assume you actually own the copyright just because you claim to, so that you can file false claims against someone just to fuck with them?
They're suggesting giving police powers to the the alleged victims? ("more powers by copyright holders to seize and preserve evidence of piracy")
Remind me not to visit europe anytime soon.
"feeds a growing black economy in which criminal networks use piracy to fund other activities such as drug dealing, arms trading, money laundering and terrorism."
I'm sure it happens - the simple fact is these organizations need money and will do whatever illegal activity is neccassary to fund their operations, or whatever can make them the most profit... but here is the sticking point. How much do you think these people realy make of of pirated software? MOst of the stuff I have seen sells for 4-5$. Not really a big deal when you consider other likely sorts of income - drug dealing (I believe a 1kg of cocaine fetches 100,000$ anymore) extoration, blackmail, etc. Can you see Tony Soprano talking about their new 'cd pirating scheme?' Consider the taliban/al qaeda (sp?). Most of the funding for those two organizations (besides legit taxes) occured from A.) Opium B.) Donations from wealthy businessmen - Oil Money. Never forget, the vast majority of funding for most middle eastearn terrorist groups is from oil. Remember that the next time you go to fill up the SUV.
This is probably just FUD. Most of the people doing this are people who are just trying ot earn a quick buck, but this doesn't preclude the possibility of it happening. Anymore it seems that you throw the word 'terrorist' into anything and you have a good chance of getting people to side with you.
The main example provided by the Motion Picture Association is a "DVD-R factory" that produced Spider Man and Star Wars copies.
But this is not a factory with professional DVD-burners. This is just a guy who bought 30 DVD-writers at the computer shop around the corner - just as you and I could do. I am afraid that some day we will end with a unique ID on our DVD and CD writers at home just to protect the copyrights.
Just as with the prohibition in the 1930s we have here laws that are far outside acceptance by the general public. All those measures won't stop the main problem (in this case: overpriced CDs) and in fact it only helps the mob.
I really don't see what putting an ID code is going to do here. Sony music traces pirated CD key to Virgin records... what then?"
You are assuming that your transaction is anonymous.
If you are paying cash thats probably true. But id you are paying by credit card the transaction is date stamped etc, Its not hard to correlate the sale with a particular credit card. And thats just with current techniques, it would not require much to add the SID code to the barcodeand that gets tagged with crdit card number and you
have to do almost no work to find out who bought the CD. Then add a watermark to each track which has the SID and voila if a track is ripped and
put on your fave p2p network they know who ripped it. Whhich is the real
goal here. If they were just interested in finding manufacturers they would not need a SID just a manufacturere number.
oooh!! do you think they may be lying?
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
Your company has an improperly licensed copy of windows somewhere, and the BSA "raids" you.
Some corporate weasel..er, lawyer decides that while that copy is usually $80, in some obtuse set of circumstances, its retail value would be $100,000. In other words, they get to decide just how much the fine will be.
My company only supplies business customers. When friends need computers, I take them to a regular dealer. I discovered that it is possible to buy a pirated copy of MS Office for $50.
It would be VERY easy for Microsoft to find all the pirates. (I have no trouble finding them, and I'm not looking.) The fact that they don't is the reason that there is no other word processor. Lotus WordPro is dead. Word Perfect is experiencing very slow sales. Other companies can compete at $500; they cannot compete when the $500 product is also sold at $50.
It seems the only people who would be hit by the ID code requirement would be the legitimate manufacturers as the pirates simply wouldn't bother.
From the article:
"First, it would be easier to identify illegitimate products -- CDs that don't have a code would raise a red flag."
this does not combat the rampant internet piracy of music that they are talking about so much.
Ok, i buy a cd. it has an id number embedded in it. when i duplicate the disc, that disc has the same id number embedded. but if i rip the cd to mp3 or wav or whatever, and then re-burn it, no more id number. just a little bit more work to duplicate the cd. you make that new version your master, and send that one to duplication.
Besides, when was the last time you bought a duplicated cd? This kind of piracy pretty much died when mp3 came of age anyway.
"We had a case in France recently where we turned up at a company's premises with a search order, but they were one step ahead of us on every PC -- deleting the files before we could get to them," said Peets.
Since when does deleting a file cover your tracks reliably...?
Either way, I have to agree... the whole idea seems fairly pointless...
Whether you choose to apply [copy]right to copying or distribution, in the end it does not matter. It is a question of having a control point. Which simply does not exist. Either you try to stop copying in the devices that can make digital copies (any gadget with a CPU or a DSP on it) or you try to find a point in the distribution chain where you can stop the distribution (such as a directory maintained by companies like Napster or AudioGalaxy).
The problem in either case is that the potential control points are beyond reach of national legislation. Sure, you can impose restrictions on digital devices and try to prevent imports of devices that break those restrictions. However, this is not enforcible internationally. All it takes is a single digital copy that finds its way into the Internet. Once the first copy has been made, it can be distributed en masse.
Then it becomes a question trying to find the control point for preventing its distribution. This is even more hopeless. Sure, you can go after the Napsters of this world but that won't stop the distribution. People will just find other ways to share and you can't go after every citizen who does so. It would simply be infeasible.
So, let the legislators have their little dreams. They are fighting against wind mills.
The movie industry will be the next one to feel the cold winds. Pretty soon full movies will be as convenient to swap as mp3's are today. While people will still go to theaters to see the movies on wide screen, VHS and DVD rentals and sales will suffer. Sill, record breaking mega budget movies may soon be a thing of the past, too.
