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Fast CD-R Drives Make For Twice the Piracy
Bowie J. Poag notes this Register story about an RIAA copyright infringement bust in New York. The RIAA claims the operation had the equivalent of 421 CD-burners, which, translated from RIAA-speak, means "156 CD-burners but some of them were fast". How they expect anyone to take their statistics seriously is beyond me.
...does that mean I have half a cd burner?
This is the equivilant of 40 first posts, isn't it?
If we pirate 1,000 songs but all of them were crap, we're innocent?
that gave us 2002-1900 = 100th Anniversary of Quantum Physics
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Millennium Crisis Line: 0890 900 2000 [calls cost 50p/min]
Or does this seem like a story about the RIAA acknowledging that people can copy cd's...with a cd-r?
My god the humanity! They'll be able to make their own cd's! Why wasn't this reported before.
This first post is being sent over a cable modem and is like 15 regular first posts!
Sex - Find It
not the individual consumers. Not that individual consumers are pirating cd's any less, but these are the guys you can catch outright without creating new laws that restrict our rights.
How they expect anyone to take their statistics seriously is beyond me.
Who, the RIAA's or The Register's?
(ba-dum-bum-cha!)
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco Posted: 14/12/2002 at 00:31 GMT
"Perhaps the truth is less interesting than the facts?" asked Amy Weiss, the RIAA's Senior Vice President of Communications recently in this email to The Register.
It's a question which has baffled many of our readers, and us too. Perhaps it's a kind of Zen koan, which needs to be repeated many times before making sense. If so, we can't report any success.
But the RIAA seems to be having a few problems with the facts itself.
Yesterday it issued a press release announcing a piracy bust in New York which unearthed 421 CD-R burners.
Only there weren't 421 burners, but "the equivalent of 421 burners."
In fact, there were just 156. How did the RIAA account for this discrepancy?
"There were only 156 actual burners, but some run at very high speeds: some as high as 40x. This is well above the average speed," was the official line yesterday.
Apparently another example of the Association's difficulty grappling with new technology. After the RIAA's website was hacked, with large sections rendered inaccessible, spokespersons explained the difficulties were due to a sudden upsurge in popularity.
Well, that's one way of putting it.
The other curious aspect of yesterday's release is the use of Secret Service agents in the bust. The Secret Service, we naively presumed, was employed to protect high-ranking elected officials.
Wholesale pirating and distribution is BAD. This is the kind of thing the RIAA SHOULD be pursuing and is the reason for them actually exsiting.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Is that like 'the equivalent of being pregnant'?
Either they're capable of writing CD-Rs, or they're not, sheesh.
It is mathematics like this that allow companies such as Worldcom and Enron to cook their books.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
So does this mean that if I pay twice as much as I should for a CD (as we all do with the industry's fixed pricing) that I've really bought the equivalent of two CD's?
From the article:
The other curious aspect of yesterday's release is the use of Secret Service agents in the bust. The Secret Service, we naively presumed, was employed to protect high-ranking elected officials[*]. Perhaps this is a further indication of who's really in charge.®
Uhh... no.. actually, the Secret Service was created to track down counterfeiters.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
What you are missing is that these silly statistics aren't designed for the general public--they are designed for POLITICIANS.
The **AA doesn't give a damn what the general public thinks--this is all PR for bought-and-paid-for politicians. The lobbyists will show up, wave around these silly statistics, flash some money and boom! suddenly there will be more laws/levies/taxes on recordable media faster than you can type 'cdrecord'.
Let's say the "average" is 24X... I have a 12X burner. I guess that means I have the equivalent of 0.5 burners... I'm not a threat! Yay!
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics."
;)
C'mon, such a huge percentage of all statistics out there are dubious. Did you really think the RIAA is above a little "data cooking"?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
In accordance with the RIAA logic, I can now beat any speeding ticket by claiming to have the equivalent of more than one car! For example, if I were busted doing 60 in a 20, I can claim I have three cars. After all, it's 3x faster than the average driver travels through such a zone. Stands to reason that I simply have the equivalent of 3 cars driving at a legal speed and therefore I am innocent.
Yeah... I think that'll work...
Would someone PLEASE bust them for lying. I can't even consider this "spin doctoring." You can't make a claim with any amount of seriousness that a "fast" cd writer is the equivalent of two or more "average speed" drives. I can't decide which is worse: Scientology or the RIAA.
So now if I gnutella on a T3 am I suddenly stealing 28x the music because it's "really fast"?!
Just another sign of these idiots' attempts to ignore the progress of technology out of sheer stupidity and too much laziness to develop new business models that embrace it.
...that I have precisely TWO 4x burners, for a total of 8x, so I must declare that I own "2/3 of a burner". Ahhahhah.
