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How To Stop Piracy: Raid CD-R Moguls
An anonymous reader writes "In what appears to be a not-so-legal move, Mexico's equivalent of the RIAA used federal police to raid the installations of Grupo Mekong, responsible for 200 of the 400 million virgin CDs imported each year, accusing them to be "capos" of the Piracy bussiness in Mexico.
What is the rationale? Record companies buy only 20% of Mekong merchandise, so the other 80% must be going to pirates! Yeah, Never mind computer users ,independent labels or other legal uses.
You can see the article here but what amazes me is the behaviour! What will the next step be? Raid the truck companies who deliver the CDs? "
A large percentage of their inventory is used for satellite piracy! Com'mon RIAA, can't you help out the poor satellite companies!
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
English translation
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I'd like to see 'em raid the trucks The Fast and the Furious-style. Imagine Hilary Rosen driving one of those Civics and cursing in Spanish at the truck driver. Imagine Jack Valenti hanging from the side of the truck getting his arm cut off while his lobbyist pals in some more black Civics try to save him.
Or...
"I'd like to live, just long enough, to see them put your head on a pike as a reminder to the next ten generations that some boy band music comes at too high a price. I'd like to look up into your lifeless eyes, and wave, like this..."
i am a soviet space shuttle
They are giving the truck manufacturers all the ammunition they need to make trucks.
Trucks give these so-called truck companies the very tools needed to have a truck company, which provides a perfect cocktail for the CD-R retailers to get their greedy, dishonest hands on the product.
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
Yeah, Never mind computer users ,independent labels or other legal uses.
It looks more like these are CD's that have to be pressed, not CDR's useable by computer users.
Don't these CD's have to be pressed in a factory?
Anyway, it's inexcuseable, but probably something the RIAA would do too if they could get away with it.
for those slashdotters who actually read the articles
;-)
So YOU'RE the one!
What, you expect special treatment?
They say to not know that they make other industries with the virgin discs that sell to them
Notice the dateline is "City of Mexico." I imagine President Bush lives in the "House of White."
How long before we have an international incident because someone relied on these freebie translators? Imagine the U.S. using google to save time going through all those docs from Saddam Hussein ("My God! He's stockpiled 36,000 sticks of weaponized rancid butter!").
*
I searched for "Mekong Group" (kind of a disturbing name to Americans in light of Vietnam fighting there: "The Mekong group comprises Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and China's Yunnan province, all of which border the Mekong River.") No luck.
However, from reading the article in Spanish (and I don't speak Spanish) I get the impression that the actual allegation is that the Group knowingly sold millions of discs "off the books" and can't account for them in their invoicing. If true, the action doesn't sound so unreasonable, as it suggests they knew they were doing something fishy. "Suggests" -- who knows? But this doesn't sound like a suspicionless search, and not at all Orwellian.
I speak and read spanish rather fluently,
these were CD-R's
The government agency APDIF (the association protecting the intellectual property of musical recordings) raided this company,
the company says its illegal because they aren't doing anything wrong, the APDIF is using statistics similar to those used by the RIAA to substanciate their claims that Mekong is aiding the piracy industry ( leaving out all legal uses of CD-R's including data, and other legal uses), Mekong suspects that the APDIF has bribed government officials, or is in some other way in bed with them, and they are specifically attacking Mekong, the article states that there are at least 50 other CD-R importers none of which have been hassled at all, while Mekong has been interferred with 10 times in the last year.
I'm Mexican and while I really feel embarrased this kind of idiocy happens in my country, looking closer it happened because the authorities and legal system are extremely broken and stupid when it comes to understanding the nature of the crime that is being pursued in regards to piracy, and the record companies can abuse the situation.
/.ter should know, piracy IS a crime, only it's not related to theft, but to copyright infringement. This definition is blurred specifically by the record companies in Mexico so to be able to prompt the Police to take care of things as they command.
Funny, but I think this is the same case in almost ANY country. So, while it happened in Mexico because the system could be abused pretty easily, watch out for the same thing happening in other countries soon enough.
Before this happened, I had even seen commercials stating in a pretty explicit way some phrases equivalent to: "Piracy is theft". This shows it's not only a fault in our system, but because the record companies have the money and power to push their lame propaganda, laws and the perception of the crime can be shaped fairly easily by pulling the right strings.
As every educated
You see, there is a really strong music industry in Mexico, where we have literally hundreds of "artists" that sell their overrated, overpriced crap all over the continent, and predictably, this industry is controlled by the same RIAA companies we love to hate.
