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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."
full article without the annoying request for info popup thing:
10 arrested in piracy raid at swap meets
CDs and DVDs - Police seize more than 50,000 items worth about $758,000
Sunday, June 10, 2007
HOLLY DANKS
The Oregonian
HILLSBORO -- Police closed down two popular swap meets Saturday and arrested 10 people on accusations of selling counterfeit CDs and DVDs in what one recording industry official called Oregon's biggest piracy raid.
Sgt. Paul Wandell, Beaverton police spokesman, said officers seized more than 50,000 items worth about $758,000. Most of the items were fake music CDs and movie DVDs, along with knockoff designer purses, sunglasses and clothing, and counterfeit brand-name toys, Wandell said.
Marcus Cohen, anti-piracy counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America, called the number of items seized at the M&M Swap Meet and Millennium Flea Market "overwhelming."
Besides being "the largest piracy raid in Oregon to date," Cohen said, Saturday's crackdown also was one of the largest operations in the country.
Wandell said Beaverton police got a tip about counterfeit items being sold at a Beaverton market in December, and the investigation led them to the Hillsboro flea markets.
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.
About 20 recording and movie industry investigators came from California to help police identify counterfeit items.
"We were surprised about the size and sophistication," Cohen said, standing in a steady drizzle Saturday afternoon at the chain-link fence that surrounds M&M. "It's something we are going to be paying very close attention to, finding who has a replication machine that shouldn't."
The names of those arrested and the charges were not immediately available. The owners of the swap meets were not arrested, but Lt. Michael Rouches, Hillsboro police spokesman, said he would ask city officials to look into revoking the owners' business license if they knew what was going on.
The flea markets are held every weekend.
Hayde Miranda, one of the M&M owners, said she didn't know any of the vendors were selling anything illegally. "It's unfortunate that some of our vendors, who are independent business owners, were selling things that were fake. We rent to them, but we have nothing to do with what they sell."
Miranda said M&M would be open today.
When dozens of police officers arrived about 12:30 p.m. Saturday to serve a search warrant at M&M, there were about 200 customers wandering booths that sell food, clothing, jewelry, trinkets, car parts, music and movies. While police blocked the entrance, a steady stream of drivers and pedestrians approached the gate at 346 S.W. Walnut St., hoping to get in and wondering what was happening.
"There were some vendors who ran and left their money behind, and some grabbed their money and booked," Wandell said. "But there were no problems, and it was very orderly."
Customers and vendors leaving throughout the afternoon as police packed up seized merchandise said they were not bothered by the raid. "The police were just doing their jobs," said a car parts vendor who didn't want to give his name. The vendors who were arrested "knew what they were doing was illegal," he said.
Wandell said customers who purchased counterfeit items would not be targeted because it would be hard to prove they knew the merchandise was fake. The CDs seized Saturday were selling for about $4.50 each and the DVDs for between $4 and $12, he said.
Fake CDs and DVDs usually have poorly printed labels, loose shrink-wrap or a different kind of covering, Wandell said. Some of the movies seized Saturday included "Shrek the Third" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," which are still in theaters and haven't been released on DVD yet.
Cohen sai
~/.sig: No such file or directory
Last I remember, impersonating law enforcement was illegal.
Is it too optimistic to hope they'll get busted for it someday?
Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be evil.
As a result, eight suspects were arrested and charged. Seized in total as a result of the enforcement actions were a total of 20,800 counterfeit CD-Rs, 71,428 counterfeit movie DVDs
The enforcement resulted in one arrest and the seizure of 13,000 counterfeit / pirated CD-Rs and 6,505 counterfeit movie DVDs. An additional search on 8th Avenue resulted in five additional arrests and the seizure of 33,600 counterfeit CD-Rs and 19,104 counterfeit movie DVDs.
Yup, it's still Fair Use. I mean everybody's been paid already right? Why should I have to spend more then I want to get something. I should only have to pay what I want to pay right? It doesn't matter how much they spent to make it right? Since they're an evil movie studio.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
This is as it should be. Massive copyright violations like this are illegal, immoral, and unethical. Good job cops!