In the end, I think, the non-copyable and non-distributable commodity is the artist itself. No-one can duplicate the creativity of a person. Hopefully this will eventually lead to the artists having more control over their works. The business model certainly could be envisioned and it would be more artist-to-consumer without unnecessary middle men.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
We should tatoo a barcode on lobbyists' foreheads so
that will crossreference who is paying them!
Piracy is used as an excuse to force consumers to put up with tougher restrictions, to use the copyright laws to push all media to a pay-per-view-or-go-to-jail format.
Universal Music is announcing a recall after it was discovered their latest batch of CDs were mysteriously encoded with the unique ID: H1LL4RY-R0S3N-15-054M4-B1N-L4D3N-IN-4-P16-5U1T
"We had a case in France recently where we turned up at a company's premises with a search order, but they were one step ahead of us on every PC -- deleting the files before we could get to them,"
Or maybe the data were not there to start with ? Frankly, all they ask for is to break our civil liberty and right in each of our nation to be able to search at will.
The term Copyright, GeStaPo come to mind, without even the "Geheim" (hidden) in it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Why would you want to fund drugs dealing, arms trading, and money laundering? The purpose of these crimes is to make money.
Are they really suggesting that a drug dealer will make a loss on dealing drugs, so have to sell pirated software to cover his costs?
This quote, "use piracy to fund other activities such as drug dealing, arms trading, money laundering and terrorism." cracked me up.
I was under the naive impression that drug dealing and arms trading were highly profitable, I thought money laundering was used to hide the massive ammounts money those actvities generated.
It's now obvious to me that file sharing and pirate CD's in flea markets are really just a front to pay for unprofitable activities like drug trafficing and arms trading.
Come on guys, at least try to make up convicing FUD.
Australian? Join EFA
I've heard some dumb things in my day (such as college students getting drunk only to bounce on their beds and fall out the window) but this is beyond my comprehension.
/.ers know very well they'd go after anyone they could. It's a cartel / monopoly. They don't have to worry how many customers they piss off at this point.
..."
I am in full agreement with harsher penalties for mass producers, but this isn't what would happen if the MPA, BSA, or any other organization got what they wanted. Often times it is a large piracy ring the companies go after, but
So basically it sounds like CD's and DVD's will becoming with a SID (Source ID) which will identify the factory that made it. How is this supposed to help prevent piracy? Suppose I'm churning out masses of DVD's in Germany. Ok... they know which plant the DVD came from. So fucking what? If the truth is being told they more than likely won't know which store I even bought the original disc from. Not to mention it wouldn't be hard to buy a disc from someplace like Norway, which isn't even a member of the EU, and have either a different SID or no SID.
Something tells me this whole SID thing is not to prevent or track piracy, but to keep small DVD / CD producers from being a threat with even more rules and regulations.
From the article:
The software and media groups also want the process of being granted civil search orders (known as Anton Piller orders in the UK) to be made easier and cheaper throughout the EU. Some countries already make the process relatively easy, said Peets, but not all. "In some member states it costs 100,000 euros to obtain a search order, and in others it can take months to process the request, by which time there could be a leak," she said.
What is wrong with that? It seems like Peets wants to be able to barge into any house he or his cronies choose to look for pirated material. The US would do good to have a large fee to obtain a search warrant. Maybe the government / police / corporations would think twice before applying for a warrant.
Also from the article:
"Pirates are using the Internet to download illegal copies of movies and then burning them onto CD-ROMs or DVD Recordables,
Jesus Christ in a furnace! What if somebody used bi-pedal motion to smuggle a DVD across the street for a neighbor to copy! We must act quickly against this "walking" lest piracy run rampant! Quickly, start putting the plant ID on all shoes made so we can stop piracy and make sure nobody makes their own shoes!
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
MacGeevy cited a recent UK raid on a DVD-R factory turning that was allegedly making copies of Spider Man and Star Wars: Episode II movies. emphasis mine.
Hasn't Hollywood been bosting that Spiderman and Star Wars Ep.2 are two of the highest grossing movies of all time?
How does piracy hurt the industry again?
All that unique idenftiers will do is raise the cost of producing the media, not that CD/DVD's are expensive to produce but I'm sure the cost will be passed on at least once.
Australian? Join EFA
What would drug-dealers need funding for?
What, the profit margins on cocaine fall through the floor suddenly? Oh the absurdity of it all. On that list (drug dealing, arms trading, money laundering and terrorism) the only thing that needs to be funded is the terrorism. And according to the government propoganda, they use drug money (like the CIA does) not pirate money.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Actually, as mentioned in the article, you don't have to be a law enforcement organisation to carry out a search order in Britain. These special search orders are known as Anton Piller orders.
Also, you can be in a ruling body without being elected in Britain. In fact, in Britain, you can serve at the highest level of the judicial, executive and legislative branch at the same time, all without being elected. Lord Irvine of Lairg, the Lord Chancellor, does so.
Maybe you should read a little bit more about the Columbian drug lords. They aren't funding attacks in the US, but what they do to maintain control of the drug fields looks like terrorism to me. Kidnappings, assasinations, bombings, etc. Of course, the right wing paramilitaries do some of the same things, so I guess you could say Plan Columbia funds terrorism as well. I don't have an axe to grind on this issue, but it bothers me when people ignore evidence to make a political point.
As far as pot goes, I agree 100%. But haven't some of the domestic whacko groups funded themselves through homegrown crystal meth labs?
It shouldn't be suprising that lawbreakers do illegal things to make money.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
It wouldn't be so we could cross reference them. It would be for orderly disposal.
In all other country you need to depose a complaint in offcial way. And then depending on the complaint a search warrant may or may not be delivered, but this can only be used by official. It does not say however if the company send together somebody as "technical" help in case the official lacks the technical knowledge to detect evidence.