;)
But I use the Evil Commie P1-r4t OS Linux... maybe the RIAA will come get me for that one
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I would think /.ers already knew our four letter friends (MPAA, RIAA, etc) lie through their teeth at every avaliable opportunity. They keep saying how p2p is running them into the ground (yet keep posting remarkable profits) and how nobody buys CDs anymore because of it (yet they manage to sell hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of carefully marketed trash from Dion and Spears).
The fact that they count funny when doing a "bust" of evil pirates is exactly what I'd expect. I'd be surprised if they came out with an announcement stating that
-- MG
RIAA says the damage could be as high as 90million.
These groups, I'm sure, don't use take into account "Opportunity cost". Just because I bought a pirated CD for $2 (or obtained it for free), doesn't mean I would also pay $20 for a legimate copy if no pirated copies existed.
They have 800 CD burners, but most of them are slow.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
If you were trying to karma whore this was a bad idea. We all WANT the RIAA web site slashdotted. And btw you don't need to "mirror" the register, it never goes down from SD linking.
At least not until the price of buying 421 CDs has come down to the price that 156 CDs would cost you retail right now.
As Benjamin Disraeli said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics". We all know which kind were looking at here.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
As you should now be able to see, none of this applies to any of the CDs which were being burned at higher than average speed.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
the equivalent of 421 CD-R burners
If they had said "the equivalent of 421 12x CD-R burners", that would have been a bit more accurate.
What I find funniest about this story is the link to the RIAA:
http://riaa.org/PR_Story.cfm?id=592
"PR STORY?"
Not good PR, but PR nonetheless I suppose.
Maybe the same thing will happen to the RIAA that happened to WorldCom and Enron.
I know this sounds redundant, but how did they get 421? If one CD-R drive is 40x, does it count as 40 CD-R drives? If they did it that way, then it would seem like most of the drives being used were fairly slow, because otherwise the number would have been higher. It was a professional pirating business, so I'm guessing many of the drives would have been at least 24x. If each drive is at least 24x, then 156*24 = 3744. With the numbers they gave (and the speed of a CD player counts as many times), the average CD-R speed is just over 2. But that seems hard to believe, because these are (were) professionals, and they would have had the money to get faster CD-R drives.
The only reason the RIAA published this number is to make the media grab it more. This is the same thing they did with "Everyone using Napster is pirating music", which wasn't exactly true (many were, but not all). The media ate up the RIAA's headline, and ignored the real truth behind it.
The automotive insurance companies must use the same "math", and since my car is so fast they are charging me like I have two (possible three :-) )...
...we would say they that it's the equivalent of 0.36 FAST CD-Rs.
Doesn't add up. RIAA's math skills should be used to power interstellar space ships.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Millions of C64 page requests flood the register article!
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Glad we just had a threat about these new drives - do they count tripple?
And if there were DVD-Rs there, did they count them in the CDR numbers?
Since DVD 18 can hold roughly 17 gigs, did they count that as 18+ burners?
When the RIAA reports these numbers, it makes me wonder how they do their taxes.
"Well, let's see. I gave a dollar to the kids in Ethiopia, and there are 3 million kids, so I'm going to write this off as the equivelent of 3 million dollars, because I don't know which kid is going to get it. Hmm, that sounds about right..."
I have a Ferrari F40 so really I have 4 Ford Sedans.
According to the RIAA press release - in the footnote:
"The Recording Industry Association of America is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry."
Indeed. Well, their supporting facts to indicate that they represent the entirety of the recording industry includes this:
"RIAA® members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States."
So, you've heard it here, folks. 90% = 100%.
The proof of the corollary theorem, 1 = 2, is left as an exercise to the reader.
These kinds of busts of people who willfully infringe on copyright is the kind of activity that the RIAA should be using, instead of attempting to encumber everyone's computers, regardless of the guilt of the computer user.
When the HRAA (home recording rights act) was passed, it set a dangerous precedent of being presumed guilty. No matter how one wished to use home stereo equipment which can copy audio digitally, one was treated like a media pirate.
For example, when I was burning a CD of my own music (which I own the copyright on) two years ago, I was not allowed to make a digital copy of one of my songs to the new CD. What happened was that a flag saying the song was a copy was set; my CD recorder does not allow me to make digital copies of copies. It assumes that all such activity is piracy, even though I use this equipment to make copies of my own songs.
In addition, the CD player forces me to pay extra for CD blanks because it assumes that my activities are copyright infringment activities. In other words, I have to pay the media companies royalties for the privledge of copying my own music. Fortunatly , there is a bug in the firmware which allows me to work around this issue and use far more inexpensive "computer" CDR blanks.
The RIAA and MPAA are trying to cripple computers in a similar manner, which such abominations as the SSSCA. They should stop treating honest computer users like criminials and start persecuting people who willfully engage in piracy.
People who do not think piracy is a problem are mainly in the US, where it is not the kind of problem it is in other countries. In México, for example, one can hardly walk down a street in a shopping district without noticing stands where people sell burned copies of music CDs, complete with inkjet printouts of the cover art for the CD. These kinds of sales do hurt the profits of the RIAA. Obviously not to the extent that every person who buys a burned copy is someone who would have bought a legitimate copy otherwise, but certaintly to a lesser extent.