In fact, these events should come as no surprise, because in countries like mine, most people can't afford to pay the equivalent to US$15 for a single disk, priced as if it were an imported item, when it could be cheaper because the price markups don't need to be as high as in other countries, where everything from labor to land costs are more expensive. People DO buy and distribute bootlegs, there ARE criminals around here, but this is not the way to handle the situation. This is just a test of RIAA's power.
Companies that want to protect their profit margins and revenue sources at the expense of the user... Where do you see this happening next?
Mark my words, this is going to happen in another country and at a much bigger scale, sooner or later.
Now, who are the real "capos"?
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
Is it possible for the company who had its CDRs ripped off to sue the Mexican equivalent of RIAA into oblivion, i.e. to ... outbid the recording industry for justice?
Tech Public Policy stuff
I know in Canada, for example, that all CD-Rs are taxed, and part of the money goes to the recording companies. If a Canadian importer was only sending 20% of the CDs that they imported to stores that collected the tax, they would probably be doing something illegal there, so perhaps there is a similar situation in Mexico... i.e. only 20% of the CD-Rs that are sold have the record-tax collected with the sale. If that was the case, then there would certainly be a legal reason to go after these people, if not a moral one.
(btw, It probably goes without saying, but I think these kinds of laws are ridiculous. In the US taxes are collected on blank tapes, and special CD-Rs that special music-only CD burners can record onto)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Is that like S/PDIF?
Sorry, that was a really lame joke.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I mean, come on, do you realize that fully 20% of the oxygen that trees produce goes to criminals, bums, drug dealers, and pirates? Coincidence? I think not! The trees must be jailed!
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
How large has the CD industry become over the past few years? I'd guess it's already larger than the music industry. Just take a look at your local electronics store - I know several that have more shelf space devoted to CD readers, writers, blanks and other equipment than to music CDs.
So in essence, this is just one industry association trying to do as much damage on another industry as they can. Because they know that sooner or later, it'll all come down to "what is better for the economy" or "who has the larger bottom line".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
BabelFish, and other systems based off of the SysTran system use a literal translation algorithm, also called Word-for-Word translation. Thus, it doesn't search for phrases or sentence structure; it's not uncommon to see "su" (the Spanish equivalent of his/her/its) simply translated as "his". And as Spanish would have it, "Ciudad de Mexico" literally translates to "City of Mexico". ("White House" is "Casa Blanca", by the way)
As for the Mekong group, with a quick search you'd find their website. Note that it's "Grupo Mekong".
News flash: Not everything is based off of English. Nor does everything get passed on to American sites.
Whether one is committing a crime or not, (one can even be 100% legit) cops in much of the world will not hesitate to hassle one if they think they can get 'don't hassle me' bribe money.
This is Mexico it happens all the time. Gez I know someone who was arrested & locked up for reporting the theft of her handbag, she paid a bribe & she was out of there. Only thing was she didn't know how things worked in the 3rd World because it took 2 days of her being locked up before she put 2 & 2 together (just because a cop wants a bribe doesn't mean they'l spell things out for you)
What a GREAT IDEA for law enforcement!! See, now they don't have to investigate murders any more, just go and arrest the manufacturers of the bullets! Now every murder can be solved in seconds! Piracy? Arrest the people who run the electric company! After all, they provide the power that runs the computers those pirates use! Or, even better, go and arrest the managers of the FOOD STORES. After all, if they didn't sell food to pirates and criminals, they'd starve to death! OH..and arresting the food managers will have an unexpected bonus...we'll starve terrorists to death at the same time! Does this sound ridiculous? Seems to me that it's exactly what's going on! See, many things can be used for both legal and illegal purposes. Banning them JUST BECAUSE the potential of illegal use exists is purley asanine, yet it's already happening now.....
(Let's hear it for the karma whores! WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!)
Ok, another translation by a person who kinda knows Spanish (I do fine in conversation) but I am bound to get a few things wrong where you need to know the culture. Those who know better -- please feel free to correct me. When I'm uncertain, I put the actual literally-translated Spanish word in parentheses after my guess at the best-fit (actual meaning) English word. Here goes nothing:
UEDO (Special Unit against Organized Crime) detains (roots?) head(?) pirates
They (the pirates?) say they don't know/don't care about the way that their blank disks are used.
The UEDO spent 90 days detaining (rooting?) Efrain and Rafael Solis Heredia, owners of the Mekong Group and considered by the music indistry the "heads" of record piracy, since they alone bring into Mexico about 200 of the 400 million blank disks that are imported each year.
Idelfonso, Solis Heredia, brother of those detained (rooted?), acting as proxy, announced yesterday that the next week he will denounce PGR and the Secretariat... for the "illegal" nature of a December 18th operation where the Solis brothers were detained and 7 million CDR disks were confiscated (secured?).