It's criminals like this who provide justifications for DRM and other annoyance. Everyone who objects to DRM and copy protection should be applauding the cops for investigating the swap meets, and the RIAA for merely informing the local police of the copyright violators, rather than engaging in their own strong-arm tactics.
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 mean, piracy is a crime isn't it? What's wrong with using real cops to bust people pirating stuff?
Unless people here actually condone piracy, which would be unthinkable for such a law and order crowd.
Why SHOULDN'T police officers be involved in a criminal copyright infringement raid? Selling bootleg CDs is WAY illegal.
"Sgt. Paul Wandell, Beaverton police spokesman, said officers seized more than 50,000 items worth about $758,000"
:)
In other words, $15 per item for knock off and counterfeit items, including CDs and DVDs with allegedly unauthorized copyrighted material... Bull. I say alleged because I'm guessing that there were plenty of hip hop mixtapes that are technically illegal but in reality supported by the marketing arms of various record companies, stuff that would never sell for more than a few bucks each. Or maybe illegally imported (but not illegal to own or sell in, say, China) DVDs... Let's face it, the movie studios have certainly perverted justice and the law in order to sell their stuff for $20 a disc in Wal-Mart, so I'm not crying a river for them. It's certainly not a price anyone would pay in a real free market.
Then there's purses, handbags, stereo equipment, all knock-offs... The assumption behind that $758,000 figure is that people would pay so many thousands of dollars for a Gucci bag, whatever that is, and selling a $20 knock off will hurt sales on behalf of Gucci.
Let's revise the statement above.... 50,000 items of merchandise at a value of, say $150,000 in market value might be more realistic. I can't see anyone sticking their neck out to sell that many items at a flea market for less than that.
You are so wrong, it's unbelievable. How does painfully wrong information get modded up like this?
"We were surprised about the size and sophistication," Marcus Cohen (anti-piracy counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America) said, standing in a steady drizzle Saturday afternoon at the chain-link fence that surrounds M&M. "It's something we are going to be paying very close attention to, finding who has a replication machine that shouldn't."
Wait.... There are people how have replication machines that shouldn't? Is there a law against this? Only thy member of thouest recording industries shalt have duplicator machines?
Go jump in a lake, Mr. Cohen. Same goes to the rest of the RIAA.
This story is actually about them using REAL local cops (the kind who should be busting drug dealers and burglars) to do their dirty work, not rentacops.
I'm pretty sure that copyright infringement to the tune of $700k is criminal in the US. I don't know where the boundary is, but after a certain dollar amount, it becomes a criminal matter.
You seem to be grossly misinformed. While copyright infringement done without the intent to make a profit is indeed a civil matter, copyright infringement for the purpose of making a profit is very much illegal.
Speaking as someone who thinks the DMCA is insane, despises the way the RIAA treats its artists and then calls itself the defender of musicians everywhere, thinks that copyright needs reasonable term limits, has the current AACS key in his MSN Messenger tag-line, and checks Beckerman's blog regularly in the hope of good news, I support this action.
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
On the first hand we have people paid to basically impersonate police which most can agree is pretty bad, if not illegal (IMHO).
In the second case we have police raiding a flea market which was selling counterfeit goods, which I think most of you should realize is perfectly acceptable. If some jerk off is making money of copyright infringement, I hope they're taken to the ringer. At the -very- least their goods should be confiscated.
Bye!
The threshold for federal prosecution for copyright infringement is $2500. It is well within anyone's rights to ask the police to close down a million-dollar market in counterfeit goods. USDOJ Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section
This is exactly what they SHOULD be doing; getting the the people that rip off the Artist's FOR A PROFIT.
They should focus more on operations like this and less on filesharers.
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
Regardless of your attitude towards people who download copies of music without the copyright holders permission, I don't know of too many people here who would argue that its OK to SELL copies of music without the copyright holders permission.
This is where the RIAA should be focusing their time.
Selling pirated CDs and DVDs for personal profit is illegal and should be. I have no problem with the police assisting in taking out large distributors of this illegal media. The RIAA has no business pretending to be police. They are not civil servents and will not be acting in the best interest of the general public. At least the police are supposed to be working for the greater good.
Aside from the negative effects this could have on legal retailers, distributors, and artists, consumers could easily be fooled into thinking these items were legitimate copies. Some people do actually watch those extra features.