As far as i know only in britain can no-official non-elected people have a search warrant on your home. But then againw e are speaking of a constitutionnal monarchy where some people (Lord?) don't get elected.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I forgot about Meth, honest.
About the Coke it's not terrorism it's a war.
The Drug Lords are bad guys but so is the gov't. I didn't forget or ignore that fact.
We just make it worse because we are starting the next arms race there.
Instead of fighting drugs at home we are trying to take it down south.
Get your Unix fortune now!
oo boy what a challenge
Why, yes, I do have some solid facts about who supports the terrorists. But it's not CD pirates.
It's smokers.
Read this Guardian article to see just how REAL money is made. Hint: they don't waste time on warez.
From the article:
MacGeevy cited a recent UK raid on a DVD-R factory turning that was allegedly making copies of Spider Man and Star Wars: Episode II movies. The raid netted over 10,000 discs and 31 DVD burners.
See! We need these ID numbers! If we had them, we could find out who bought the original Spiderman and Episode II DVDs that were being copied in this DVD-R factory! We could trace the credit card records, find the person who purchased these DVDs, and more importantly, where he purchased them.
Come on, don't tell me you wouldn't love to find a shop selling these DVDs..?
Actually, if you think about it - the biggest source of terrorist financing is...
Oil!
Not that oil companies are directly suppling cash to terrorist networks but oil based economies provided the source of bin Laden's fortune (well on the other hand there's Sadam).
Fight Terrorism - ride a bicycle.
When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras
I think, this is not so much about tracking copies but more about control. I can see them pushing through some legislation requiring players to check for that ID and to refuse playing otherwise.
That again would mean higher barriers of entry for small manufacturers, whose discs wouldn't be playable on most consumer players.
Regards, Ulli
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
Next time I go to the shop to buy a CD or DVD I will have to show my ID which will get registered?
Maybe give a sample of my DNA? Or a license agreement signed in blood?
When I give sell or give away any of my CDs or DVDs I will have to inform some representative of the music industries there has been a change of ownership?
How long will it take before musical instruments are being forbidden? Their sole purpose is to play music and most of the music being played may in fact be reproductions!
"Sir, you are violating copyrights. Put down that saxophone and step away from it! Do not play another note or we WILL shoot you!"
The next step is to force manufacturers to only build devices that will reject media without the source tag. Of course this is just to protect us consumers from pirated media, which "have inferior quality and may damage your equipment", as the warnings on VHS tapes tell us.
So what does that mean?
- The "professional" pirates will find a way to spoof or simply copy these codes
- The Slashdot crowd will tweak their players so they can play copied media
- And finally, the man in de street will be able to do none of these things. Yes, finally the media companies successfully prevented him from playing that copied CD that his neighbour made for him. He will also be prevented from making copies for himself, thus being deprived of his fair-use rights, not through direct legislation but through a back-door, in the name of combatting piracy.
It gets worse if this happens, and you can bet it will: isn't the RIAA already pushing for equipment to detect and reject unsanctioned material? So what about those people that create music themselves? Now, just like the old days, they need to go to Big Record to produce their music, or obtain one of those codes.
Laws demanding this code is the first half, Laws demanding equipment to look for these codes is the second. Both will bring control of all content we will be allowed to see or hear, back with the corporations.
A slightly pessisistic and even paranoid outlook perhaps?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
"The movie & recording industry are lobbying hard for the Europeans to carry unique source identifiers to aid in combatting privacy. They are also demanding tougher penalties for infringers. It seems the only people who would be hit by the ID code requirement would be the legitimate citizens as the pirates simply wouldn't bother."
Every terrorist out there believes he/she/it is a soldier in some war or another. You are confusing a situation with one of the tactics used by parties in that situation.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
When you buy your next DVD-R or CDRW drive, wear dark glasses, walk funny, dress in baggy clothes, and pay cash.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
The transaction would probably have to be anonymous.
In the UK, and many countries of the EU, storing trackable information about an individual is covered by law. In the UK we have the Data Protection Act. It strictly limits what you can do with such data (even IP addresses are considered 'personal data' - our company had to abandon a project because of the legal ramifications of storing simple usage history on one of our servers), and disclosing it to third-parties (RIAA or equiv (PRS probably).) is *not* one of the things you can do with it.
Most stores simply wouldn't do this - it's not worth the hassle (and lost sales) to them. You'd have to make it illegal not to to keep this data (is is the situation with TVs and Videos in the UK) which would require additional legislation in every member state of the EU (otherwise you'd just buy mail-order) and would take years.
Yes, I knew that this is the real reason they produce all those movies ;-)
No no no. This seems to me to be a logical first step in locking a CD/DVD to one specific player. I've seen a quote somewhere (no source, arg!) about a media exec saying that if they could lock down a specific CD/DVD to a specific player, that they could increase profits by a large margin. The very concept of this seems wrong, as no media in existance has ever had this restriction. If a cd player breaks, you just get another. *sighs*
If you could lock your media to a specific, individual player... *winces*
(Just got up and still half asleep, this post is not guaranteed to be free of spelling/grammitacal errors)
That just mean that the Italian Mafia (tm) will have to open a new line of bussiness, that will steal blank disk (in volumes) and sell them the the pirates (which may be family members) so the disks can not be tracked back to them.
The Italian Mafia (tm) already are *famous* for passing up Danish trucks full of meat during the night on the highways. In the morning noting is left except for maybe the truck and maybe the driver.
Not that I recommend anything illigal, but it is pretty easy to predict what will happen.