The people who willfully pirate music and movies need to be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law; I will go so far as to say that the law needs to be set up to make persecuting these people easier. But only the guilty should be punsished; methods for duplicating and distributing music and movies, which are very helpful for promoting independent artists, should not be crippled by the media companies.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
I thought this sort of math was only applied to drug busts.
"We estimate the marijuana had a street value of 4.5 million dollars."
(Yes, if you sold it one eighth at a time to desperate, confused rich people.)
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
A man who fucks for 15 minutes before delivering the cream to the woman, result in a baby.
Therefor, a man who fucks for 5 minutes before delivering the cream to the woman, must result in triplets.
Of course, we're just talking about successful cases here... and I don't want to think about the poor guys who comes after 30 seconds...
So? A victimless crime is *still* a crime. It will remain such until enough people lobby to have it changed from being a crime. However, I really don't see how what these people were doing (pirating material on a large scale) is something that should be supported in any case. These guys are just trying to profit on other's work.
/.er.)
(Waiting for the smartass "Who? The RIAA or the pirates?" response from some immature
"nd 21% percent of people buy less music now they download.
RIAA always forget to tell us that the other 79% buy more;)"
And I'm one of them. I'd have never bought Avril Lavigne, Michelle Branch, and Vanessa Carlton's album if I hadn't been able to use Kazzaa Lite to sample them in advance.
Glad I did, they are awesome.
Corporatism != Free Market
Holy obfuscation Flying-Mammal-Man!
;-)
First, congrats to the RIAA for shutting down a real piracy operation. However, if they wanted to get the idea across without messing with the facts, why didn't they say something like "...able to churn out X CDs a day..."? They obviously went through the trouble of doing some sort of calculation to come with that 156 burners = 421 average burners, why not put it in real world terms? Shouldn't be too hard to come up with really big numbers like:
(x_burners)(average_CD_burnt_per_minute)*24*60
Lets say average_CD_burnt_per_minute (aka burn rate) of a 20x burner burning a 70-minute CD is:
20/70min = 0.286 CD/min
You have a fascility churning out:
156*0.286*24*60 = 64,247 CDs/day
Now isn't that a much more impressive number? (assuming I've got me numbers correct; my brain only half-works on Sundays, which is how I average more than a whole brain during the week
--The more you know, the less you know.
Since the RIAA is cracking down on piracy and scaring people into not making personal copies of their own CDs it stands to reason that this is cutting into the profits of CD Burner and Media producers. It seems to me (using the RIAA's own logic) that the RIAA should be charged a certain amount per CD/DVD they sell to give back to the Burner/Media producers to make up for the losses in revenue. But then again, I could be wrong.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
If it was victimless, then surely it wouldnt be a crime? I thought laws were there to protect potential victims, and if there was no victim then surely it isnt a crime? Theres no such thing as a victimless crime, only the worthyness of the victims to be called a victim. (Oh and since someone mentioned it above, ill reiterate it here. This wasnt some idiot after free speech or something, he was copying these dvds and cds wholesale. 35,000 cds! This is the sort of thing the authorities should be going after.)
An unnamed spokesman for the RIAA stated "Sure, they had 156 drives, but since we put less than 30 minutes of music on a piece of media that can hold 64 or more, we were able to calculate that these devices were able to pirate at an effective rate of 421 drives."
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
you forgot the "send me your bank account number" part
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Glad I did, they are awesome.
Are you serious?
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
I can't wait until next week, when my processor is so fast that Microsoft decides that my single processor is the "equivalent of a quad processor," so that I need Windows 2k Server instead of 2k Pro.
You realize they are already doing that with hyperthreading processors, right?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
the equivalent of 421 times? After all, some connections are faster than others.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
"Who? The RIAA or the pirates?"
actually, that is exactly the point.
It will remain such until enough people lobby to have it changed from being a crime.
and it is this absurdity that people hold onto that makes our laws so completely fscked up. the idea that "just because its a law, it must be right and good." More specifically, the idea that "people" can "lobby" to have laws changed is absurd.
I stand by my belief that copying information is not bad, at heart. Really -- not bad at all. Therefore, I can't draw a line against those who do it lots and say -- well that's bad, though.
From http://www.secretservice.gov/mission.shtml
I don't see anything there about IP law, Fraudulent CD's, or other Piracy or theft laws. The Secret Service protects the president, and investigates Counterfeit CURRENCY, Securities Fraud, Bank Fraud, and other Financial Crime Thats why they are part of the Department of the TREASURY
So what were they doing at RIAA's latest Bust exactly? Though the Register did get the SS's role wrong, they were right in presuming that they really shouldn't have been part of this bust.
Does that mean your Ferrari breaks down 8 times more often?
ok, I'll bite.