"This operation turned into a search, but they had no warrant, with these situations as our basis, we are performing a legal analysis to figure out what kind of charges (demands?) will be brought, in the next week we'll have it." (run-on sentence present in original Spanish, making it hard for me to figure out what he was really trying to say...)
"They (the PGR?) were requested to release them (the Solis brothers), but the PGR detained (rooted?) them so that they could start their investigations, from that comes our concern because in the style of earlier administrations (Governments?) they are trying to make up some nonexistent crime or plant something to make us guilty of something that was never found," said the lawyer.
The Solis brothers are (SIC-were?) detained during the previous investigation PGR/UEDO/397/02, since its business, which has branches in 4 parts of the country, sells blank disks to the legal record industry as well as to pirates.
According to the calculations of the APDIF (Association for the Protection of Recording/Music IP), the legitamate industry (i.e. the record industry) purchases 20 million disks per year, but that is only 10% of the 200 million that the Solis family imports and sells each year. For this reason, they are flagged as the principle instigators of piracy in Mexico.
Among the accusations he refuted (among the supposed irregularities denounced?), Ildefonso Solis noted that in the December 18th operation, among the 7 million disks confiscated were 2.8 million units that were taken for a second time, since they had already been returned since the merchandise was legal.
"60% of these disks were produced in Mexico, 20% were disks that had been seized the previous time, and 20% are disks for which we have the necessary invoices and papers, so we can't see any reason why they make these illegal seizures," he said.
In fact, Mekong's proxy (Idelfonso) presented copies of documents from the Tax Administration Service, in which is recorded the return of 2,852,523 blank CDR disks and 3 CPUs on August 27.
Solis said that it is not their problem that some of their customers are producers of unauthorized music, and accused the AMPROFON (Mexican Association of Producers of Records and Videos) and the APDIF (Association for the Protection of Record IP) of being behind the "defamations" and operations of the PGR.
"They claim that these disks can be used for illegal activities, which is something that doesn't really concern us -- we know what we are doing, but we don't know what other industries are doing."
"We know that behind them (PGR) is the AMPROFON componay, that they (AMPROFON) have turned (taken? I'm guessing the m should really be an rn, in which case "turned" is correct) them against us, as well as APDIF, because they feel it is illegal (they feel illegal?), but we only sell original blank materal, and we sell it to the industry, we don't understand the rationale behind these accusations and defamations against us," he claimed.
In addition, he asked the PGR for "talk, not repression," since he complained that the federal authorities have only acted against ("grabbed at it") the Mekong company and not against a single one of the 50 other companies -- including international companies -- that are involved with importing and selling CDR disks.
Between December 19th 2001 and December 18th 2002, there have been 10 operations and 10 visits to 10 branches and warehouses of this company that supposedly supplies half of the pirates in Mexico.
"We know that we are not the only ones, there are about 50 companies that are involved in importing disks, and among these 50 there are many international ones that have not been bothered and that are involved in the same activities as are we, I won't name names."
"We want the authorities to talk with us and we want to not have repression, the operations that are being made are totally illegal, we want there to be dialogue, that the authorities explain to us why they are doing these illegal actions," said Solis.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Ummm no...
Read this:
http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml
The levy is set to increase on Jan. 2003
CDRs - 53 cents / disc
Hard Drives on portable MP3 players - $ 21.00 / GB !!! 21 dollars!
They are also going to institute levys against removable and non-removable memory cards.
This is hardly 'a few cents per CD'
In Brazil, there's something similar to that, but the message is "piracy is a crime". Here, a new CD costs around US$7.50 to US$10.00, but an equivalent pirate CD costs around US$2.85 (at least where I live). These pirate CDs are usually pressed bootlegs, but not always. Considering a single CD costs (in average) 15% of minimum monthly wage in Brazil, I think it's safe to assume CDs are way overpriced here. Sad to see bootleggers AND record companies get rich taking advantage of this situation. And copy-protected CDs are cropping up here too. :(
My neighbor's
Well, that is your position anyway. If you look at the Audio Home Recording Act ("AHRA"), you'll see that there is an immunity to making some types of recordings. One cannot be prosecuted for making those types of recordings. However, the RIAA's position (as seen here) is that CD-R drives on computers are not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act:
All this may mean, however, is that, instead of looking at the Audio Home Recording Act to see if making a personal copy is legal, one would have to look at the traditional Fair Use factors. It is very arguable that the AHRA was originally intended to prevent perfect digital copies of CDs, and an MP3 is not a perfect digital copy. In fact, one may argue that distributing MP3s is a "noncommercial use," as those who place music on Kazaa are not seeking renumeration, so are thus within the spirit (though possibly not within the letter) of the AHRA.I've been a long time reader of /. and even sometimes dabble in to see the replies of people, being a Mexican my attention was caught by this article, and more so by the replies. I'll try and give some more insight and correct some things.