Peets said the SID would be helpful in two ways. "First, it would be easier to identify illegitimate products -- CDs that don't have a code would raise a red flag. Second, would be easier to trace the source if each code is linked to the plant where it was made."
Uhh ? First, what is the problem here and secondly, how well does the proposed solution solve it.
Given that those manufacturing CDs and DVDs in the thousands for illegal sales, will simply use someones elses's ID, it becomes obvious that we are not beeing told the whole story here ..
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I think the idea that piracy funds drug dealing is one that is easily dismissed, given that world wide drug dealing is a far larger business than all of the movie and music biz combined.
I don't see how this will work in the real world...
Suppose you buy a CD as a gift for someone? Or you recycle a CD at a music store? It's certainly no newsflash that many places pay for and sell used CDs. (How I got most of my Zappa collection actually).
Who will be resposnsible then? The original owner? The person who bought the gift? Would the radio station who gives away 100 copies of a new release at a CD party be then held liable for any copies found?
They'd just love to be able to track you by transaction wouldn't they?
Adding a water mark, or tracking your purchases by transaction most certainly DO NOT prove you were the actual person who uploaded/ripped the copy in question.
IMHO, I think their ultimate goal here is to give them an avenue to go after the casual copier. Hey, wouldn't that be great press? "60 yr old grandfather BUSTED for making copies of Glenn Miller's Greatest Hits".
Of course not. Terrorism is the new Devil, and trying to make the populace hate and fear the things you oppose, is an age-old practice.
Off topic, but of note was Chaney's (was it Chaney?) warning about new terrorist attacks. The US government have found the perfect excuse to push their own people and those of other countries around: "We must fight terrorism!". Chaney is just keeping the ball rolling. "We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia". Shades of 1984; Orwell alreay knew that a war is the best way to keep your own people in line. "War on drugs" didn't cut it, war on terrorism seems to, and everyone with an agenda, including media companies, are jumping on the bandwagon.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Huh?
(South American) Drug lords don't commit acts of terror. They have badges on their arms like all "legal" fighters. They use guns and don't recklessly kill citizens (there are a few cases where low ranking members do commit acts of terror, this fact I won't ignore. Usually these acts are on foreigners who go to "convert the masses")
From everything I've read on the topic the terrorists in South America is the USA, specifically the CIA. They are the ones doing covert operations to take down the drug regime(s).
It's a rebellion. Just because they fight the status quo doesn't make them terrorists.
Get your Unix fortune now!
When it comes to tagging EXPLOSIVES to identify the source, oh, no, it would cost money and it wouldn't work ( http://www.speedsite.com/~ccohen/taggants.htm ; http://www.speedsite.com/~ccohen/taggants.htm ). But when it comes to stopping kiddies from copying MUSIC, no effort should be spared...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
All colour photocopiers and laser printers on the US market encode the unit's serial number in a watermark in the colour dithering pattern. This is by agreement with the US Secret Service, to allow counterfeit currency to be traced.
This would give a lot of ammunition to those who want CD/DVD burners to embed their serial numbers on discs. In fact, with technology having advanced further since the colour photocopier agreement, the RIAA/IFPI's standards for DVD burner watermarks could contain other information (such as GPS coordinates, for example).
If you look at the inside rim of a CD or DVD, you will find codes that look like "IFPI xxxx", where 'xxxx' is four digits or letters. I was under the impression that this is an IFPI licence code for the pressing plant where the CD and/or the glass master were made, for auditing purposes.
Or do they want SIDs embedded as watermarks in audio or something (undoubtedly for their legally-mandated A-D converters to detect)?
Why the hell are they pushing legislation? If they want unique identifiers, it's their damned job to use them. But no, they have to make it so that other people who don't agree with their philosophy have to do it as well.
No comment.
1.Price
2.Availabillity
3...uh. I can't think of anymore..
Assuming noone is making a point of civil disobedience, the reasons to CONSUME a pirated disc are few. If someone doen't want to pay for a software program or crappy music by one of today's artists, they will get a pirate cd, or make one themselves.
That's where availabillity comes in. If someone can't find Nick Drake's Pink Moon at their small town Walmart, they can get it over the net.
None of the arguments used by the *IAAs target either of these, because it makes pirating THEIR fault. (Too much $$/not enough content & We don't bother to keep that in stock/ Are you sure you don't mean Nick-elback?)
Either way, consumers are NOT being served.
Honestly, this is completely silly. I fail to see what added security there is in the proposal.
What if a buyer is using them as a sample of music to determine what to buy?
Despite what people think, a lot of people do use illicit sources of music for this reasoon. I use Limewire to get a bunch of songs from an artist I like - if I like it, I'll buy a CD (or two or three). I bought many Daft Punk CD's in just this way, as well as a lot of other artists... and for the artists where I dont end up liking much of the work, I just delete all the songs or possibly buy a single of the song I did like (though THOSE are way overpriced)!
So in my case if I buy a $10 CD, the publisher might actually MAKE $50 or $100. They already give out sampler CD's for free and don't claim to loose money there, why is the $10 CD really that different? Apart from the publisher getting that $10 as opposed to the "pirate".
In the end, the only losses you can really see are the $10. Anything beyond that is too ill-defined. Otherwise a pirate could bring up statistics supporting what I've said and claim RIAA owes the pirate a comission on the CD's bought buy the $10 CD buyer!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Today PC game market is almost dead. The only way to sell your game is to have some kind of online authentiction for network play. Don't expect any non-network kind of game (expect mainstream "who wants to be a billionnaire") to sell, but most people will have played your game
Just look around you, and your geek friends.. They will more likely buy crappiest DVDs around than buy the game they have spent weeks playing.