Give me the name of one victim of these "criminals" who were copying
CDs and selling them. And then tell me how this person was harmed.
I have always thought of PR as "public reputation".
The Merriam-Webster dictionary actually says "public relations". What a sour relationship.
The Secret Service, we naively presumed, was employed to protect high-ranking elected officials.
This is the big problem with Federal law enforcement -- there's so many different law enforcement arms, and few of them like to cooperate with the others. I heard on NPR that they want to form yet another to combat terrorism! Why not have:
(1) FBI -- Enforce federal criminal statutes, including counterfeiting and narcotics, as well as felon apprehension. This gets rid of the DEA, the non-protective Secret Service roles and the Marshalls Service. Essentially focuses on criminal acts comitted in the United States.
(2) Homeland security. Immigration, border security, customs, counter-terrorism, counter-espionage and government protection, including Presidential Security. Eliminates border patrol, customs service, and the rest of the Secret Service function. Essentially focuses on crimes involving extra-national activities and government security.
The constitutional standards for (1), which would mostly involve US citizens, could then be kept higher without a risk to national security.
I wonder what the SI unit of a CDRW is? Is my $75 40x really worth 2.7 $40 16x CDRWs? If so, could I sell my drive as 2.7 drives on eBay and get $108?
I don't understand why they felt the need to inflat an already large figure. Even 156 drives is a freaking large amount of drives.
A small collection of rather interesting quotes, taken from the RIAA's press release & the Register article...
.. the U.S. Secret Service, assisted by a team of investigators from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), on Monday morning raided a major music piracy operation in New York City, leading to the capture [...] of 421 CD-R burners [...].
---
"There were only 156 actual burners, but some run at very high speeds: some as high as 40x. This is well above the average speed," was the official line yesterday.
The Secret Service, we naively presumed, was employed to protect high-ranking elected officials.
"Perhaps the truth is less interesting than the facts?" asked Amy Weiss, the RIAA's Senior VP of Communications.
...hand out lots of money. That gets them taken seriously by anyone who matters: legislators.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
the Brazilian national soccer team has been retroactively disqualified from the World Cup finals, after reports surfaced that they had the equivalent of twelve players on the field during the match, instead of the regular eleven.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
does MP3/P2P equal (1.5M)/P ?
These are the same "statisticians" who think that the continual seizing of multimillions of dollars worth of drugs ("street value" of course) equates somehow to "winning the war on drugs." The RIAA's logic assumes that there is an infinite demand for pirated CDs and that, therefore, any increase in speed of reproduction equates to an increase in sales. No wonder, is it not, that they can't wrap their brains around the idea of increased sales through increased exposure? These characters cannot grasp the very simplest concepts of economics. Would anyone wish to speculate on whether this results from a perspective hatched in the very nest of monopoly conditions?
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
And those three individuals were actually fifty four guys but they have rights equivalent of three normal citizens.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
The important difference with these guys is that they are pirating music to make money off of it. Consumers who make copies and distribute them are doing it for free. Actually, more acurately, consumers are PAYING to pirate the music since they have to have a broadband connection to be able to do it, a decent CD ripper/burner, etc.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The RIAA press release says "The raid, executed by a team of several Secret Service agents and RIAA investigators ...". IANAL but warrants do not entitle anyone but law enforcement to enter private property and certainly do not allow private persons to take part in a law enforcement action.
Give me the name of one victim of these "criminals" who were copying CDs and selling them.
Any artist who would have recieved a cut from the sale of the legitmate product was a victim.
Any consumer who thought he was buying legitimate product and got counterfeit product was a victim.
Any merchant selling legitimate product who lost sales to these counterfeiters is a victim of this crime.
All taxpayers were victims of the criminals because they have to pay for the law enforcement, court system and jails used to catch prosecute and punish these criminals.
Any citizen wha was affected by a crime that wasn't pursued by these law enforcement agents while they were after these criminals was a victim.
Any citizen who was a victim of a crime financed by the sales of these materials is also a victim of this crime.
> ...the RIAA works to protect intellectual property
> rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of
> artists...
Note: This doesn't mean that the RIAA works to protect the intellectual property rights of artists. Only their first ammendment rights (or, in other words, the ability of their companies to sell the stuff). It does, however, 'works to protect' the intellectual property rights of its member companies.
Its very nice of them to put the 'artists' phrase in there, but what they do isn't about the artists.
All in all, this is a good press release. It erodes the credibility of past RIAA claims (which were suspect to begin with) and future RIAA claims.
> Contact: 202.775.0101
That number is disconnected. Nice to see that they stand behind their words.
Where can I get one of these 2.6987179487179489 X CD burners?