1)We can't say "It happened in Mexico" because there are three different places called Mexico, one is the country, another is the state and a third one is the city, so Ciudad de Mexico is quite right.
2)Raided makes me think of swat teams jumping in from windows totting guns and helicopters flying overhead etc...(yes its your dammed media that makes me think this) an "arraigo" is actually just house arrest you...arraigo dosnt translate to raid TYVM.
3)A "Orden de cateo" is pretty much a search warrant which the officials didn't have while they searched through Grupo Mekong's stuff. It wasn't just the PGR that was in on this FYI also.
4)Mekong is under this supposedly because most of what they sell they sell to people that use this CDRs to burn copies of original stuff and sell them, so this compares as if in the U.S. Wal-Mart is investigated for selling the guns that the deppressed teen used to blast the heads off his classmates (what can I say I'm still fascinated by that stuff).
5)Mekong can account for every last piece of their merchandise with the required paperwork, the Officials cant account even for a search warrant.
6)Mekong believes the AMPROFON and APDIF (yes pretty much the mexican RIAA) is behind this, the same way it is in other countries.
7)Yes alot of mexican cops are looking for a bribe, they have a shitty salary and they dont ask for much 20-50 pesos (2 to 5 dollars) and theyll leave ya be, but it ain't everywhere and lets not compare Mexico's Police Force with the U.S. we ain't the racists ones, so there.
8)We're not a third world country you .... were a developing 2nd world country.
9)I know I had more but I just forgot.
Puh-lease don't make like Mexico is a shitty country, every country is shitty and we can debate upon that any freakin day of the week, and twice on sunday.
Um, while James Russell (I think) did actually come up with the concept for what would become the CD in 1965, Sony and Philips didn't popularize the format till 1983. So, no CDs were kicked back in the 50's - 60's.
Also remember that even today, record contracts include at least a 10% "breakage" or "container: allowance off the worldwide gross prior to calculating how many rolls of pennies the artist will get, after recouping all expenses. What they do with that 10% (since CDs don't break in shipment like the shellac records for which the breakage allowance was instituted) is a mystery. Some labels actually skim 25% off the top. No need for CD kickbacks there.
Yep, 25%. You want to see just how egregious some record contracts are? The following is clipped from an actual label contract presented to the prospective band last week. All identifying brands and names have been removed:
ROYALTIES
Company shall accrue to Artist the following royalties for the sale by Company, its licensees or assigns, or long playing Albums derived from the Master Recordings against which all sums paid to Artist herein shall be recouped.
(a) With respect to records sold up at Company's or its distributor's "top line" price level in the United States, a royalty at the rate of ten percent (10%) computed on the (SRLP) list price less a 25% container deduction.
(b) With respect to each particular type of record sold in Canada and Japan (including records exported to third parties in Canada and for which Company is paid by such third parties), royalties shall accrue at Eighty Five percent (85%) the rate applicable under subparagraph 6(a).
(c) With respect to each particular type of record sold in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the European Economic Community (including records exported to third parties for such territories and for which Company is paid by such third parties), royalties shall accrue at Sixty Five percent (65%) the rate applicable under subparagraph 6(a).
(d) With respect to each particular type of record sold for any territory throughout world not specifically mentioned in subparagraph 6(a), 6(b) and 6(c) (including records exported to third parties in such territories and for which Company is paid by such third parties), royalties shall accrue at Fifty percent (50%) the rate applicable under subparagraph 6(a).
(e) With respect to records sold at Company's or its distributor's "mid line" price level through normal trade channels, royalties shall be at Seventy Five percent (75%) the rate set forth in subparagraph 6(a).
(f) With respect to records sold at Company's or its distributor's "budget line" price level through normal trade channels, royalties shall be at Fifty percent (50%) the rate set forth in subparagraph 6(a).
(g) Sales of any Singles, Extended Play Singles and recordings in the United States which are not long playing Albums shall be paid at the rate of Ten percent (10%) computed on the (SRLP) list price less container deductions and any taxes. Sales outside the United States shall be proportionally reduced according to the formula specified in 6(b), (c) and (d) above.
(h) With respect to the licensing of the Master Recordings to third parties, including but not limited to usage such as record clubs, compilation records and synchronization usage, royalties shall be at the rate of Fifty percent (50%) of the net amount of any such fees received by Company, its licensees or assigns.
