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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."
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
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
To quote the article.
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 these illegal discs which have no SID can be traced to their source using the SID they do not have.
Can I have some of that crack please.
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
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.
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!
You guys oughtta apply for statehood. Of course, we'd have to drop the america bit, maybe it would be the United States of the Atlantic?
oo boy what a challenge
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..?
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...
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
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.
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)
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.
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...
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)?
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.
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
Exactly. And Open Office seems to be the best word processor for both features and file interchange with MS Turd^H^H^H^HWord.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Presumably, such a unique ID would allow you to link a CDR to the recorder that created it.
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.
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.
The British court order you are talking about is not a search warrant but merely a court order requiring a person to allow entry to obtain evidence.
As it is only a civil court order the only remedy for refusal to comply is contempt of court procedings. Entry may not be forced under such an order.
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.
Do they really think that the pirates are operating out of legit CD / DVD duplicating buisineses?
That's what happens in some countries. The owners of many CD pressing plants don't care what they're pressing as long as they get paid.
[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!
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
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
Arse, elbow. Nuff said.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The point to making things illegal isn't to stop them from happening. There will always be all types of crime -- not just piracy, but all crimes, from jaywalking to murder. The point isn't to eradicate all crime, it's to suppress it to a point where an environment exists which can support a healthy civilization and society.
That said, piracy doesn't have to be the crime that it is. People just need to stop pirating things and start using things that are freely given away, such as GPL'd software. It's a little bit different with music, since there's not really a widely-used equivalent to the GPL for music (or tv/cinema/etc.), and at the same time, an ongoing, concerted effort to strip fair use rights away from users.
But the same idea should hold: Don't pirate music, but do consume that which is available in free formats, and continue to assert your fair use rights such as time shifting, space shifting, quoting, parody, and making archival copies.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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?"
"Arse, elbow. Nuff said."
(For the non-Brits amongst you, that's a compressed form of the phrase "you don't know your arse from your elbow" - i.e. "you haven't got the faintest idea what you're talking about, so STFU."
I heartily concur.
What would Lemmy do?
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
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.
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.
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
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?
I was wrong. Bush/Cheney opposes the investigation being spearheaded by Daschle. And why do you think that is?