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
What really annoyed me about this article though was this comment, "The other curious aspect of yesterday's release is the use of Secret Service agents in the bust. The Secret Service, we naively presumed, was employed to protect high-ranking elected officials[*]. Perhaps this is a further indication of who's really in charge.®"
What the fuck's up with that? Is the author so stupid they couldn't be bothered to check out the The United States Secret Service? A quick check of their Mission Statement would have revealed this little tidbit of information making their comment childish and unnecessary.
I'd say that copyright violations on this mass scale fall well within the jurisdiction of their powers.
Hilary Rosen is the equivalent of 22 regular greedy corporate whores
Is 16x according to my estimates. So I guess my 32x burner is actually 2* burners?
Yes, but the story here is that the RIAA would rather charge them with having more CD burners than they actually did, rather than charge then with distributing n pirated CDs.
CD burners are not a unit by which you can measure piracy, nevermind inflated "equal to" units of CD burners. The RIAA's purpose was to put the confusing math in the press release, so that hopefully dumb reporters would report that they had "over 400 CD burners" in their operation, rather than print the rather unimpressive number of CDs they distributed.
...at midway through a burn, is your cd half empty or half full? If you are burning it in an empty house, and the burn hoses up, and you scream, does anybody hear? Honestly, I think those RIAA folks are doing the more of the good drugs their talent does.
As they were selling them cheap, lets assume around 1/3 of retail ($5~$7), and, using RIAA math you get to only 21,415.6 cds a day.
If you also consider they probably worked 8 hrs a day (unless it was also a sweat shop, or had shifts
When compared to RIAA's 465 burners you only have a rate of 15cds/day/burner which is not impressive at all
sorry, bzzt on all counts.
we live in a world where everybody competes tooth and nail to take more money fom everyone they can. people take and lose money all the time. I hardly think it "harm" to have someone else taking money -- making it so you can't take so much. This eliminates points 1 and 3. stop relying on laws to maintain a profit hedgemony.
point 2: how exactly was a consumer harmed? If he got something defective, he should return it. if the merchant was duped, that's not the consumer being harmed. The reality is that copies are not defective, they are exactly the same -- and that's the point.
on point 4, I agree, taxpayers are victims in many ways, but not because of the criminals. The existence of crime is more a result of how our society works and the pressures people are under. If anything, the governemnt, and the institutions that squander and misuse tax resources are the problem.
on point 5, I have a bridge somewhere to sell you too. claiming vague "other crime not stopped" as reason for prosecuting these people who were copying is absurd. I'll leave it at that.
and on point 6, whatevidence do you have that money gained from this copying was or will be used for crime? if so, that crime has not even happened yet... and when it does, we will look for its victims.
and most importantly, you must not read too good: "the name" and HOW THEY WERE HARMED
3) They believe the public is too stupid to understand (or care about) a useful metric. Given their behavior so far, I think it's the most likely scenario.
It's sort of like a monopoly, it works fine untill they do something wrong - then you're screwed. No thanks, I'd rather have them having to argue with each other, and get caught up in turf wars and duplicated data.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
I know everyone hates statistics, but that's not really the issue here -- it's basic arithmetic. I mean, they can't add and multiply properly, either by accident or design, but as soon as they're caught at it they undermine their already limited credibility.
:)
... anyone have a cite? The biggest problem is estimating the returns from schemes that have never been tried. In other words -- statistics and, worse, speculation.
This reminds me of virtually any tax debate in Congress, excpet there it is at least partly statistics -- trying to extrapolate from known values and economic relationships to determine future revenue. WIth the RIAA, at least in the present example, we see simple nonsense. Of course, this sould be the work of the PR people, a group not known for math skills.
As for "the idea of increased sales through increased exposure" that's a matter for speculation, and a decision I feel that is wholly up to sellers to determine, not the consumer. I imagine the relationship of publicity (earned at the sacrifice of some profits) to ultimate profits (the number they really care about -- not sales) is a curve of some sort, with diminishing returns beyond a certain point of giveaway music. More efficient piracy will not advance the game, rather it may give the beneficiaries an added sense of entitlement, and reduced obligation to pay the big bad record labels for anything. This is not so much civil disobedience as yielding to temptation while feeling justified for just desserts or educating the greedbags.
On the publicity point, recall that Napster and P2P are pull not push mechanisms; you have to request what you want, thus you already know something about it and probably like it. This is less likely to spur sales than push, where the studios would promote music that is not yet established, and which they believe need promotion.
Someone MUST have done a decent study of this question
As an ethical matter marketing should be left to the sellers, with input from consumers but not pressure in the form of piracy. They have a right to be stupid; we do not have a right to coerce. If I were the seller, losing music to piracy would not immediately dispose me to start giving "samples" away for free -- I might go the RIAA route, even if it were illogical. Psychologically, it has to be a decision they feel they made on their own, or that upstarts demonstrate to be viable. Also, if the sellers can make more money not giving out free music, I can't blame them for a second.
They had some older burners and bought new as new technology came out? Wow, you could almost make that into a business model!
