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North Korea's High-Tech Counterfeit $100 Bills
ESRB writes "North Korea is apparently able to produce high-quality counterfeits of U.S. dollars — specifically $100 and $50 bills. It's suspected that they possess similar printing technologies as the U.S. and buy ink from the same Swedish firm. 'Since the superdollars were first detected about a decade ago, the regime has been pocketing an estimated $15 to $25 million a year from them. (Other estimates are much higher — up to several hundred million dollars' worth.)' The article also advocates a move to all-digital payment/transfers by pointing out both forms are only representations of value and noting it would cripple criminal operations such as drug cartels, human traffickers, and so forth."
Don't you copy it Kim.
It's the only way to prevent counterfeit money.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
advocates a move to all-digital payment/transfers by pointing out both forms are only representations of value
Sure, we should plug the paper hole, but who here believes that wire transfers are never faked?
We all know US Dollars are effectively worthless anyway. :)
If only the U.S.A and other countries would pay their debt to them, I don't think they would need print those dollar bills lol.
"The article also advocates a move to all-digital payment/transfers by pointing out both forms are only representations of value and noting it would cripple criminal operations such as drug cartels, human traffickers, and so forth."
I would rather live in a world where I can carry cash and buy things without some asshole profiteer figuring out how many companies they can sell me out to behind my back.
The 2009 attempt to raise funds by devaluing its already pathetic currency revealed not only the country's fiscal desperation, but also the abuse Dear Leader was willing to inflict on his people. The won was devalued by 100 percent, which meant 1,000 won suddenly had the purchasing power of 10 won.
It appears they got the 100 to 1 ratio correct but I don't see how this is a "devaluation by 100 percent." Such ambiguous language would normally lead me to believe that a devaluation by 100 percent means everything is completely worthless (with zero percent value left). Wouldn't the correct devaluation percentage be 99 percent? I guess I would have preferred the fraction or ratio comparison instead if that is indeed how listing devaluation by percentage works in economics. Perhaps they could use better phrasing like "reduced purchasing power of all your money to one hundredth of its original worth overnight." Furthermore, how would you not riot over your government doing something like that to you?
My work here is dung.
If we make US all digital, they'll just switch to the Euro.
Using the Freedom of Speech while I still have it.
It would also do wonders for illegal immigration as there would no longer be any money paid under the table.
MUST go into a bank. Hello paper trail.
The IRS would also love it as it would prove difficult to hide any income via cash payments.
The ink is made by a Swiss, not a Swedish company. What the hell is it with Americans that they confuse these all the time.
The real reason to go all digital for money is because it makes it much easier for the government to control what you can and cannot buy. It also makes it easier for the government to control who can and cannot go into business.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Iran is the only country the USA has ever given a printing press.
The US Federal Reserve has been producing counterfeit bills since its inception.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Electronic payment records are already being recorded and data-mined by corporations for fun and profit. If every payment is electronic, every payment is traceable and every thing you ever pay for will be recorded, compiled and cross referenced. I really don't trust corporations or even my government that much.
Just like copying movies and music: NK haven't stolen anything. The US still has all the dollars it ever has. It isn't like stealing a car where that deprives the original owner of the car. It's more like *duplicating* the car while the original owner still has it.
So it's OK, according to Slashdot.
Why does cash still exist in widespread usage? It clears at par.
If someone wants to pay you $10, and they give you cash or a check, you get $10. If they want to pay with anything else, be it Paypal, Square, some other mechanism, etc, the payment processor changes some ridiculous fee that will range from $.10 to $.50 or who knows what higher.
"Clearing at par" is why cash and checks still exist, and until electronic transactions are not only convenient and easy, but ALSO clear at par, there will still be a huge role for cash and checks.
Test your net with Netalyzr
what a wonderful thing an all-digital money would be,the government could make you unable to buy anything or be paid for work oh a whim. Our DHS already does something almost as evil when it freezes good people's bank accounts for any "unusual" activity such as paying a few thousand to credit card company.
