(CD) Pirates Take to the Ocean

rammstein_rulz writes "www.cdfreaks.com reports that asian CD pirates now produce thousands of pirated VCD's on anchored ships in international waters to avoid getting caught. Malaysian marine police have been asked to be on the lookout for pirate ships"

Comments

Enemies of Your Friend Are Now Your Enemies

[reallocate]

This is an example of an unreasoned, apocalyptic extremism that plays into the hands of the forces the poster so adamantly attacks.

Playing word games with "piracy" is pointless. Producing unauthorized duplicates of commercial products is known as counterfeiting. Most countries have laws prohibiting the creation and distribution of counterfeit goods. It's as illegal to market a counterfeit CD of the current flavor-of-the-week pop band as it is to sell fake Rolex watches.

By glibly saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", all you've done is made more enemies: You have aligned yourself with counterfeiters, a tactic unlikely to draw support from the mainstream public.

The enemies of your new friend are now your enemies.

Re:Enemies of Your Friend Are Now Your Enemies

[reallocate]

>> ...forcing prices to be artificially high is known as "Price Fixing.

So what? Pointing to high CD prices won't legalize counterfeiting.

This debate is not about the ability of college students to buy and copy music and movies as they see fit. The debate is about changing U.S. copyright law to ensure the interests of the public are addressed, rather than skewed in the interests of corporations with a lock on music distribution.

If you seriously want to change the status quo, get to work. Otherwise, understand that unthinking assertions do more harm than good.

Re:Enemies of Your Friend Are Now Your Enemies

[Nogami_Saeko]

Rather a broad judgement don't you think?

Of course SOME people will always pirate stuff to get it for free, but there IS a magic number when it comes to buying things where people will just buy an original rather than deal with the hassle of getting it "for free".

Take a real-life example that actually happened a week ago to a friend of mine:

She found some local electronics store that was selling a new CD she wanted for $5 on a short promotional special. Rather than deal with the hassle of trying to get all the tracks on kazaa, etc. She just dropped $5 and has a nice original CD.

If the CD was $15, she probably would've downloaded it.

Myself, I have all of the tools I need at home to duplicate DVDs (region-free DVD-ROM, software utilities, and a DVD-R drive).

I don't - the reason being the price of DVDs, which is usually reasonable value for the money. Why should I spend hours of time and effort ripping/re-encoding a DVD to make a copy when I can just throw down a $20 and have an original?

My time and effort is worth more than the cost of the DVD, so I just buy it.

So there we have it - at some magical price-point, people WILL buy stuff, if for no other reason than the amount of work it entails to get it elsewhere (and having an original "anything" is nice too).

I trust I need not even comment on software companies like Adobe or Microsoft that sell their products in the hundreds or thousands of dollars, then whine about piracy...

This sounds like more hassle than it's worth.

[shimmin]

If the ships used are registered in some nation's maritime registry, then that nation's laws still apply onboard, so why not just do it ashore in that nation? If the ships used AREN'T registered, then they have no legal protection against the coast guards or navies of _any_ nation that cares to harass them.

It made a lot more sense back in the 1950's and 60's when Norweigian oil platforms in the North Sea installed some truly overpowered AM rigs and broadcasted music the BBC wouldn't play into the UK. (Paid for by the record companies who wanted the advertising.) Then, they were doing something that was legal in Norway, but not in the UK, and benefitted from being close to the UK, so a Norweigian maritime installation made perfect sense.

Here, the pirates are doing something that doesn't benefit from being done at sea, so why bother?

Price point and region encoding

[freeweed]

One thing I've always wondered about is the use of region encoding, but on a much smaller scale. You mention how you're willing to pay $20 for a DVD, because you can't be bothered to spend the time ripping it - but what about someone who only makes $5 an hour? Is it worth THEIR time?

I have rather well-off friends financially who don't even blink an eye at plopping down $500-$1000 a month for PC software, whereas with my student status, that's more than I make most months. So, I resort to what most students do, and still use the software.

Now, we all know one of the big uses for region encoding is so that content producers can effectively price-fix their products: they know they'll still make a profit selling a CD for $5 in say, Malaysia, but not any more than $5 because the average Malaysian makes 1/4 of what the average American does (all hypothetically speaking).

With a very large wage gap between the rich and poor in the US, it almost makes me wonder: CDs for $5 (still making a profit, remember)would sell boatloads to poorer families who normally would just download them. HOWEVER, the richer folk among us would buy the CD, even if it was priced at $50.

Now the only thing left to do is have the **AA buy some legislation that allows it to check your financial status, and price your goods accordingly. "Look, we've nearly eliminated those evil pirates, AND we're being nice to the little guy!"

Wow, I think I just scared myself.

Re:Hilarious

[freeweed]

And of course as soon as they do that some bright person will buy a million or so copies for 7 riggit each, ship them to the US, sell them for $10 a pop and make a nearly $10 million.

And that's one of the many reasons why things like Palladium are being developed - imagine region encoding on software. Except instead of a 2 or 3:1 price differential, we're talking 100 or 1000:1.