It's impressive how game industry, which is FAR MORE destroyed by piracy, but does nothing.
Two quick thoughts -
First, since old CDs and DVDs wouldn't have the tags (I presume), how would you play them?
Second, what about Indy labels? Not just them, actually, but people who make their own CDs (bar bands, etc). They either wouldn't be able to make useable CDs or they'd have to get an ID tag. If they can get an ID tag, a pirate could create a dummy band and tag copied CDs, no?
By my estimation, you'll have to buy a new version of every CD you've got, and either small/Indy band won't be able to make CDs or the system is so un-thought out that it will crumble in a week. (Unless they have a way to update the hardware, someone can just make a CD burning program that has a single hacked or acquired code).
GL
Exactly. And Open Office seems to be the best word processor for both features and file interchange with MS Turd^H^H^H^HWord.
Of course, if they legalized all that stuff, the money would be going to a handful of Philip Morris type companies that can be easily monitored; as it is now, it's all going to hundreds of anonymous drug lords who answer to no one.
if you had the intellectual property rights to all of Frank Sinatra's songs for example, what do you do??????
Auction them off on eBay as fast as I could.
[What about] people who make their own CDs (bar bands, etc)
Most bar bands break the law anyway because they cover other songwriters' works without paying ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI.
Will I retire or break 10K?
So they would know which DVD was the source, but
unless they also linked every DVD to the owner, they couldn't tell who you are.
So the aim must be to track people aswell based on the copies they buy. Perhaps they will get MS to put add a feature that reports the ID of any DVD inserted into a Computer.
We should call on the EU to block the privacy invasion caused by electronically tagging DVD in this manner.
About 10 years ago I found that all the local distributors were selling pirated copies of MS-DOS. All of the copies of "MS-DOS" had small, or large, printing irregularities. The Microsoft legal department verified that they were pirated. (In those days it was possible to call the Microsoft legal department and talk with someone.) These were not swap meets; these were computer parts distributors, the largest in the area.
The large Taiwanese DOS pirates ran the legitimate alternatives to DOS out of business. Microsoft seemed to be allowing that.
Effectively, the Microsoft anti-trust case is actually a smokescreen to hide the inaction of the U.S. government. The issues in that case are one-twentieth of the real issues of anti-competitive behavior.
It seems like the ..AA are just pushing for every stupid idea that pops into their heads, regardless of feasibility.
They will put these unique IDs somewhere on the edges of the disk.
How do you know? There's a whole lot of empty space in the headers of a CD, reserved for things like this. Karaoke discs also use the subcode channel.
Where's my sharpie? :)
A SHARPIE® fine point permanent marker will not help you if the new standard stores the serial number in the subcode rather than in a separate session like key2audio does.
Will I retire or break 10K?
in some obtuse set of circumstances, its retail value would be $100,000.
Such circumstances already exist in the United States of America. Copyright law, 17 USC 504, provides for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work infringed.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What would I do? In all seriousness, I would be considering different long term career options.
Actually, I think you've got a point. Let the **AA come up with some other media format all their own, which relies on a cheap proprietary player also of their own. So both the player and the media it uses are entirely their own invention.
Then if they can't prevent people from copying, it's their own damn problem. Not the consumer's problem, not the rest of the tech industry's problem, not Congress's problem, but THEIRS. And the **AA alone will be responsible for "fixing" it if they think it's too vulnerable to copying.
Which of course it would be, but that's not our problem.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
If someone pays by check or credit card, or is recorded with facial recognition, the record company can trace the CD to its original owner.
When I was in college, people had CDs stolen from their cars all the time. I can easily picture someone stealing CDs and posting them on the internet. In this situation, the record company will track down and accuse an innocent person.
"They are the ones doing covert operations to take down the drug regime(s)."
..
Yeah, sure.
US is always there trying to do some evil.
I mean everytime, everywhere it is always US that is guitly - terrorists kidnaping tourists for ransom ? no
Osama and hic clique ? no
Please, your envy of US success is making your mind , or whatever's left of it, completely useless.
Presumably, such a unique ID would allow you to link a CDR to the recorder that created it.
"Terrorism is the new Devil, and trying to make the populace hate and fear the things you oppose, is an age-old practice."
...
It is. Just because you are not personally affect by it yet, it doesn't mean it is not a problem.
It only means you are a selfish, smart-ass idiot.
"but of note was Chaney's (was it Chaney?) warning about new terrorist attacks."
If he didn't do it and something happened you would have Democrats and people like you whining and accusing them of not releasing any information.
I have a good advice for you
Get lost.
Fuck, now I can't throw my CDs in the water?
All CDs in Europe should be marked with the code FUCK-YOU-ROSEN.
For DVDs, use FUCK-YOU-VALENTI.
It turns out that one of the terrorists had a copy of MS Flight Simulator! And it wasn't an illegal copy either!
Obviously, MS Flight Simulator is a tool of terrorists, and represents a clear and present danger to New York and Washington!
I propose everyone who has a copy of MS Flight Simulator turn themselves into Ashcroft. After all, giving up a few rights (i.e. the flight simulator owners) for the safety of everyone else is what we must do in this war on terrorism.
Remember - your PC can destroy buildings as surely as a fuel-air bomb.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
how about you idiots who buy copy protected stuff like audio cd's and dvd's just stop buying !!!!!
then there will be tons of their crap spilling off best buy and wal-mart shelves because no one will buy
Read. Learn.
Of course the "vast majority of funding" for President Bush was from oil too, at least as far as his campaign went.