...then get back to me on what a good idea all-electronic currency is. At least the state can't just make your Benjamins disappear when you become an unperson.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
American currency is stuck in the 19th century. All around the world, countries with currencies that Americans scoff at as "worthless" have invested time and money in redesigning their currency to 21st century levels that make it harder to counterfeit. But, whenever anyone in power even breathes a word of redesigning US currency, the populace flies into a rage, foaming at the mouth about anyone daring to pervert their sacred greenbacks. All efforts to bring the bills up to date have resulted in hideous, half-assed results.
I've actually heard stories first hand from a currency expert, who used to print banknotes in Europe, who was invited by the US to offer ideas on bringing the currency up to date, and the officials there rejecting each and every idea he put forward because they were "too different".
It's kind of sad. Everyone wants to counterfeit your money, and they're good at it, but you're too sentimentally attached to its archaic design that you're completely unwilling to change it.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Drop a MOAB on the facility where the presses are located.
Done, and done.
We don't have to abandon paper money just because it is not possible to keep forgeries from being manufactured. The government just needs a private key and digitally sign each paper bill it produces (similar to the current serial numbers but with PKI powers) and then when you accept paper money for payment you will need a computer to read and verify the digital signature is valid. This would solve the problem (with the added expense of verifying bills) but the government won't propose such a simple solution because they would rather force people off paper currency to track them better.
We better move you all to traceable, trackable, revokable electronic money.
You thought your privacy hit the fan before? Wait til your every pfennig is nothing but a shifting index in the Federal Reserve database.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
We get the ink for our money from another country?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
There's an excellent Planet Money podcast on North Korea's illegal economy.
In the podcast they explain how North Korea is able to sell their fake currency, as well as the other shady things their government does to make money. It's worth a listen if you're interested in the North Korean regime.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
You can't cripple organized crime by removing official currency and trying to force everyone to conduct transactions above board. Organized crime is organized. Per definition they have the central authority necessary to issue a gang/cartel sanctioned currency.
p.s. A simpler way to cripple drug cartels: Legalize all drugs, and make them available OTC at every bar and pharmacy in the country. (Disclaimer: I have never used drugs or alcohol, and I still wouldn't use drugs if they became legal.)
What kind of technology goes into printing bills? Just curious, for the sake of philosophy.
All rites reversed 2010
I've long argued that the main thing propping up the artificially way too high US Dollar is its preferencing by extralegal entities since the normalisation of white collar "work" drove most of the American economy out of inherently tradeable production into devices which must be propped up by legal fictions to acquire monetary value.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
North Korea has not and cannot produce these bills.
This is simply an attempt to cow people into not using cash any more.
Soon, people wanting to pay cash for anything will be labeled terrorists.
This is very sad; naturally all of this is IMHO...
In a more normal time, when the Fed and others weren't openly wishing for the reduction of the dollar's value, this would be considered an act of war.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The local Ambassador of North Korea in my country told journalists in 2010 that by 2012, the North Korea economy will be booming and that it will surpass the economy of the US, or something like this. I guess they are simply trying in the best way they can. ;]
Ezekiel 23:20
I heard somewhere the most fitting description of NK. It is like the sopranos running a country.
The U.S. doesn't make anything, so why not counterfeit those countries that make all the goods.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Furthermore, how would you not riot over your government doing something like that to you?
Man, you really don't know anything about NK, do you?
Anyone trying would be shot. There's no press. Very little outside observation, almost none allowed in or out.
On top of that many of the people are very literally brainwashed to adore the countries leadership and accept blindly anything they say or do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sort of like bitcoins. instead of serial numbers each note would contain a multi-hundred digit unique RSA code. The bill would be its physical token. US Treasury websites could validate the bill. The same site could invalidate a fake or copied certificate. Or privacy people could avoid validation at all.
Current $100 bill are not entirely private. Its trivial to read and record the current serial numbers. And some banks may be doing that for large bills to look for crime payouts.
Much of bitcoins problems, if you believe the Wired articles, are not due to the certificates, but the minter's disks being compromised and the coin info erased or stolen.
Of course, this is exactly what the U.S. Government itself does: Print new money that doesn't actually represent any extant wealth and then "pocket" the full face value of the new currency. But then once these new bills makes their way into the market, the rest of us get to suffer inflation as a result.
It would do no such thing. More and more people are switching to simple barter mechanisms, precious metals as an intermediate, things like Bitcoin, and "alternative" currencies (example). If the government ever eliminates cash, this will only make such things thrive.