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
However, that is no excuse for lying about the actual numbers. "156 CD burners" are "156 CD burners", no ifs or buts. Since most people use high-speed burners already, that's what they will assume a "CD burner" refers to, and inflating the numbers is seriously misleading.
What would be legitimate would be a number like "156 CD burners, capable of producing 25000 counterfeit CDs a day".
I plead guilty. I have the equivalent of two CD burners.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
They just read the numbers and multiplied them.. 24 X 2 X .... = 421
What luck for rulers, that men do not think. - Adolph Hitler
honestly, it doesn't matter how many cd burners they have, what matters is how many cds they can produce. i dont get why they would try to make it seem like there were so many burners when they say exactly how many they estimate they could produce. If they have 1000 1x burners, would they say thats only really equivalent to about 50 "normal" burners? somehow i think not.
:)
btw, what is the burner equivalent of an actual pressing machine?
So if you fired the President of the RIAA, would that be like firing a 1000 stupid employees?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
1 high speed photocopier is the equivalent of 10 Gutenberg printing presses.
Photocopier owners to be investigated for fraud, and will be charged with illicitly copying 1 book every 2 minutes the machine has been in operation.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
too bad everyone here agrees with you already, and if they don't, their a %90 likely to be a troll. Good words, but put 'em somewhere were normal people will read them. Post that somewhere were people still undecided will see that downloading a few songs of win MX or KazaA won't cause the end of the world. Because, right now, public opinion on filesharing is starting to change on the non-tech sector of the public. The techies will never give in, but they don't need to. half of america doesn't know two things about computers, ever downloaded mp3's and generaly believes what the voice on the TV says, opinions and all. Popular opinion, like fads in music, can easily be manipulated, especially by a company that already OWNS the media industry.
EXAMPLE:
Surgio from system of a down was on k-rock(92.3 NYC), about 2 weeks ago. One of the DJs asked him what he though about their new album being leaked to the internet early. Surgio promply responded, "Well, there is nothing wrong with downloading mp3s from the internet..." This and comming on the heals of many other artists ralying to save napster last year( or was it two years, cannot remeber). This shows just how much the artists are hurting by this. Remeber for every album you buy at $18, the artist makes an average of 7 cents($0.07).
(PLEASE HOLD ALL COMMENTS ABOUT SOAD, THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE)
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
"this was an actualy piracy operation"
No, it was a counterfeiting operation. Counterfeiting is the reproduction of copy protected designs for illicit sale.
RIAA doesn't like to use the word counterfeiting, because the only type of thing worth counterfeiting is hard to obtain (official papers, Picassos, Bugattis) or something with a high cost:resale ratio (Rolex, Chanel, CD, DVD, banknotes).
Normally the high resale in the latter category is justified by the protected design because the cachet and market demand for the product is assisted by the artifically high price. Perfume manufacturers used this argument to prevent grey imports of their products into UK by supermarkets for sale at a lower than usual price.
Now, of course, there's no cachet to a CD/DVD sale. The product owner wants to sell as many as possible, and a high sales volume does not diminish the product's appeal to the next purchaser. In fact the self-advertisement due to popularity is a key sales tool, like for books. So RIAA avoids the word 'counterfeit' to avoid answering the question of why the products they represent of priced so high.
"the name" and HOW THEY WERE HARMED
Clearly that was already done. Your arguments that they were not are totally without merit.
For example, "we live in a world where everybody competes tooth and nail to take more money fom everyone they can. people take and lose money all the time. I hardly think it "harm" to have someone else taking money"
No nation on Earth would agree that it is within lawful behaviour to defraud, steal, rob, embezzle or otherwise obtain money by such means. Clearly this is occurring in this case, and as such is a crime whose victims are deprived of this money. By your specious argument it would be perfectly ok for me to hold up banks, run penny stock fraud operations, and engage any other such crime because all it involves is 'taking money'.
what evidence do you have that money gained from this copying was or will be used for crime?
Like, uh, where do you think these guys were getting the money to buy the blank CD's and burners they were using??? Obviously from the proceeds of a previous crime.
If the RIAA fudged the numbers on the count of burners seized, they could very well have fudged the numbers on the seized media count.
Perhaps the "35,000" CD's that were recovered were really 32,500 700MB CD's, but since they have a greater capacity, they "qualify" as being 35,000 650MB CD's.
I think a new, relative form of measurement is great (obviously 421 and 156 are the same thing when counting CD writers). I mean, the standard numbering systems don't work well because they are too precise and everybody splits hairs over the minutest details. If everybody wasn't so anal about numbers then we wouldn't have half the problems we have now with cooking the books. And students could get "mostly right" math answers which would mean better marks and therefore a better self-esteem. Yes, math needs to be tamed and the RIAA is definitely leading the way. I wonder if they take of their accounting with the same system.
Actually your wrong, your only 1/3 of a person. Unfortunatly you don't get a choice in what parts to keep...
I live in a giant bucket.
Try to actually read the article next time.