So you drive a strong point... filling up your SUV can have drastic effects on the world political situation and indirectly or directly aid positions of world power regardless of their intent.
This sig intentionally left justified.
"This would not allow us to track users," she said, "just the business where the disk was replicated." Peets noted that many disc manufacturers already use the codes, citing a figure of 80 percent. And remember, the EU has strict privacy laws.
Slightly off topic, I know, but I recently purchased a minidisc player, and though the player is nice hardware, it complies with sdmi. What this means is that I have to "check-out" my music, and if I do so more than three times, I cannot check out that song any more. So, if I lose a disc, or data gets corrupted, I can't copy a song any more. All this copy protection does, is serve to annoy me, It does nothing with the fact that I am copying pirated music to the device, it would tread legitimatly copied music in the same manner.
Dont they know that Music wants to be free!
The above is not worth reading.
Penguins want to be free
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
After all, how are they going to know who owns a DVD- or CD-recorder with a certain ID? Purchase records? Not if the culprit paid cash for his device... and if the industry ends up requiring "registration" of recorders, people will just find other media (small hard drives! CF or SM cards!) or mod their recorders.
Also, I'm skeptical that this could ever work in a practical sense, anyway. Look at MAC addresses on NIC cards, and how those supposedly unique numbers sometimes do repeat and conflict. That's why we're allowed to manually change them. If the computer industry can't get totally unique MACs, how can they be relied on to get totally unique recorder IDs?
This also, of course, obviates the argument as to whether recorders should just record the MAC addresses of the machines they're in =)
Get off my launchpad!
You'll just need a music license that you'll show when you want to buy some cd/dvd.
There may be several types :
Then you'll also need to register your cd/dvd burner at the nearest police station so they know the special id written on each cd you burn.
They'll be able to track you if they find a cd you burnt and gave to a friend : you'll get 99 years in jail.They're talking about having every CD manufacturing plant put a plant ID into every CD they make, so that illegal CDs can be traced to the plant where they were manufactured.
The idea here is to be able to trace a CD back to the plant where it was manufactured, so that large-scale pirates can be stopped.
IF that's the real goal, then I have no objection. Directly targeting infringers makes a hell of a lot more sense than today's policy of attacking dual-use toolmakers.
I don't believe this is the goal, though.
They already make the CDs. If they want to put a serial # on each one, they already have the ability to do that, and don't need new legislation to force themselves to serialize CDs. Something doesn't add up.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Don't forget the ziplock bags. Buy 'em in mass quantity.
I hate getting weed in wrapped up paper towls and syran wrap!
You make some good points, (I couldn't agree more about dual-use tools).
But it still leaves the question.. how do you target the infringers.. and who is the infringer to begin with? Is it the person who last paid in some traceable form for the CD? Wouldn't you need proof that they ripped the CD to begin with?Without that, someone could easily say.. "That CD? I lost it ages ago..".
LOL, Next thing you know, you'll have more regulations on posessing a CD, than you do a handgun!
You're right, It all really doesn't add up, does it?
I agree, these are very good reasons why such a strategy wouldn't work effectively. However much of the technology relating to copyright protection mechanisms will only achieve this degree of specificity and the *IAA etc are pressing for the right to acquire this information. Probably because while not perfect it will be accurate enough. similarly if you want to harass casual rippers this may be enough to supress significant amounts of it.
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
Most large music retailers also have DPA compliance policies for use in relation to loyalty cards and such-like, it wouldnt require much extra work to use it for this purpose and in my view (IAAL) I think it would be permissible.
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
So GWB does have a good reason to want us to remove our dependence on foreign oil (other than the other obvious reasons)?
Volume Holographics Optical Storage NanoTechnology will obsolete CD, SRAM, DRAM,
FRAM, OVONIC, HARD DRIVES, MRAM and other
types of memory.
"ALL IN ONE MEMORY" proposed is obverdue, I'm
sick of having hundreds of interfaces and programs to do the samething, data storage and
retrieval of data !!!
How long until we're able to copy the unique ids?
Are you kidding? How long did it take before PM was made to be accountable for their incessant lies to both the government and the American public? How about our political system that can be easily manipulated by companies with deep pockets? Get this- I just read recently that the American government passed a bill to bail out none other than its TOBACCO farmers, to the tune of about $620 million, relieving them of their debt. I wonder what the next great welfare class will be.
I'd trust an American corporate conglomerate no more than I'd trust the drug lords (and personally, I think drugs suck ROCKS anyway).
And I have to confess that Cheney's credibility took a major dive as it was revealed that he asked on more than one occasion that there NOT be any investigation into what information was available to whom prior to the 9.11 attacks. I think Cheney has managed to confuse "CYA" with "CIA". Just the same, I hope this exposes whatever incompetence contributed to this mess.
[T]he media groups claim that counterfeiting and piracy of copyrighted works "fund[s] ... terrorism."
Wow!! For a second, I thought they were just being the usual greedy bastards! Now I know they're just doing it to fight terrorism, and I'm for it 100 percent! You should be too, or you're supporting TERRORISTS!
Umm, care to provide any credible cite for that claim? If not, I'd strongly recommend that the mods mod parent down as `-1 (wrong)'.
<sarcasm>Hmmm, yes. How silly of the administration to try to claim that the September 11 attacks are a sign that there are terrorists in the world who want to attack us.</sarcasm>
Quite seriously, though, can you provide any evidence of either of your claims -- that is that a.) that Cheney is exaggerating the dangers from terrorism that we still face, or that b.) this is being used to push a political cause?