All that being said, I still think the RIAA is despicable and their attack on online media distribution is patently absurd and abusive. They need to work with the consumers instead of against them and realize that their model is outdated and irrelevant in the modern world.
Forecast for tomorrow: A few sprinklings of genius with a chance of DOOM!
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.
"A tip-off on fake CDs is that they will have 20 to 24 tracks each, instead of 12 or 14," says Marcus Cohen anti-piracy counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America.
Yes, sir, and beware of one-pound cans of coffee that contain sixteen ounces instead of thirteen, sleazy operators that will sell you a four by four by eight foot "cord" of wood, and call the cops if your bag of a dozen bagels turns out to contain thirteen.
Short measure, your infallible sign of genuine U. S. music industry product.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Wait, let me get this right. People are outraged that the RIAA used the local police department to seize unauthorized and unlicensed duplicates of their copyrighted works which were being sold for profit?
That's an actual felony in the United States, not the civil matter that small-scale P2P usage is.
Of course the police would be involved. I'm only surprised it was the local cops, not the U.S. Marshall's office or some similar Agency.
I don't know where the boundary is, but after a certain dollar amount, it becomes a criminal matter.
If the copyrighted works have at least $1000 retail value, it is criminal infringement.
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).
I'm just going to add to the chorus here:
Selling counterfeit goods in a mass market is a real felony violation called infringement for personal gain. It carried a jail sentence decades before the DMCA ruined copyright law. This is exactly the kind of crime that needs to be busted up by the cops, and I don't care that the RIAA was the one who tipped them off.
Way to go RIAA. Keep doing your job to protect your members' interests.
The rent-a-cop raids are atrocious, but they have nothing to do with a sensible raid seizing "50,000 items worth about $758,000." That kind of infringement is wrong. I hope the people who ran the market enjoy their cell.
--
Toro
Yes, yes Bad Guys doing bad things are arrested, so what could be wrong with that?
The outrage could be inspired by a couple of reasons:
1. the privatization of law enforcement. There is an entire private structure dedicated to law enforcement in the U.S. (private prisons, arbitration, lawyers) This is a case where the line between private and public has blurred.
2. Outrageous excess. A couple of mega-corporations make enough money to hire their own law enforcement. I haven't even discussed their history of anti-trust, suspiciously monopolistic control of the distribution of entertainment, and a variety of other criminal acts already prosecuted.
3. Right of First Sale? Right of non-infringing use? These are very important legal concepts that the media conglomerates want to sweep away. They discourage these uses by prosecuting anyone from a Grandmother to some idiots selling counterfeits.
It's really very easy when you cast every issue in such black-and-white terms. You know exactly who the bad guy is. That must be comforting but it's misguided faith in an organization that history shows harm everyone.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The counterfeit $20 bill in your wallet is worthless - but try to pass it off at face value or sell the print run to an undercover cop at a discount and you will be doing hard time.
Cops, like judges and juries, do not "Think Geek."
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!
How do you know that it's not Creative Commons or public domain material? One of these cases was tipped off by an angry girlfriend.
Because the vast majority of commercial music that can be reasonably counterfeited is not CC or PD. I said "reasonable to presume", not "certain".
Democracies are supposed to work that way.
Yes, so then make your argument "This shouldn't be illegal", not "This isn't illegal, so the police shouldn't be arresting people for it...oh wait, it is, but it shouldn't be."
retracted.
I'm glad the RIAA is making efforts to stop the "pirates".
Personally, those jackasses at the swapmeet make it dangerous to download music the way it was intended.
They're using their grammar skills there.
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!
Isn't the kind of situation where the RIAA send their own militia to "assist" in raids like these a dangerous conflict of interest? If there are enough of these goose-stepping RIAA gestappo guards running around during the raid, misdirecting the actual law enforcement officers around them, what would prevent any additional RIAA guys from walking in during the chaos to plant evidence (like the duplication machine they mention), ensuring they can detain at least one person to make an example of before the public?
It's almost like giving the ok to a rape victim's family to participate in the bust of the suspect and trusting that none of them would throttle the guy before the police got to him.
