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Piracy Setup Discovered in WV Capitol Building
arakis writes "Someone in West Virginia has apparently spent tens of thousands in state funds to acquire computers and video gear to copy movies and music. From the article: 'Ferguson confirmed Tuesday that his staff found the makeshift audio-video studio amid his widening probe into spending and other abuses at the state General Services Division.' Looks like some employees are getting the axe for everything from purchasing abuse to time fraud."
14GB of MP3s? I'd bet that one in three Slashdotters has at least that much. Anyone know what the "crack the headers" bit refers to for CDs?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
This suffice it to say reinforces the image of public sector workers abusing their state privaliges. I remember an interview with Wanda Sykes where she talked about her other job at her job while working at the state. I am a very strong supporter of teh privitization of many Government agencies. I'm sick and tired of seeing my tax dollars being wasted by over payed gum chewing counter people who have no clue.
Waste, fraud, corruption -- they don't always happen in lump sums. So admittedly, we can't expect every find (nor very many of them) to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But considering how much it probably cost them to just run the audit, and compared to the general budget, I'd have to guess this wasn't that great of a find (in terms of ROI and/or % originally wasted.) Yes, it's naughty, yes, it's great to find it ... but ... just considering I've watched local government workers use grants for bio-terrorism to purchase themselves PDA's and laptops because they wanted them (not really bothering to justify the purchases) ... or how often they just sit up there and play games and rip music in the sheriff's department (they're bored!) ... *sigh* ... or the time wasted by employees reading/writing slashdot while at work ... $88k? bah.
I once met a group of government IT workers who, by applying the union rules, were able to stretch their hours considerably. It had something to do with the fact that the minimum claimable overtime period was 4 hours, but they were permitted to claim overtime even if they only worked 15 minutes. So by staying 15 minutes past the end of the day, they were able (were required to, in fact) to claim an additional 4 hours of overtime.
This group was actually working hard, and doing legitimate 12 hour days, but by doing strategic 15 minute increments they were all able to charge 24 hours a day. This lasted for about a 2 week period.
They appeared to be quite proud of themselves.
a tower with dvd decryptor and a couple hundred gigs of avis and mp3's is now a vast piracy setup. that's funny.
You've never actually been on a drive through West Virginia, have you? Mind you, it's beautiful (the part that isn't up on blocks). For a state that's got a lot of territory just a short drive from the nation's capital, it's a funny mix of demographics. But yes, a rig set up (however modestly) to crank out physical copies of pirated media probably is a big deal to a lot of the locals.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
/. should know better than to use the word "piracy". It is a demonisation term.
The Clawson family who lives in that area have brothers and sisters who were born in Pennsyvania, Virginia, and West Virginia and all were born in the same house.
The state lines just kept shifting for a time back then so although the house did not move the residing state at the time did. I imagine it was kind of a tricky situation keeping track of those changes come census time with a house full of kids being born in different states from each other and their parents.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Lets not forget the installation of a T3 line at the Dean's home that CWRU had to pay for... or so rumor would have it.
And the license bureaus are a model of business efficiency? They're not. Government contractors? Known for fleecing the government whenever possible. As long as they're only semi-private and therefore not open-market profit-driven, they're going to be like that. It's the profit drive that makes business efficient and tends to weed out corruption and waste. Not all of it, even then, but yes, it does better than government. It can't do that if there's no money in doing what they're doing.