Both sides do it. The CIA may not be the good guys, but that does not make the drug lords good guys. Columbia, in particular, is in the throes of a very messy civil war and the bad guys on both sides aren't wearing uniforms or badges.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
piracy to fund other activities such as drug dealing, arms trading,
money laundering and terrorism."
Always add that line if you want sympathy for your intrinsically bad plan.
Other infringers, including companies and individuals who buy the
counterfeit material, would be fined an amount equal to the retail value of
what has been stolen.
This seems a little onerous. Noting that the people who buy this stuff ...
would ever pay full price anyway, this seems like a guaranteed income
handout to the business conglomerates. Money talks
really really funny
Actually, I could. He got into the calling card scam, and that was only 5-10 dollars per unit. I fail to see how that is different than selling a pirated DVD for $5-10.
However, TS is a fictional character and this discussion was about actual terroroists. I seriously doubt that piracy is a major source of income for any terrorist groups. There is simply too much competition in the pirated media market. Since copyright infringment is a minor crime, there are many people who are otherwise law-abiding that will participate. Why would a terrorist group go to all the trouble of pressing DVDs or CDs to provide something that is available in alt.1337.warez? They wouldn't. Sure, there are large-scale copying operations, but I think that terrorists would be more likely to be involved in LARGE money operations, like opium or stolen automobiles. The US mantra has changed from 'Do it for the children' to 'If you don't do it, the terrorists have already won'.
Enigma
This way when they *find* a pirated CD, they can know what CD machine made it, "ahh, cd duplicator # 14652, we sold that to ... ahh, the russian mafia".
This is how piracy works: BMG needs 100,000 of Britneys new cd ... they call up factory X and they say yeah, we can produce 100,000 cds in two weeks. But the factory lied -- they can really make 200,000 cds in two weeks -- and they *DO*. BMG gets its 100,000 cds, and they've got 100,000 cds to sell. BMG pays 1$ a cd (max), but the "counterfit" ones are identical to the real ones and they can sell them to some shady characters for *alot* more.
And if it's not the same factory producing the pirated cds, its people using the factories machines at 2:00am in the morning. Russian mafia guy takes a janitorial or security job at factory X and when everyone goes home, he and his buddies run off cds to sell :)
I believe that CD pressing machines cost the order of 6 or 7 digits. Your street punks selling cds on the corner cant afford these machines. Right or wrong, the RIAA wants to find out where the cds are being made. Although Im sure they will use this ID in some sneaky way later
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
The DVD spec leaves out the subcode channels
It leaves out the CD subcode channels (frame header bits) but introduces its own subcode channels (dotfiles in the UDF filesystem) that are just as impossible to attack with a permanent marker.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Ah my point was not to play down the actual threat of terrorism, but the way this threat (however real or imaginary) is used to push all sorts of political agendas
a) I have no evidence, but Cheney failed to mention any concrete cases or even the existence of such cases, that lead them to believe the threat is still present.
b) examples abound, this mention of media pirates funding terrorism is merely the latest one.
- Another one that springs to mind is Microsoft trying to keep their source closed, because disclosing it would threaten national security and the US efforts (to fight terrorism) in Afghanistan.
- The Russion army and Milosevitch have used this defence, that they were not stomping on civilians, but they were fighting terrorism
- Israel has used this excuse to attack the Palestines with doubled resolve, in the name of fighting terrorism
In all these cases, there is some truth to the claim that fighting terrorism is their goal. And in all cases, the perpetrators hope that by claiming to fight terrorism (notice that they rarely say terrorists), they gain some sympathy from the international community in light of what happened on the 11th of September.
Hmm, going more off-topic now.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I have no evidence, but Cheney failed to mention any concrete cases or even the existence of such cases, that lead them to believe the threat is still present. -- say what? We know, of course, that not only is a lot of the infrastructure which made 9/11 possible still out there, but that the nations which funded and armed that infrastructure are untouched. We also know that al Qaeda is still releasing tapes calling for attacks on the US, including a tape using footage of Daniel Pearl's brutal murder. I'd say that's evidence enough for concern, and motivation enough for action in our own defense, no?
examples abound, this mention of media pirates funding terrorism is merely the latest one. -- we certainly agree that this push on the part of the ??AA is reprehensible,but I don't understand why you try to link that push to Cheney. Remember that if we want to talk about links to politicians, the ??AA and their buddies the trial lawyers are stalwart Democratic party funders.
come on, how many 'copy-protection' cds exist currently? nearly every piece of gaming software
(besides those exciting bargain bin games) have some form of "copy protection". the fact is that you can not copy protect a cd without putting either a tag or a file on it. the file-type copy protection is easy to crack, all you have to do is copy the cd onto your hd, delete the *.tmp file in the base dir and then burn to cd... the tag method would easily make it impossible to copy cds, the problem is that regular cds would not work and therefore probably would not be allowed by the govt.. it would render billions and billions of cds useless...
>> Quite seriously, though, can you provide any evidence of either of your claims -- that is that a.) that Cheney is exaggerating the dangers from terrorism that we still face, or that b.) this is being used to push a political cause?
EVERYTHING is used to push a political cause.
Welcome to America.
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
I saw an article once where they interviewed a Russian software "pirate" -- they asked him about the terrorism thing. His response was basically, "Well, I make $x a week. About $x of that goes into food and housing for myself and my family. Why would I send any of my money to any terrorists?"
I had an idea based on this. Help me find the holes in this:
:
1. All CDs and DVDs are produced with a 65536-bit unique identifier. 2^2^16 is about 1 CD or DVD per person on earth per second for the next 9-followed-by-19000-zeroes years, so that should be about enough, I expect.