(i) No royalties whatsoever shall be payable to Artist hereunder with respect to records (i) distributed to any person or entity primarily for purposes of promotion, (ii) sold as "scrap", "overstock" or "surplus", (iii) distributed as "free goods" (limited to no more than 20% or "bonus" records).
(I'm surprised there isn't a clause about shaking the artist by the ankles on a monthly basis to get his loose change.)
Beyond that, the more common kickback to organized crime in the music business in the 50's - 60's was cash applied to payola to help the "investments" of organized crime climb the charts.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
I'm a British software developer living in a small town on the Pacific coast two hundred miles north of Acapulco. A good weekly income here is 1000 Pesos (US$100), a professional with a college degreee might make 1500 Pesos (US$150) a week. The local Commerical Mexicana, a WalMart equivalent, charges roughly the same for CDs as in the US, so a single CD is at least 10% of gross weekly income.
Of course people don't buy their CDs from Commercial Mexicana, they buy them from the smaller music stores, whose stock is almost entirely CD-R-based, and who charge more like 30 Pesos.
When I first moved here I spent a couple of hours at a restaurant having my brain picked by Juan Carlos, a Mexican "Del-boy" (the dodgy-goods trading hero of "Only Fools and Horses"). He was interested in improving the hard drive capacity of his CD duplicating kit -- the time he had to spend each day ripping master CDs to the burner's hard drive was down-time for the burner, and so being able to hold a larger library of masters on the hard drive would reduce the number of rips he had to do each day to meet that day's orders.
I don't condone such blatant copyright infringement, but the fact is that the CD-R makers are selling to people who would not spend the equivalent on 'official' discs (when I first moved to the US CDs were half the price I'd been paying in the UK, so I probably tripled or quadrupled the number of CDs I bought, doubling the amount I spent.)
The ultimate solution for the record companies has two prongs. First, the per capita income of the target market can be raised, but that's out of their hands and is hard to do in an economy that is hampered by some degree of corruption and by import/export tariffs that are high (or worse, indeterminate -- importing goods into Mexico may be legal, but the process is very erratic, which makes it hard to establish a reliable supply-chain). Second, bring the unit price more in line with the disposable income of the target market.
NOPE a real patriot is both intelligent and a student of history, past and reasonably current. A real patriot is able to recognize patterns of deceit and apply them to current events. A real patriot learns from his own and other country's past actions and learns to not keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again. A real patriot can look at a scam, see it for a scam, recognize scams from the past, see where the junta has used scams in the past, and is brave and smart enough to say NO, NEVER AGAIN! A real patriot isn't hungup on political parties and rhetoric, a real patriot is not a member of some fanboy cult over some "leader" or "political party" and stays blind to their misdeeds in the past, a real patriot LOOKS at what individuals do as compared to what they say, and is able to figure out reality rather than have it dictated to them. A real patriot doesn't use the "nuhremberg defense" to excuse illegal actions. A real patriot has the courage to NOT follow illegal orders and to speak out when they see criminality in their ranks and in their superiors actions in the government.
The world has tried the lock step goose stepping methods, it doesn't work, it's heinous and criminal. Real patriots have the courage to actually follow their oaths, and not just BLINDLY follow orders. A real patriot will do these things, false patriots full of bravado and lacking intelligence will follow the old ways that lead to "sieg heil" actions.
Learn from history or be destined to repeat it, you have a binary choice there.
Oh, yes. One of these days we're going to cross the Rio Grande and kick your capitalist butts.
We have elite teams of car thiefs that can take the threads and wheels off of a tank in less time than it takes to start the engine, and leave it standing on four cinder blocks. Even if the tank happens to be moving.
We have crack groups of squatters that can invade and occupy any size territory in less time than it takes you to scream "cucaracha".
Our drug dealers have more firepower than the 3rd Marine Division. And they dress better, too.
The only problem right now are our nuclear weapons, since they require a match to activate. But we're working on more advanced technology - Zippo lighters.
We're going to take back California, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico. And then we'll march up to Chicago to link up with our 2 million-strong sleeper cell there.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
We have elite teams of car thiefs that can take the threads and wheels off of a tank in less time than it takes to start the engine, and leave it standing on four cinder blocks. Even if the tank happens to be moving.
Heh. I've always wanted to see the "missing scenes" from Independence Day where a big mothership hovers over Mexico City, and goes down under millions of beggars, window-cleaners, juggler kids and fire-eaters. And gets robbed of everything that looks shiny or valuable enough, to be sold later in Tepito.
That is, if said mothership actually finds Mexico City under all that smog...
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.