8==8 Bones 8==8
...you never lose a child due to a speeding driver. But if you do, perhaps you'll realize that what you think their priorities should be may not be what they realize priorities should be. It's all good and well to say "yeah, I was speeding, but I wasn't hurting anyone!" - but that sort of logic just means that you feel a ticket is only valid if the person did hurt somebody; obviously, it's a little late for a ticket then.
Put differently.. if speeders, drunk drivers, people running red lights, etc. etc. would just quit doing that, maybe cops wouldn't have to worry about them and put more manhours into those other cases.
The above not related to the MPAA/RIAA bit which this story is really about, so.. on-topic: good on them. It's a crime to sell counterfeit goods. Wake me when law goes into a direction where they can use a cop squad to bust somebody for downloading songs/movies only, and I'll actively oppose it. Those who want to make money off their downloads.. tough shitski if you get caught.
>Huh? Ever heard of inflation?
But I think what the GP is refering to is that even with inflation, the $20 bill will ALWAYS purchase $20 's worth of goods. In the case of a CD containing music, when it is first released, and assuming it is someone currently popular, it may sell for £15+ (in the UK). Give it 6 months or more and you will likely find it selling for £10, and another six months and it might in the Woolworths bargain bin for £5 or less!
>>It's rather assinine to attempt to conflate counterfeiting of ANY consumer product and money.
>Why? Money isn't real either - you can't walk into a Federal Reserve Bank, for example, and redeem it... so, by definition it has no inherent value, only that which we ascribe to it.
It certainly used to be the case that bank notes would state "I promise to pay the bearer on demand ...", and this used to refer to gold (maybe that was just in the UK?).
The idea was that cash would only be printed to cover the value of the gold reserves. I believe this is no longer the case after a "run on Gold" starting in the '60s ... from the article ...
On August 15 (1971), with only $2.23 in gold available to redeem every $100 of U.S. paper promises, President Nixon declared international bankruptcy by closing the gold window. After that Sunday, as former Congressman Ron Paul and Lewis Lehrman have explained: "There were now absolutely no checks on the ability of the United States to inflate." And inflate the Fed has. By all measures, the money supply has increased by 400% since 1971.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
A classic Slashdot tactic is to accuse someone you disagree with of "trolling." I am not trolling. I'm just stating the truth about piracy, which has been spun over the years into some goofy moral crusade against copyright instead of being describe as what it actually is--selfish people scrambling to get stuff for free before they get caught. It's an entitlement culture.
What on Earth does this have to do with the argument? Obviously if an album isn't good, it won't sell. I'm not even sure what you think you're responding to with this statement because it has nothing to do with piracy. What someone does have a right to is compensation for their work, so if you take their work, you have to pay them for it. Otherwise, it's slavery.
In other words, you don't have a god-given right to their music.
If your ideas of freedom to use or copy it extend to distributing it over P2P networks, then you are infringing on their freedoms and rights.
Ah, and here we go. I knew somebody would use this classic tactic--change the debate from the morality of making sure an artist doesn't get paid to a history lesson on copyright and how it's "antiquated" or "obsolete" or "dead." Which, of course, isn't true since the GPL relies on copyright. It also has nothing to do with the topic of the discussion--the immorality of making sure an artist doesn't get paid when you take their work.
What does the time it takes to listen to something have to do with anything?! Does that mean fine wine should be worth 25 cents because I can drink it really fast? Products are priced based on the value assigned to them by market demand, not by their production costs or consumption duration. You're just using more distraction tactics to make sure people aren't discussing the artists. We've gone from scapegoating the RIAA to scapegoating copyright. You pirates are deathly afraid of discussing the human beings you're ripping off because it paints your movement in a bad light--a light you've worked very hard to avoid by blaming the RIAA as much as you possibly could.
Wow. Just wow. "It would be nice if artists got paid." At least you admit that you're okay having artistic slaves putting out work with no compensation so that you selfish pirates can enjoy it for free, as if you have some right to it.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Violent crimes are happening and increasing everyday... My taxes pay for these cops salaries. These cops should be at least fired and lost of pension.
Yeah. How dare they enforce a law THAT'S ON THE BOOKS which makes it a CRIME to profit from sales of counterfeit materials? What assholes! Next thing you know they'll be hunting down murder suspects!
You're a fucking moron.