2. When software is run from a disk, it reads the unique ID and presumably won't run if the identifier isn't in the range allocated to the company.
3. The unique ID is pre-burnt, so you can't override it.
Obviously you can still hack your copy of WordStar 2003 to ignore the unique ID, but you can't simply copy the disk any more.
This doesn't solve the problem of legitimate backup copies, of course. It also doesn't solve the problem of wanting to make lots of free copies of a commercial program so you don't have to pay for it -- but that's rather the point, nu?
OK Hax0rs - what would be the way around this scheme? Hacked disk drives that return a configurable ID might work, if you know the ID; the counter to that would be to make the unique ID unreadable -- that is, use it like a public key/private key system, so that a program never really reads the ID (and indeed can't) but something in firmware combines the unique ID and the software's expected ID range and returns a yes or no, re-encrypted so the software has to decrypt it. Dunno. Any ideas?
: Devilsadvocatebat
I have discovered a truly remarkable
I hope I'm not the only guy on this planet who sometimes believes the US gov't orchestrated the whole 9.11 thing just to control everything and everyone with fear ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Why would a terrorist group go to all the trouble of pressing DVDs or CDs to provide something that is available in alt.1337.warez?
I'm not agreeing with the whacked out notion that significant terrorist funds are flooding in through the sale of pirated media... however, I imagine some of this stuff sells exceptionally well in areas of the world sans easily available broadband. I mean that last Satistic I saw said something like 500 million people were on the internet. Consider that many of those are dial up and many more are on the net through work, and you have a fairly vast market for pirated media regardless of its availability on the net.
The laws should stay as they are. Someone should be penalized based on how much profit they made from pirating, not the "retail price" some company sets their software at. Pirated software, unlike legal proprietary software, is subject to market pressures. That CD is ONLY worth $10.
Of course, this would be bad news for the GPL; but people can modify the GPL in making their software, and hopefully we can lobby RMS to modify it a little. If you're worried about MS ripping off your GPL'ed code, include a clause in it like this:
"Any individual or organization who violates this license is liable for up to $1,000,000 dollars or up to half their net worth, whiever is larger. The licenser may choose to allow this to pass"
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
COLOMBIA. Not Columbia, Washington is in the District of Columbia. Bogotá is the capital of the country of COLOMBIA. Hard to discuss facts with people who can't spell . . .
actually you can get a kilo of coke for a mere $15k.
I've seen quite a few posts about how ridiculous this is, but the IRA have been known to get involved in all of these. I'll post a reference as soon as I dig it up. This is all from a few years back, though - I don't know if they've scaled back recently or not.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
Now the Contras, on the other hand, were terrorists making money off cocaine trafficking. But they were "freedom fighters", right? So they were good because Ronnie said so and so in that case doing coke was patriotic! Meth is producded by lots of bikers who have no political agenda whatsoever. Lots of Ecstasy is imported from Israel, does that make them terrorists? Or just the rabbis smuggling it? Damn, I like Israel, I should go out and do some Ecstasy!
Perhaps such bullshit thinking is why recent studies showed that kids are *more* willing to do drugs after seeing anti-drug ads. They know when they are being lied to.
You are confusing lame scare tactics with facts.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
I had no idea that it cost so much to fund drug dealing, arms trading and
money laundering.
Have the drug dealing, arms trading and money laundering businesses
adopted the Dot Com business model while I was looking the other way?
Terrorism might operate at a net loss, but I understand that terrorism
tends to disrupt business. ( and I ought to know, my office was / is blocks
from the WTC ) and drug dealing, arms trading and money laundering are
businesses.
It would appear that some already do write serial/id's to your burned media.
http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq02.html#s2-26
Regards,
AC
Dude...just check any of the major news outlets. I heard it mentioned on one of the Sunday TV network roundtables. Do your research, and THEN tell me I'm wrong.
Again, can you provide any cite for the claim that Cheney called for their not to be an investigation of the intelligence failures which made the Spetember 11 attacks possible? AFAICT, the administration has been calling for such an investigation from day one (and it would be suicidal not to -- if the attacks happened before, they can happen again).
Try this.
The article provides a nice summary of everything that has been coming to light recently, including mention the Bush/Cheney opposition to an independent investigation.
Slashdot screwed up the url, so it's here: http://www.msnbc.com/news/758330.asp?cp1=1
As far as I can tell, the article suggests not that Bush or Cheney opposed an investigation -- remember, they've been calling for one from day one -- but rather that they oppose a Ken Starr -style special commission be used for this investigation, as that would result in a witch-hunt for political purposes rather than a useful analysis of what intelligence failures led to the attack. Makes sense to me...
Of course, being out to make a seperate point, which he doesn't back up very well, Mr. Alter (this is the same Mr. Alter who has written some of the nastiest smear articles the American political scene has ever seen) tries to make this sound very sinister.
It's a witch hunt because it's being initiated by a Democrat. What's the difference if the same information is uncovered by a bi-partisan committee conducting an "analysis", or someone whose motivations might more political? Why should Cheney be concerned about this?
Again, Bush and Cheney both have called for investigations of the intelligence failures which made 9/11 possible. And both have objected to mechanisms (special prosecutor or `independent' Senate committee) which would be partisan witch-hunts.
What do you find strange in this? And what part of this do you feel justifies your original claim that Cheney opposes any investigation?
I was wrong. Bush/Cheney opposes the investigation being spearheaded by Daschle. And why do you think that is?
Because Daschle has already used every excuse, reasonable or not, to play partisan attack-dog, so it is clear a Daschle-headed investigation would be a witch hunt?
That's my guess...