But the fact that North Korea is making a few million a year off of counterfeiting serves as a wonderful pretext for forcing everyone into privacy-less currency, doesn't it?
Liberty in your lifetime
I have no idea why anyone modded this insightful. I assumed the original poster here was joking. But to the mod who took this as if it was a serious insight:
Cash is basically an IOU slip. Whether it's old-timey gold-backed cash where it was an IOU for a lump of gold in Fort Knox, or whether it's a fiat currency where it's an IOU slip saying that the US government will continue to guarantee its value for public or private debt. Or, on a currency exchange, it's an IOU for the relative amounts of other tradeable currencies.
To continue your dumb analogy; no one has a problem with the North Korean government photocopying US bills and framing them on their wall. It's not the duplication that's the problem. It's that they then represent it as legitimate currency for conducting further transactions. And it becomes a game of hot potato where the first person in the chain who notices it's counterfeit is left with something valueless. There's also devaluation risks if they print enough of the counterfeit, but in the context of the amount the article is talking about, the real risk is that the money is basically then laundered.
It's stealing from everyone who holds dollars, and I suspect you know that.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Exactly, that's why I can walk into any convenience store and purchase a beer for the paltry price of five Sir Mix-a-Lot .mp3 singles, or five green Baby-Got-Backs.
Nice troll, but obvious 4/10
A libertarian shat on my carpet once. Claimed the free market would sort it out. -Ford Prefect(8777)
"The article also advocates a move to all-digital payment/transfers by pointing out both forms are only representations of value and noting it would cripple criminal operations such as drug cartels, human traffickers, and so forth." ...is that you would then have the WHOLE criminal underworld funding hacking and writing dodgy code, instead of just a sub-set. Have we really got to the stage where ALL our code, including browsers and routers, is as secure as someone's wallet?
"The won was devalued by 100 percent, which meant 1,000 won suddenly had the purchasing power of 10 won."
This was the first thing in the article that I saw or read.
Cute, except currency represents an IOU - an obligation on the part of somebody to do something. That's what it is. And what a song is not.
Wow, if they keep this up for 1000 years, it might inflate the dollar by 0.1%.
There is a difference between copying movies and music--which have no intrinsic value in and of themselves as digital 1's and 0's, and people only ascribe monetary value to them if they like them--and copying money, which is a legal tender for all goods and services.
The article also advocates a move to all-digital payment/transfers ... it would cripple criminal operations such as drug cartels, human traffickers, and so forth.
Yeah, and other dubious operations like speaking freely or engaging in outside-social-norm behavior.
So will "The Shat's" vision of plas cards come true soon? It has been too long since I read the book or watched the movies and series to remember how transactions were kept private.
Of course, just as distributing somebody's computer program or song digitally without their permission steals from them the chance to generate income from that creation.
Proposal to rename North Korea to Cagliostro. All in favour?
...compared to the Fed's quantitative easing. Why upset ourselves over this!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
They used to counterfeit, then they took a dollar in the printer.
I mean, while we're at it with the shitty memes.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Clearly, dropping everything we currently think of as money and switching to the gold standard would solve this, right?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
And now we have it. The pretext is N.Korea counterfeiting Federal Reserve Bank notes. Now we have a pretext to getting rid of paper currency and letting the US Federal reserve control all of the US money on the planet... that is the monetary unit of trade the whole planet uses for oil and a variety of other important things. And, as a bonus, of we wanted to go back into N.Korea, we can do that too!
Just like copying movies and music: NK haven't stolen anything. The US still has all the dollars it ever has. It isn't like stealing a car where that deprives the original owner of the car. It's more like *duplicating* the car while the original owner still has it.
Brilliant! Best Slashdot post of the year.
(I may have to change my sig.)
Troll much? Money's purpose is to act as a token for things that are naturally scarce. Which means that money itself has to be artificially scarce. By contrast, if I'm reading a copy of a book, and you have a copy of the same book, your possession of a copy doesn't interfere with my possession of a copy one bit.
It's exactly the same. The problem with counterfeiting money is it devalues the currency. The problem with illegally copying commercial media is that it devalues that commercial media.
How could you expect otherwise then? How do you know what you're saying is true?
I said "very little". Not "none".
There are a few documentaries by people let inside to film in NK, and lots of interviews with the few NK citizens who managed to escape to South Korea.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Money has no intrinsic value in and of itself. It's only ink on paper.
which is a legal tender for all goods and service.
Because the government says its legal tender. Why do you accept the power the government has to say what currency is, but you don't accept the power the government has to say what's copyright. You can't have logical consistency and say that the government have the power of one and not the other.
Kim, don't copy that dollar! You wouldn't steal a movie, would you?
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Which means that money itself has to be artificially scarce.
And books, DVDs, music has to be scarce otherwise the author can't sell it.
The OP has it right. There is no difference.
Only to the same extent that forging a movie DVD steals from everyone else who owns that DVD.
... it's an IOU slip saying that the US government will continue to guarantee its value for public or private debt...
Guarantee its value? How exactly does that work? If my dollar is worth half as much as it was a few years ago, who do I talk to about getting the guaranteed compensation for the difference? "Federal Reserve Notes" are just like Monopoly Money, there is absolutely no backing or guarantee of value whatsoever. The only things that give them perceived value are that you need them if you're going to pay taxes, and that no commonly accepted alternative is available.
The "Federal" "Reserve" "Bank" does exactly the same thing, with exactly the same results. What's the difference?
The car analogy makes it so much simpler to understand this issue
Just like copying movies and music: NK haven't stolen anything. The US still has all the dollars it ever has. It isn't like stealing a car where that deprives the original owner of the car. It's more like *duplicating* the car while the original owner still has it.
.... and then selling the duplicate cars to try to put the car manufacturer out of business.
If you're going to do the analogy, at least make it complete.
So it's OK, according to Slashdot.
If you'll look back at some of the discussions about copyright on Slashdot I think you'll find that a lot of people do find this form of copyright infringement wrong, even if they have a different view of "non-profit" copyright infringement.
Just my two cents, which you are free to duplicate.
No difference between North Korea printing money without regulation, or the Federal Reserve printing it without regulation.
The effects are the same. It's monetary terrorism devaluating the $USD.
The author's dismissal of the privacy problems with going from cash to all-digital transactions, especially as flippantly as he does in his final paragraph, really lumps him in with the "if you've don't nothing wrong, you've nothing to hide" types. Yet another talking media head perfectly willing to trade everyone's basic privacy rights for a bit of perceived safety. In his mind, he's already won the debate, and it's only kooks and vested interests holding out. But don't listen to me, I'm obviously a cash-hoarding militia member, an anonymity-obsessed ACLU'er, the U.S. Treasury, Russian mob, Laundromat owner, or a person who has hidden a purchase from my spouse or income from the government.
one why are we buying the ink for or money from a swedish company and two why in the world are we letting them sell it to other people?
Within 10 or 20 years, expect $100 and $50 bills to come with expiration dates, after which time they would not be legal tender except for deposit at domestic banks or designated foreign banks.
Also expect them to come with geographic designations, outside of which they would not be considered legal tender except for deposit at designated banks.
Personally, I'm surprised that Congress hasn't come out and said that all $100 bills made before modern anti-counterfeiting measures will become "no longer legal tender, except for deposit at a domestic bank or designated non-domestic banks" starting in the near future.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
compared to the amount of money the federal reserve creates out of thin air every year.
fed: over a trillion
nk: 25 million
classic misdirect from a shill who advocates giving up all our privacy in business transactions to stop the evil north koreans. also, as pointed out by others, there are multiple factual errors in the article.
It's exactly the same. The problem with counterfeiting money is it devalues the currency. The problem with illegally copying commercial media is that it devalues that commercial media.
While the analogy is close, it's not the same. You're assuming that the commercial media has a fixed, intrinsic value...in other words, the value of the media is not determined by sales or cost, but determined by some arbitrary number that is assigned to it. If that were the case, then movie and music studios could reach up their ass and assign any number they feel like, regardless of what it cost to product or how much profit was made.