"Finished" == burned (presumably with pirated music/movies)
... commercial CD stamping equipment used in Southeast Asia to pirate CD's from remade master stampers. Those have to be a whole-lot-o RIAA CD equivalents.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Wow, imagine getting this together on a beowulf cluster!
This sig no verb.
Anyone with a clue knows that means the camera is interpolating the captured pixels up to a higher resolution from a lower-res CCD. Those people who don't bother to learn a little about what they're buying deserve what they get.
I love the little cds, theyre awsome. Now if only the little DVD-Rs were readily avalible, more data than a CD-R but half the size.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Woof!
(I know. It's bad. I'm sorry.)
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
So many agencies.... so few terrorists!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
the eric conspiracy wrote:
;)
> Any artist who would have recieved a cut from the
> sale of the legitmate product was a victim.
Who then is the greater criminal?
1) He that takes a handful of pennies from the hand of an artist (the royalties from a CD)?
Or
2) He that takes overwhelming share of the purchase price of a CD (often up to $18), takes the copyright via a work-for-hire law, and binds the artist to contracts whose term is based on albums which may never be accepted (effectively no limit) and during which the artist may not sing/work?
Preventing #1 is easy: reduce the price of CD to sane levels, and there would be no incentive to counterfeit them.
Preventing #2 is harder, and would require either massively restructuring the music industry, or creating a replacement. Right now the labels are in charge, and the artists are effectively their slaves. Give the artists back their copyrights, put them in charge, and turn the labels into a variety of services that could be run as small businesses. The same technology that the RIAA so greatly fears that "pirates" could use, could and should be used to liberate the artists.
Actually, I found the links to other Register articles at the bottom of this one to be far more interesting. Especially the one in which a RIAA rep is telling the Register to retract an article in nearly the same terms the bad guys used in the early (anti-media shark) Mothra movies. Looks like someone is just begging for a blue-eyed Category 5 hurricane to hit their HQ in beautiful downtown Newkirk City.
"Look at this story! I want a retraction!"
Nelson, Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
I am OUTRAGED by this garbage. Seriously, I am completely and utterly disgusted with the kind of trash that these organizations have done to our country, from both a political and technological perspective. It's as if they are trying to take away all of the consumer's rights so that in the future, the big multinational conglomerates that produce EVERYTHING we use will basically DICTATE to us what we can do with their products, when, where, how and why. Consider the old story, about a year ago, maybe, of these "smart" chips that would cause small household appliances, such as toasters, to permanently stop functioning if taken outside of a specified region. How convenient. Or how about those printer ink cartridges that refuse to work after their "expiration" date has passed? Or all the garbage "technologies" put into software, music and movies to make them refuse to work unless conditions are as dictated by the producer. What happened to the days when some jack ass's copyright actually EXPIRED after a REASONABLE length of time? Does an electrician who wired a light switch get royalties every time that light switch is flipped? Does a contractor who installs a door get royalties every time that door is opened or closed? Does your locksmith get to decide who you have the priveledge of inviting to your house? And must you pay your locksmith for that SERVICE? NO!!! That's why electricians, contractors, locksmiths, and EVERYBODY ELSE who makes tangible products must CONTINUOUSLY perform their job, or they will not have income. Is that so difficult? Do you hear any electricians complaining that they have too much work? Would it be a worldwide disaster if so-called alleged "content providers" (the people who produce the utter GARBAGE we call movies, music and software) had to continuously make new work to earn a living? So-called "piracy" is a fact of life in these profession, similar to the fact that an electrician's work lasts a good 20 years.
The RIAA is a piece of SHIT.
The MPAA is a piece of SHIT.
Microsoft is a piece of SHIT.
If the above three organizations were forced to close and all the people working for those organizations were on the street begging for beer money, the world would be a MUCH better place.
Look how stupid the RIAA is! Obviously, they really, genuinely believe every deliberately crafted word in every one of their press releases... It couldn't possibly be propaganda... No, I think it's safe to say that with all of their billions of dollars, they still can't hire anyone who actually understands the issues, so I'm going to mock them for their stupidity, and go download a bunch of illegal music to which fair use does not apply by any stretch of the imagination... But it's okay, because the RIAA is so stupid!
Quick, someone get the name and address of everyone who's ever worked for the RIAA and post it to Slashdot!
I only do half the time?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I think you just converted a bunch of people on Slashdot to IP-loving capitalists.
Is not the mistake. But the covering up and refusal to admit it.
It's one thing if they admitted they made a mistake and it was actually 156 drives. But they actually try to weasel it as being equivalent to 421 drives.
That gives you an insight on what sort of people are in control at the RIAA.
Ooo, and cars, don't forget cars - after all, it's possible to commit a crime with a car. Add baseball bats to your list too. And chainsaws. And axes. And duct tape. And knives. And pencils. And hammers. And piano wire. And cement. And syringes. And ...
