CD Copying Kiosks Endorsed in Australia

Iron Sun writes: "While the story is somewhat misleading in stating that the plan legalises piracy, CD copying kiosks have been given the go ahead here in Australia. It will be interesting to see what the Australian Recording Industry Association says about this. Supposedly the plan involves royalty payments to ARIA, but where artists stand is not discussed."

Comments

Better Quality?

[Random Data]

with superior sound quality to home burners and able to outwit anti-copying devices

OK, Apart from $5/burn (or a whole 30CDs before you've paid for that burner), HTF am I going to get better than 44KHz out of a CD? The only interesting thing is that someone decided the copiers weren't illegal in and of themselves.

Choosing your truth

[jon_eaves]

In the article, we have this comment,
Michael Speck, of ARIA's anti-piracy investigations unit, said: "Any request or application that is made of the industry is not just point-blank rejected. This is very much a case of watch this space.

"There are many legitimate uses for CD burners. However, experience has shown illegitimate uses as well."

So, when music sales are down, it's because of those damn pirates, but when we can get somebody to pay us, regardless of our principles, then it's a legitimate use.

Yeah, riiight...

definitions?

[Eythian]

If ``music piracy'' is defined as something similar to ``the illegal copying of music'', then how can the sentence ``plan that legalises music piracy'' be parsed? Once its legal, its no longer piracy.

Royalties

[serps]

"...AMCOS said it would endorse the CD-pirating kiosks for a standard royalty of about 6 per cent."

Yet another case of taxing everyone for the deeds of the few. Unfortunately, Australia has no laws about fair use (ok, they do have exemptions in their version of the DMCA, but only if the material wasn't copy-protected in the first place) so I guess it's better than expected.

Since we're paying royalties, does this mean we're entitled to copy and give these copied CDs away? After all, the artist is being compensated so it's not stealing, is it?

These things are pretty awesome

[Sheetrock]

Over in Japan, I've seen the same thing they're basing these kiosks on. Essentially, they'll copy a disc from memory while you stand there, and finish the average CD in about 30 seconds (match that with a CD burner!) I don't have a golden ear, so I can't say whether the quality is better than home burning, but I don't think they're burning from MP3 but from the real disc which is probably where this claim is based. A laser printer spits out the cover art and a robotic assembly actually composes a replica of the real CD, such that after this thing gets done it gives you a shrinkwrapped CD similar to what you'd buy off of the rack. Then, it plays what is preset as the best track from the CD as it dances around the floor for a couple of minutes as an advertisement to other people in the store.

I thought it was indescribably cool. The floorspace taken up by the dancing routine is a bit wasteful, but if you figure that you can replace several racks of CDs with one of these units I think it is well worth it.

Location, location, location

[NewtonsLaw]

Hey, if I were flogging these kiosks I'd have one outside every music store in the country.

Customer walks in to music store, looks for suitably copy-protected CD, pays his money, leaves the store, turns left at the doorway, pays his $5 walks back into the store with original CD in one hand, the dupicate in his left, steps up to the counter and says "I want my money back, it won't play in my CD player."

Money changes hands, customer walks out with his new $5 CD.

Six months later the RIAA can't understand why the guy who operates these kiosks now has a bigger house, faster car and larger boat than any of the recording company bosses :-)

Would this help independant artists?

[detect]

As an independant artists I would like to know how/if we could contribute music to these kiosks.

If so it would be a great distribution medium for us indy artists

Re:DigitalPiracy.com

[NewtonsLaw]

There are always extremes.

At one end of the spectrum you have the RIAA who have the ball and won't share unless you pay them a fistfull of cash (repeatedly in the case of streaming audio).

At the other end of the spectrum you have those who think that copying music without payment doesn't deprive anyone of anything.

Neither perspective is really rational in today's world where people deserve to be compensated for the value they create and the creators an marketers have to realise that the value of their product has changed significantly due to advances in technology.

The sensible people here aren't pro-piracy, they're simply advocating that the recording companies wake up to the fact that if they don't start to see sense pretty soon, the pirates will overwhelm them.

What we have here is a typical case of supply and demand demanding an adustment to pricing.

Thanks to digital duplication, the (illegal) supply is now endless. That means the price must drop if sales of (legal) products are to be maintained.

"Wake up or die" must be the message drummed into the thick skulls of the RIAA.

I'm not in favor of piracy -- I'm in favor of paying a fair price for a good product. Unfortunately that seems to conflict with the RIAA's agenda right now.