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Ebay vs. Musician
evenprime writes "Ebay's Verified Rights Owner Program was designed to make sure the auction site doesn't let people
sell things that violate copyright laws. Unfortunately, over-zealous ebay employees have been causing problems for independent musicians. George Ziemann has a detailed
account of the difficulties he's faced when trying to sell copies of his CD on the auction site. Apparently ebay kept pulling his ads simply because he was selling a product recorded to CD-R!
Ebay employees assume that all audio recordings on CD-R are the result of piracy, despite the fact that many indie bands burn their own music to CD-R to sell it. Wired has a nice summary of this story."
I can go on Ebay right now and buy Vcd copies of pirated dvds and cdr copies of pirated music cds. And they are shutting down the people selling music they made?!?!? I don't understand.
any place you cant sell body parts you should already know is going to give you hell for music on cd-r's...
Its called Cover You Ass.
EBAY knows doing such a thing will just bring it some bad reviews... OTOH, not doing this can bring in the RIAA hounds... what would you choose?
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Once it's written to (and finalized), it's a CD, rather than a CD-R.
So just sell it as a CD.
3. Profit?
...who have such problems.
http://www.negativland.com/riaa/
You're probably trolling, but just for the benefit of anyone else reading this - the reason to sell through Ebay is because it's a no hassle, trusted organization. It reaches out to people who might feel unsafe giving their cc# out to some random indie "label", while still selling on the band's terms.
of how a super-anal IP climate pretty much just hurts those trying to break into the market.
.. nobody is going to run/approve/host indie boy's audio bits unless they've been signed off by a big label.
The RIAA should just rename itself 'The Trustworthy Music Initiative'. The more strongarm RIAA gets, and the more fear they seed
"Old man yells at systemd"
The truly ridiculous thing is that this system doesn't work anyway. The most common thing I've seen from people selling bootlegs or other illicit music is for the auction description to say "You are bidding on a pencil (or other random object). The winner will also receive..." The sad thing is that this usually happens with bands that don't mind their music being traded (Pearl Jam, Phish, etc.), but newbies get scammed into buying copies of stuff they could get basically free for trade. EBay has done very little to prevent abuses like this, yet they'll prevent a musician from selling his own work?!
~ Don't say in the auction listing that the CD will be on a CD-R. Just say that it is the original, un-altered cd. Put any questions feel free to email me (or something similiar) at the bottom of the auction. Ebay doesn't snoop through packages and unless they ask you or another user actually reports that you are selling music on CD-Rs they won't know.
When in doubt, err on the side with the most lawyers.
Lord, bless my users that they may stop being such fucking idiots!!
Given that eBay is an auction site, that indies are by nature not likely to have the kind of demand that would make auctioning their music worthwhile, and that CD-Rs of their music being pressed by them isn't something that is likely to be in a strictly limited supply, what's the advantage of selling your own music on eBay over setting up your own website or using one designed to push independent music that already exists?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Does eBay automatically cancel auctions that contain "CDR" or "CDRW" on principle? Because if not, and an employee actually READ the bid description, I'm sure (ok, relatively sure) Ziemann put on there that this was his own music. If so, why didn't they just email him and ask to clear up any confusion?
Just becuase he only anticipated selling 20 CDs doesn't mean he should be cheated that opportunity simply because eBay employees are tools.
Now, the musing. This kind of blanket policy in regards to anything is the proverbial throwing the baby out with the bath water. For example, back in 1997, a friend of mine got me anime (the first Tenchi movie) for a birthday present, which inspired me to start collecting the series. Finding a Suncoast that would sell it to me at the age of 17 was difficult, though, since almost every one I visited had "Must Be 18 or Over to Purchase" stickers on every title - even on titles with absolutely no content that could be justifiably deemed "offensive" to those not of legal age. I eventually just enlisted the help of an older sister to get what I was going after.
The irony of this is that when I turned 18, virtually every Suncoast in the area dropped that blanket policy.
More and more modern law is allowing (and sometimes encouraging) any corporation to be come a vigilante. In this case, it's obvious that Ebay has the right to deny service to any customer they please. What's disturbing is that the government is encouraging companies to adopt policies that turn that right of denial of service into the noose used to hang the guilty (as well as the 'likely guilty'). We can blame the RIAA all we want, but ultimately, the government (through action or inaction) is allowing these types of things to happen every day now.
My in-car CD player doesn't cope with CD-R media, and neither to several DVD players from major brands (Sony, for instance). If I purchase something labelled as a 'CD' but find out it won't play on my equipment, then the guy is going to get negative feedback, trust me. They also degrade much faster than a properly pressed CD.
CD-Rs are not normal CDs. Labelling them as such is bad.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
How is that IRONIC? Did Alanis Morresette teach you the English language or something?
IRONY: Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: "Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated" (Richard Kain).
Sorry to jump down your throat, but this is one of my personal pet peeves. Irony would be if Ebay had a problem with selling CD-Rs, when they themselves were the largest supplier of blank CD-R media. Or if they wouldn't sell CD-Rs, but linked to Napster and Kazaa.
What you describe is merely a case of double standards.
I work with a guy who was unable to sell his Apex DVD player on Ebay because the MPAA got all in a tizzy saying that people were modifying the players to be region-free yadda yadda yadda. The fact that he advertised it as an "original, unmodified" version meant nothing and Ebay repeatedly put the kibosh on his auctions even though he had talked to "customer service" and explained that this was an unmangled off-the-shelf model.
So he gave up trying to sell it and burned the mod disk and now he can't stop raving about the import DVDs he can watch. I'm bitter because Breakin', Breakin' 2, Beat Street, Rappin', The Best Of Weird Weekends and all other sorts of DVDs I'd love to buy will likely never be released stateside.
And still the pirates march on on Ebay; pirates keep on doing their thing without being hassled by the man while people who do things by the book get fucked. I love intellectual "property" law.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
If musicians start getting smarter about how to promote and sell their music, they would figure that they could easily buy a CDFactory the burns CDs and they can cut out their record label and I bet they could easily sell their records for much less and probablly still make more money because there wouldn't be anyone in the middle to take away from their profits.
Let's hope these "you're guilty, period" employees never "serve" on a jury.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
What you describe is merely a case of double standards.
I would argue it's not even a double standard. Porno is legal. CD-Rs of your own music is legal, too... The problem is the lunkheads who search for bootlegs aren't paying enough attention, and end up NOT finding the real bootleggers, instead screwing the honest musicians (because the bootleggers probably don't use the term "cd-r", but the honest musicians do).
I sympathize with the man completely, but I wish he didn't let himself get sidetracked so easily. I would have sent a letter back that clearly and simply stated:
I hate not being able to get a human to talk to me. He's frustrated enough from having them remove his auctions after a cursory glance that didn't even check to see if he followed their policy, and not being able to find someone who will talk to him about it makes it worse.
I also think his "can't sell this on ebay" logo is invalid; that would violate the right of first sale, wouldn't it; the right to resell anything you have bought? Part of fair use, last I checked.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I've vontacted them many times about people selling pirated MST3K videos ("Keep Circulating the Tapes" doesn't mean you can charge for them), even of episodes that Rhino and BBI has for sale.
Their answer is always "The copyright owner must contact us. Please alert them and have them get in touch with us."
I guess the same thing doesn't apply to music for some reason.
Frankly, this guy is just an Internet street singer... No offense. Some street singers are pretty good and even some had sometimes a chance to go into the "official" music arena.
But as with street singers, he's got trouble with the police patrols (in this case the uber-careful eBay). So they kick him, spread his meager cents all over the street and hint him to "get outta here". They don't wanna know if he's good or bad. They don't care for his music. They just wanna see the street looking antiseptic, wax shinny and without a single stain on it. For who? I don't know. Maybe they are worried about its nostalgic clients who dream to see the colors of the III Reich again?
If you advertise on Ebay that you are selling a CD, then ship a CD-R, the purchase might (quite justifiably) accuse you of misrepresenting what you've sold, and give you negative feedback.
As others have noted, Ebay has a blanket policy of no CDRs, even though they themselves point out that there are CDRs you can sell that do not infringe copyright.
My worse example is that I tried to sell an import copy of final fantasy 9 on ebay. (I am in the UK and this was the US version).
I basically stated that this was a US PS1 disc and you couldn't play it unless you had a US or chipped console.
So they pulled my auction, stating that I was "encouraging console chipping" to play (original) imports, which Sony had told them was illegal.
They said it would be OK to resubmit the auction if I made no mention of chipping, but I felt disinclined to walk the thin line between stating something they felt was encouraging evil crime and on the other hand not giving people enough information, so they'd complain when they couldn't play it. (I have had people in the US for example buy PAL videos from me and be mystified as to why they can't play them).
graspee
The guy's web site clearly states that he complied with all E-Bay rules. He is the copyright owner, which he stated in his listings.
He also gives screen shots of other E-Bay listings which are blatant rip-offs.
He also points out that E-Bay claimed that someone else had supposedly said they were the copyright holder. When he wrote back to them asking to know who was making this false claim so he could protect his copyright, E-Bay responded with a letter which ignored his request.
Good grief. Read the article. Idiot.
FWIW, a large part of this guy's problem might be announcing his "CDRs" as "CDRs," instead of something fantastically euphemistic like "home-made CDs."
eBay notoriously doesn't actually *check* many auctions, and instead tends to end things via VeRO by searching listings for "forbidden" words. One of the big forbidden words is "promo" or "promotional," which is almost guaranteed to get your listing kicked out of the music section (despite the fact that it's a rather spurious assumption to make that things stamped "Not for sale" can never be sold, but...). Thus, one finds endless listings for "samplers" or "rhymes-with-flow-motional" albums. This may be a case of the same thing.
Or it could just be the usually self-appointed eBay police making life hell, but...
-D
Someone points out that they have a fraud problem and they go whole hog after something completely different. Often their investigations are totally off base and only interfere with those honestly trying to do some legitmate business.
You're not allowed to sell your own music on CD-R just because it being on CD-R makes it automatically too likely to be inviolation of a copyright somewhere? This from the well-known auction site known for sellers who never really ship anything but cash your check or accept your cc payment anyway? The site where you can easily by "native american" artifacts or jewelry made in locations like mexico or china? The site where you can buy used dvds, videos or tapes at almost any time? Where you can buy stolen goods almost as easily as you can at the local flea market? Ebay needs to buy a life.
If you read his story, it seems to me that he got angry at eBay, stopped focussing on how to sell his CD on eBay, and started focussing on protesting.
It should have been clear that any listing that mentioned CD-R or CD-RW was going to get tagged. It should have been clear that this was being done by a dumb automated process. It should have been clear that eBay does NOT have the staff to spend very much time researching the actual status of every listed item. Maybe this is wrong, maybe this is right, but it should have been pretty clear what was going on.
What he should have tried was continuing to sell his CD's on eBay, but simply avoiding any red-flag terms in the listing.
It's obvious at this point that he wants eBay to accept listings _in which he calls them CD-R's_.
In other words, it's no longer a genuine effort to see whether independent musicians can use eBay to earn a living selling their recordings; it's become a crusade to change eBay's policies about listing CD-R's
Well, that's fine if that's what he wants to do. Personally, if it were me, I'd try to see whether there was some reasonable, hypocritical way to list my CD's in a way that was honest and didn't misrepresent them in any way material to buyers, but which would pass eBay's automated filters.
If the automated filters don't catch the listings, it's unlikely that eBay would cause him any problems UNLESS there actually was a COMPLAINT from the likes of Vivendi--and that wouldn't be likely to happen if the situation is as he represents it to be.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This is a story not about ebay trying to shut down independent musicians but rather what happens when you let a computer decide by keyword which auctions are and aren't acceptable.
His frustrations really are because the ebay "auction filter" apparently automatically stops any auction containing the words "cdr" or "cd-r".
So, this guy writes and complains as he has a right to, and yet continues to whine even when they apologize and admit that yes, they made an error. ebay tells him he can relist but he decides to be a brat and lists a couple of auctions selling "nothing" which incidentally received more bids than his band's cds did.
finally he reposts the ads which eventually get flagged by the same brainless auction filter. yes, this is frustrating and ebay should now have a human review flagged items before cancelling them but his response is totally off the wall. he complains, a person responds and apologizes but he wants to file a suit against ebay and states that:
"Ideally, I would like to file an injunction to force eBay to stop the sales of all CD media pending the resolution of this issue. I am going to pursue this through every possible avenue."
he no longer really is interested in getting the problem resolved. he then decides that the best thing to do is to mail bomb their system.
"I was going to send the message incessantly until someone called me or they shut down the comment section to force me to stop"
he did this for four hours and apparently sent 1800 e-mails.
According to the intro to his site, he spammed a bunch of people he didn't know in order to publicize himself and this issue. Well done Mr. Ziemann, your unknown band whose cds apparently received zero bids has now obtained a million dollars of free publicity.
don't support this publicity hound.
CD-Rs are not normal CDs. Labelling them as such is bad.
But ebay's autosearch bot is probably looking for precisely CD-R. So describe it as "writable CD" or "CD created with a CD writer" or something that won't trigger the autobot. Meanwhile hopefully the bad press will get ebay to make their system more flexible, and perhaps even consider making their system especially friendly to independent musicians.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I've never had an issue with eBay throughout all of this. I don't state explicitly in the auction listings that these are CD-R's. That's unnecessary information. It's all about the content at that point. I think their violation-detection process is poor. I've had auctions forcefully cancelled for using words like "ass" (as in "Funky-ass house mix CD") or using the real titles of some of the raunchier tracks I play. It happens, though.
If y'all want to hear some good house music, hit up my website.
Edmund White
http://flickr.com/ewwhite
Let me explain 'hostile'. Automated responses, canned responses, lack of contact information for a real person or even having to dig through layers of pages to find email or phone numbers.
I've been a buyer and seller on eBay since late 1999 and their increasing distance between their people and customers is worrying. It's infuriating to an extreme when you find that Obvious things are hard to locate on their site and usually the novice only has volunteers on forums to go to, which are usually a complete waste, because most of the time it's social activity in the forums, rather than any real help.
Needing and seeking help on eBay is almost like going to large Builder's Square-type store, finding a box of nails you want, but on a shelf you can't reach, and having to find the employees break room to get someone to get them down for you, then having to wait for a cashier to finish a cigarette break before ringing up your order and then informing you they can only accept payment entered through a secretly hidden card scanner, somewhere in the store which you must find and your only help is from a band of gypsies which has been trapped in the store since 1994 and would rather ignore you unless you have a spare chicken. Effectively, like some of those weird chase dreams where you can't run and wake up tangled in bedsheets.
Maybe they model themselves on the Prisoner.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"(because the bootleggers probably don't use the term "cd-r", but the honest musicians do)."
And that my friend leads us back to irony...
and many artists dont research it first befoer they put out their first CD's..
you can get 100 of your cd pressed in a jewel case with 4 color printing on the cd and the insert and the case spine PLUS cello wrapped for less than $3.00 a cd. that $300.00 for a first run of your CD so they look professional.. hell most musicians blow that much on booze in 2 nights of practice (ok Joking there... by my buddies and I certianly do)
there is no excuse as a musician if you have an album to sell, for you to have them pressed and looking 100% identical to that which you buy from the sellouts(Read that as RIAA members)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
On the plus side:
The vapours, if inhaled, can cause hallucinations.
On the minus side:
The vapours, if inhaled, can cease respirations.
A preemptive strike may be in order. In this case -- if you want to sell your own copyrighted material on ebay, first join their Verified Rights Owner program, and make an "about" page under the VeRO program. Then when you list your item, conspicuously point out both your VeRO membership and your "About VeRO member" page.
I'm not sure this would do any good in the case of blind keyword parsing, but it might at least give you some protection against vigilantes (private or corporate) who cruise ebay looking for contraband to report.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I was thinking he could just make a small graphic that had the word CD-R in it... No way to 'search' on that.
Pardon my ignorance for that type of music, but aren't you just copying other people's music, mixing the ends and beginning of the songs together and selling it as yours? It seems to me that I could record the audio off of VH1's video shows where they fade one song into the next and sell that with the same infringement.
Incidently, I am *not* making a statement that being a good DJ is not a skill. Being a really good DJ, keeping the beat together, and keeping people on the floor or circulating - basically maintaining "mood" - is difficult, and certainly to be praised.
But a mix tape is a mix tape, right? So what are you selling if it isn't a mix tape (however well it's put together and however well the songs are joined)?
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Well, I've run into this policy a few times, not for my own music, but for music from CD-R-only labels. A lot of independent electronic musicians that I listen to are on small "bedroom labels". And when I sell some extra CDs on eBay I like to sell those too. They are NOT illegal copies, they are legit, original, sometimes with hand-made and hand-numbered inserts.
I've tried all the following:
The only one that was pulled was #1. They might've expanded their filter to catch #2 or #3 but that's how it was when I was testing out variations.
Note that in every auction containing "CD-R", I noticed in my logs the next morning that a machine from eBay's netblock came and viewed the auction. Due to variations in the user-agent, and because sometimes they visited twice in the space of a few minutes, I believe they have a Real Live(tm) employee do it. What a wonderful job, eh? And they ONLY pull the auction when it clearly and unambiguously says the item is a CD-R. So I guess if you want to keep them busy, put "THIS IS NOT A CD-R" in all your auctions.
Nowdays, I just don't bother saying it's a CDR or anything. This music is obscure enough that the buyers usually know, and nobody's complained. Great policy, huh? In the meantime, people are selling unauthorized CDRs left and right, and they don't get caught.
I saw this one guy selling CDs without good descriptions or pictures.. I checked his feedback.. full of negatives because he was basically selling homemade "mix CDRs" and not advertising them as such. His feedback was also full of positives saying "great rare CD". So his business was doing all right from the many suckers out there. Shouldn't they shut these guys down first? Not to mention the guys selling 80GB hard drives STUFFED FULL of big-label MP3s. "Delete the ones you don't have CDs for" Yeah right!
So although it is within eBay's legal rights to arbitrarily do shit like this, it's a mind-numbingly stupid, ineffective, and purposeless policy. They just do it to satisfy the big labels. This guy should simply imply what it is, and not write CD-R anyplace in the auction. Or he could do like I did, put a bunch of auctions with subtle variations and learn which get pulled and which don't.
And oh, yeah don't put any "naughty words" in the auctions (I have no idea what the list of naughty words are, except "fuck" and "shit" are on it). They used to allow them in song titles, but now the drones move them to the "Adult" category with the hardcore porn.
And don't even bother writing customer support, they'll send you a syrupy "thanks for your business, but that's how it is" form letter.
I'm a (not terribly good) independent musician (if you have any interest in hearing my stuff, you can navigate over to the URL on my user page).
In 1999, at the height of the Napster furor, I decided I was going to boycott the entire RIAA until further notice; the implications of their copyright fanaticism on free speech are staggering, and I feel like I would be remiss in supporting it.
You can't really base a boycott on piracy, so I've stopped listening to RIAA recordings altogether; 99% of what I hear is stuff I download from other musicians' sites and burn to CD-R. And although you have to search a little harder, I think some of my CD-Rs are plain and simply *better* than anything the Big Four have put out since, say, 1985.
Here's two of the primary problems I encouter:
1. That fucking CD-R tax. Every time I buy a CD-R, Congress assumes I'm a pirate, and I have to pay a nickel to mega-acts like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. That's exactly the kind of shit I'm trying to boycott in the first place; it infuriates me that they've circumvented some of my boycott through Congressional lobbying. In a way, I feel like I'd be justified in stealing a Britney CD and microwaving it; I'm paying for it, right? But I don't.
2. This eBay policy, and the dozens of similar policies, that assume that legitimate music cannot be packaged as a CD-R. News flash: it can. I own probably 100 CD-Rs given to me by various local and independent bands (in about 10% of cases, I paid about $5, but usually they just give them to me because they want me to hear the music). This stuff is not contraband! I'm not a pirate!
The most important thing we can do is be vigilant against the notion that if something doesn't come out of mainstream channels, it's somehow inferior or illegal. The RIAA pays lobbyists like Rosen millions of dollars a year to sell us that proposition; let them know we're not buying.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
My Deep House CD
Another pirated CD
Contrast that to a *real* listing.
So, basically, this guy bought my box-set back in July. He's been duplicating my CD's and selling them in the German market for months. Despite the blatant infringement (he even took my HTML), I don't think I have any recourse. Heck, it's sorta flattering.
Edmund White
http://flickr.com/ewwhite
Right, the RIAA. The same way the MPAA sent a take-down order for a fourth-grader's book report about Harry Potter. They don't care if the claim has any merit. All they care about is that no one distributes music except through their channels.
Nope, no sig
I once tried selling a used copy of Office on eBay (the original CD with the hologram and everything)... got the same note as this guy. Now I wonder if Microsoft really complained or if eBay killed the auction out of fear of any possible litigation.
If you want to try to sneak one by: I highly recommend using a 3-day auction. It usually takes several days for them to troll the site to search for any such scandalous items!
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
The feeling eBay Safeharbor gives me is the same eerie feeling I get when I hear William Shatner sing.
High-quality (175-line screen) four-color printing (4/1) printing
Direct on-disc printing
Injection-molded CDs manufactured to stringent quality specifications (These are NOT CDrs/CD-one offs)
Jewel boxes and shrink-wrap
Inclusion of a track from your CD on one of our OASIS SAMPLER CDs, with free distribution to the vast majority of radio stations in the US that specialize in your musical genre
National distribution directly through Amazon.com--the biggest retailer on the Web--as well as through cdstreet and the beloved indie store CD Baby
Free barcode if desired
Ten Retail-ready display boxes
Naturally, the prices go up if you want a nicer insert with more room for lyrics and band photos, and they go down if you buy more CDs. No. I'm not affiliated with Oasis. Our band may put out a disc of our own soon, so we've been looking into duplication options, and they are the company that we like the best so far. If you want to look at some other good options for indie bands, check out the list of duplicators recommended by CD Baby. Some of them have even lower prices than Oasis. (but not as many free perks)
If you decided to use Oasis, you may want to talk to our rep, Alex (Alexandra) Vacek - she's been real helpful with all our odd questions.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Just call the thing a CD. Lots of bands sell CD's at live shows and when you get them home they turn out to be CD-R. They work fine in almost all players. If someone complains, give them a refund including shipping costs. But really, hardly anyone cares. The first time I bought an artist's CD and it turned out to be a CD-R, I didn't think "I've been gypped!". I thought "wow, cool, I'm really 3733t for liking this obscure band!".
If you really want to mention in the auction that the disc is on recordable media, then do that. Just say "this disc was personally duplicated on recordable media by the artist and copyright holder and is a fully legitimate copy". As long as you don't use the magic letters CD-R, EBay is extremely unlikely to flag the auction.
Sheesh. There are plenty of battles that need to be fought. This isn't one. Just change the wording in your damn auction, sell your damn CD's, and then get out in the streets and protest about something that matters.
On pg. 57 of the June 2002 issue of Performing Songwriter (i.e. the same issue that ran the print version of Janis Ian's internet debacle column) contains an interview with Michael Hausman about his new organization United Musicians. Their hope to a) help artists retain ownership of their masters and the copyrights on their songs instead of signing those rights over to publishing companies, and b) hire full time marketing people to help members get their CD's marketed. I think both of this is a great idea. Few indie musicians can afford a marketing person to get them national airplay, but a group of musicians could.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
That said, there is a simple answer to the eBay problem: simple and literally true. Advertise the CDs like this:
Music CD: Not Mass Replicated
The process by which major label CDs are made is called 'replication'. It's different from home CD burning or low-volume duplicating- both use CDRs, replicated CDs are stamped in an expensive (hundreds of dollars) process allowing them to be churned out faster and cheaper. It's mass production.
Anyone who seriously cares about not getting a CDR in their music purchase ought to know what 'mass replicated' means. If they don't, maybe they can guess. Again, this is literally the technical term for it- rather than saying 'CDR' you can say 'not mass replicated' which means exactly the same thing. Even some small label releases are duplicated on CDR rather than replicated, so if it matters you can't go by whether it was a pressing run, or outsourced. It's strictly about whether the CD was replicated or duplicated.
Oh, and go check out MY music- I don't mailbomb people ;) how's that for a sales pitch? "Listen to my music, I promise not to hack onto your computer and delete your mp3s, or mailbomb you, or prohibit you from reselling the CD you bought from me on eBay." This world we live in...
Remember when Microsoft signed on as a buddy and had eBay cancel hundreds of legal Windows sales under the guise of stopping piracy? eBay even had all those hundreds of negative ratings of the Microsoft buddy account set to neutral. After the big flap over it, it disappeared. Used to be here.