This kind of magical thinking falls apart quickly when you look at the "perceived value" of what is being traded; it's also the reason that the US dollar, as fiat currency, is being debased/devalued so quickly, because we're simply printing "more" of it without backing anything behind it other than the promise to repay or the threat of force (or both). If you were to price music like this - "you WILL pay us what we think regardless if it's crap or not" - then you would get the current stupidity moving through the media industry today, i.e. "we think it's worth X, so we expect X, regardless if it really is worth X" (special emphasis in italics).
I realize you're ranting/attacking the entire "digital media replication issue", and frankly the problem with digital copying is easily solved: STOP ISSUING DIGITAL MEDIA ALTOGETHER. The media industry in the US hasn't come to grips with the fact that computers fundamentally need the ability to replicate data in order for them to be effective in everyday use. While many would bemoan the loss of their DVD/BluRay/insert-some-other-stupid-format here, I frankly wouldn't miss it much. And given the quality of most music and many movies past 2005, I think we're not really losing much of anything.
Another way to support artists is direct payment. This is why I attend live music and pay a premium - so that I can hear music I like and support the artist (even if it is still indirect, although the artist is much more likely to see my dollars than say through an album). Now if only movies would go this route...wait a sec...wasn't there a posting about someone doing "pay as you go" movies, and people actually paid up front for this?
To solve all issues, we just need to abandon the crappy "you must go through distribution channels" model of doing business. The middleman isn't needed in this case, and is the root cause of the issue(s) all the way around. I don't care that going "all analog" and somesuch isn't popular on a tech site, you can bite my shiny metal ass if you can't deal with it.
My card gives 1% back. As long as I have the discipline to pay it off at the end of the month I'm getting 1% return. Of course the merchant is paying the freight for this big time. The grocery store charges me the same regardless though. In a grocery store, I pay with credit. Gas stations are a different story here. They have a lower price for cash, which I suspect reflects the merchant's transaction costs.
The best deal? Paying for something with cash and receiving 4 pre 1982 pennies in change. Not that long ago the copper in them was worth $0.03. Of course this is statisticly unlikely to happen, and Gresham's law makes the odds lower every day. Also, this deal doesn't scale.
Before the mint got wise and made it illegal, one of the big banks actually purchased truck loads of pennies and sent them to be melted. I think it might have been Goldman Sachs.
If you really believe the dollar is going to donuts, penny and nickel arbitrage is still available. You just can't melt them legally--yet. I heard there's a guy in Texas with a cheap warehouse full of nickels.
The mint is "studying the issue" of making steel coins which the Canadians have been doing for years. Yay for the US government moving at the speed of the US government...
I get it.. so you're saying that the more people that prefer a specific type of music, the move value that music and the medium it is printed on will hold? I can probably trade off my high value albums for some decent goods, but not everywhere will accept the trade as a form of payment. I hear the price of Japanese music is a bit too high lately, so a lot of people are choosing to switch to Chinese music which is under-appreciated but still has many backers from America.
Now replace the word music with currency and albums with bills.
The article recommends killing off high-denomination bills.
We did that already, and the $100 is the new $10,000, at least in the underground economy.
If we kill off the $100 and $50, the $20 will be the new $100.
All killing off $100's and $50's means is making cash-based businesses buy bigger safes and bigger briefcases. I guess that's good if you are selling safes and briefcases.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Money's purpose is to act as a token for things that are naturally scarce.
It's going to sound like I disagree with you, whereas I don't. Much. Money's purpose is to separate the act of buying from the act of selling.
Which means that money itself has to be artificially scarce.
There's no reason why it has to be artificially scarce. It could be actually scarce--like when we were on the gold standard.
your possession of a copy doesn't interfere with my possession of a copy one bit.
It interferes with its resale valve.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
The "Federal" "Reserve" "Bank" is controlled by the people, and the the theory goes that they can ease shortages in money supply by printing new, thus helping the economy overall, at the expense of inflation.
If mhajicek prints money in his basement, it may or may not help the economy overall - but chances are that mhajicek is doing it for his own benefit and not for the benefit of society... any aid to the overall economy would be by accident.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Only to the same extent that forging a movie DVD steals from everyone else who owns that DVD.
No, the only person hurt when you duplicate a DVD is the person legally allowed to sell the DVD - and even then, it is only because they are granted that right by the government. We have "first sale" in the US, so you are probably right to the extent that the used market will see some price depression as well.