Guns don't kill people any more than spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
The Register article seems to mock the Secret Service as being the outfit that only protects high-ranking officials. That is quite untrue. The primary mission of the USSS was originally to suppress counterfeiting operations, and only adopted the protection of the White House staff after the 1901 McKinley assassination. So while the USSS is most famous for protecting the President at all costs(tm), they still play major roles in uncovering counterfeiting rings (if selling The Two Towers "DVD" 1 month before the actual release of the movie isn't counterfeiting, I don't know what is). Sounds like the Brits need to do their homework (e.g. visit http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/index.shtml)
How do you know?
What would happen if IP laws did not exist is probably more like this...
Firstly, academic research would all but stop, because the only product it produces is information, and the value of that information is drastically reduced. Consequently the funding would rapidly dry up. The picture would probably be much the same in both universities and industry, for the same reasons.
As a direct result of lack of research, medical science would grind to a halt. One of the single biggest turnover markets in the world is medical research, but the reason is that doing that research costs a lot of money. If the people investing that money have no guarantee that they'll see a return on investment, they'll get out of the market. They may be greedy -- although for all the high prices they charge, they do spend a fortune developing the good stuff in the first place, and write off several more fortunes on all the ideas that don't work out first -- but they're not stupid.
Along similar lines, say goodbye to any hopes for faster, more efficient transport infrastructure any time in the near future. Car manufacturers are currently throwing staggering amounts of money into R&D for things like fuel cell cars. Potentially, they solve the environmental problems of automobiles once and for all, which I hope you'll agree is a goal worth aiming for, but without the knowledge that they'll be the only ones who can produce cars based on the tech they develop, at least for a while, they have no reason to invest in it only to see their competitors rip off the end results within months.
This same picture repeats itself all over the world. IP is not just about music, or software, though obviously both of those things are information-based and have the same driving economics behind them. Personally, for all we knock modern software, I'm quite glad we've seen the improvements we have over the last fifty years. And where did those improvements come from? R&D, of course.
Now, if the cost of maintaining the incentives to research and develop is having intellectual property, and convincing a load of idealistic script kiddies that they can't have everything for free just because they want it, then as far as I'm concerned, so be it. You don't go driving through the streets like a maniac just because your car can do 90, because there are serious consequences, and people understand that. The irresponsible few who do it anyway are, rightly, treated as criminals and dealt with accordingly. It's about time the current teen/20something generation understood that there will be consequences to their wholesale ripping of music and software as well, and accepted the corresponding moral responsibility to work inside the rules.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Marijuana... that's an asset forfeiture.
Pirated CDs... that's an asset forfeiture.
Stolen cable... that's an asset forfeiture.
Immigration violation... that's an asset forfeiture.
Helping the terrorists... that's DEFINITELY an asset forfeiture.
Isn't this shit what we fought England over, 225 years ago? My christ, the terrorists HAVE won.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
If I remember my capitalism theory, all that demand should start driving supply real soon now.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
On which 50 + 1 - 1 = 49 (until it was obfuscated).
And how many new Slashdot stories were there last month? Sorry, I meant "the equivelant of" new stories, once you've subtracted the duplicates.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If you use your Ferrari to rob a bank, then the RIAA will claim that you actually robbed 4 banks.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
There's no reason that an elite Presidential Protection group in "Homeland Security" could be formed. They could at least have better coordination and intelligence with the other homeland security branches.
Each of the internal and external security branches could have a special group designed for investigating the other when needed.
Amsuing how the register turns a legitimate copyright bust into anti-RIAA diatribe. Thank you for ever present spin on copyright issues. The fact that this crap made slashdot shows that slashdot moderators are just as guilty.
Vote for Pedro
as the AC replied to your comment (here), what you coined "actualy piracy [sic]" is more appropriately called "counterfeiting."
i found offense in what this slashdot article did; if one were to look at the RIIA story really said, you would see that that statistic was peripheral. more important was the nature of these illicit products: they were fraudulent. according to the RIAA, "officials also seized eight Rimage Imprinters, one high-end color copier valued at $75,000, and other equipment and raw materials used in the manufacturing process."
NOBODY HERE HAS MENTIONED THE REAL PROBLEM HERE!
the problem with this article is twofold:
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Being skeptical is often a good thing. I didn't know exactly what it was the first time that I encountered it, but it was obvious that there was probably a difference between "3 Megapixels" and "3 Megapixels Effective" so I made the effort to find out just what it was.
Ha!
By their logic, people would have used 421 burners to copy 350 CDs. That's less than 1 CD per burner.
1) Some burners are faster than others and thus count as multiple burners. (156 burners == 421 burners)
2) For every good track, there are probably 100 bad tracks, so 35,000 CD-Rs is really the equivalent of 350 CDs.
Um.
When I see, "50 CDRs for $20" at Best Buy, with a, "Get $15 back!" sticker on the package, it makes me wonder where the hell you are.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers