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."
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
"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.
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
Well, the question is a good one, so I won't ridicule you for asking it. But the answer may not be as reasonable as either of us would like, mind you.
First, there is the element of whether there are many "self-respecting" courts left in this country. Plus, the fact that M$ judge shops whenever it can. Add the two together.
Then, you have scenarios where it approaches (but doesn't reach) plausibility that there might be a big difference. For instance, the walmart price might be $80, but if the illegitimate copy bumped you over a 50 seat limit, for instance, M$ might be able to claim that they tend to get much more for a contract of that size. How much more could they claim? I dunno, maybe not much more. Maybe alot.
The point was, they have more leeway to decide what the fine would be, rather than it being fixed.
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
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...
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)
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!
Big compaines already rip off the GPL and
don't pay.
For example gnu tar and gnu zip are included
in 3com's (a supporter of DMCA) NBX 100 but they don't supply souce for thouse programs nor the stuff they are linked to (which is 99% of the operational code). Why should they care if they break the law?
MS version 5 had the same set of peep hole optimization bugs as GCC. It could happen by chance.
How long until we're able to copy the unique ids?
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