However, if someone started printing out millions of fake DVDs, it would not destroy people's faith in the DVDs and bring the economy to a screeching halt.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If I want 1 month of housing, 1 month of food, 1 month of transportation, 1 month of other expenses, and an additional amount representing 2 weeks of spending when I'm 80 years old, that's not what my employer pays me.
He pays me something called "currency."
To make this useful, I have to:
* Pay rent and some other bills with something other than cash. This means buying a cashiers check or money order, or have a bank account (more fees) and pay for blank checks.
* Pay for envelopes and stamps for those bills that I pay by mail.
* Pay a sometimes-non-zero "convenience" fee for those bills that I pay online because the convenience fee is cheaper than a stamp.
* etc., etc
Oh, and that's not even counting the un-expected change in effective value in the part of my salary going towards my retirement between now and the time I use it.
So much for "clearing at par."
By the way, many employers use direct deposit because it is CHEAPER overall than either printing and processing checks OR paying an armored-courier service to deliver a boatload of cash to the office every payday.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Right, you are "stealing" (to use your word) from one person or corporation, as opposed to: (a) stealing from everyone who holds dollars by deflating the currency and (b) destroying the confidence that people have in their currency, which if severe enough would lead to economic calamity.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The argument of this article smells all wrong to me. It was just a month ago that I speculated someone whether paper currency would be banned in our lifetime, and now here's an article arguing for that. Note the following about TFA:
(1) The article spends several paragraphs finger-wagging at North Korea and what dastardly bastards they are. (Although, "That sounds like a lot of money, but compared to the $1 trillion in cash circulating in the great ocean of commerce, a few hundred million is chump change... probably won't bring about a crisis of faith in our paper money anytime soon. ").
(2) Then near the bottom the article switches to a call to get rid of all paper currency, with a nice jab at "liberty" voters (as some call them), lumping the ACLU in between crazed militias and the Russian mob ("If killing all cash strikes you as a little too radical... At the risk of infuriating cash-hoarding militia members, anonymity-obsessed ACLU'ers, the U.S. Treasury, Russian mob, Laundromat owners, and just about every person who has ever hid a purchase from a spouse or income from the government, I would say this to Kim Jong-un and his posse of counterfeiters: Bring it.")
(3) Ultimately, the headline about North Korea is really just a tiny degree away from "terrorist" fearmongering -- and at the end, it casts off even that garb and goes all-out terrorist/ drug-dealer/ child molester on us ("Who would be most inconvenienced if Washington were to outlaw $100 and $50 bills tomorrow? Cartel bosses in Juarez, Mexico jump to mind. So do human traffickers in China and Africa, aspiring terrorists in Afghanistan, wildlife poachers, arms dealers, tax evaders, and everyday crooks..."). So long as it potentially, minimally inconveniences some "bad guys" then of course it's worth it, even if "killing all cash" (the actual argument) means the end of privacy and convenience for all of us.
Barf. I cull FUD and bullshit. Digital surveillance of every monetary transaction by the government -- that's real end-game here.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
* It will allow authentication.
* It won't make the spying/tracking currency use any easier than it already is.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You dont have to use quotes like that.
It really is called the Federal Reserve Bank. No quotes necessary.
(yes yes I know you were attempting to look smart but it really doesnt accomplish that)
The difference is that the Federal Reserve Bank is subject to the authority of the United States Government and is policed by the Secret Service, whereas North Korea is not.
All important papers that aren't "mere representations" of something else should be self-authenticating.
Be it currency over a certain value, non-registered (bearer) securities over a certain value, licenses and permits which are routinely used to indicate permission without being authenticated in real time (e.g. hunting permits in areas where the game warden is outside of radio contact with HQ), etc., some papers need to be self-proving.
Registered securities, professional credentials, etc. need not be self-authenticating except as a backup if the issuing authority isn't available to authenticate them when needed OR if the issuing authority cannot be trusted to maintain accurate records (or worse, if they have an incentive to doctor them).
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I don't think its a North Korean operation. More like local mob. But if law enforcement lets it run and catches the bogus bills further along in the local economy, it makes the counterfeit problem look bad. It also screws over lots of innocent people along the bills' distribution paths as their cash gets confiscated and they are out the money.
Have gnu, will travel.
it is not exactly the same.
If you're using media as a currency, then yeah. Your point would stand. Who the fuck does that? Currency exists only to be exchanged for other things. Counterfeit currency devalues all other holdings in that currency. Which decreases the purchasing power of everyone who holds that currency. Counterfeit media doesn't in any way decrease the ability of anyone with legit media to enjoy that media.
Their action can be considered an act of war. This gives us the right to board their ships anywhere in the ocean or even sink them. They should think about that.
The superdollar story has been kicking around for 16 years now, making it closer to two decades than one.
Are you serious or a troll?
Why would they even want to counterfeit a curreny that's worth shit nowadays ?
Ah the NK always late to the party.
Screw 'em. Let's just counterfeit our own money and get it all back.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
The article also advocates a move to all-digital payment/transfers by pointing out both forms are only representations of value and noting it would cripple criminal operations such as drug cartels, human traffickers, and so forth.
Bullshit. Money laundering became a crime in the US over 25 years ago as an anti-drug strategy. Clearly it didn't work, since drugs are cheaper today than they were back then, but every time you make a cash transaction over a few thousand dollars (can be as little as $2000, depending on the transaction type) a notice goes off to the government. From what I can see the net effect is if the feds want you they can bust you for spitting on the sidewalk then force you to plea bargain by threatening a 300 years sentence on financial crimes.
And it's hard to imagine what Washington couldn't know about you if every single transaction you made landed in some government database. Not that it will make any difference to the criminals - drug traffickers and pimps (and their customers) will start using euros, yen, pesos, or drugs as mediums of exchange. Or gold, or bearer bonds. Whatever.
North Korea (officially the DPRK) has inherited a lot of older Soviet anti-aircraft equipment. One major reason for the success of the U.N. forces during the Korean War (1950-1953) against the Korea was the air superiority they were able to attain. As tensions still exist on the Korean Peninsula and Korea is so heavily militarised, their air-defence network is amongst the strongest of a non-superpower. A large part of it consists of a number of older, fixed systems like SA-2, SA-3, and SA-5, but DPRK is also in possession of many mobile systems that have proven deadly in the past.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aircraft_warfare
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Nope, the problem with counterfeiting money is the fraud aspect, not the copying aspect. People who copy the dollar for, lets say, a piece of art are making a copy but not committing fraud. No one is harmed.
Lets say someone got one of your checks from your checkbook and fills it out. When the cash it, they are falsely claiming it that it is an instrument that you are backing. You are harmed.
See, BIG difference between counterfeiting and copyright infringement.
I don't see how it devalues the media. If everyone on Earth has free use of a particular song, that song is likely worth more given that it's so well known. It would be useful in movies as a background song in the same way that Turn Turn Turn is used because everyone knows it and knows what they're supposed to feel when it is played. It can be played by bar bands. It can be used in mix tapes. The original singers could perform the song and sell more concert tickets. The economy would likely improve due to increased usage of the song.
If everyone on earth has an extra dollar, each of those dollars has less purchasing power than before. The economy would get worse as a result.
In short, a copyright term of 2 years for songs would probably result in a much larger positive economic impact, while allowing the copying of money after any period of time would always cause a negative economic impact.
Cow Cube
I know that bad guys can't access servers that big companies and governments have secured against trojans and viruses so I have nothing to worry about when all my money is digital. Certainly the North Korean's hackers will leave us alone if it is digital.
Gold and silver coins are hard to counterfeit, hard to make fake gold, only takes about 20 Gold Eagles to buy a new car, not that much to lug around. Checks, credit cards and coins would work fine, plus no real inflation (Government theft).
by limiting credit card use it is much easier for me to notice fraud
I have the best of both - my Amex card gives me %2 back on everything. Straight-up money, direct deposit whenever I have accumulated $50 or more due back to me. No "rewards" web-site or anything like that.
By auto-charging my cable bill, phone bill, cell bill, newspaper, and a few other things (that do not charge a CC fee), I run hundreds of dollars a month thru my card, and pay the balance each month. From my point of view I get paid 2% to use the card.
However, I prefer paying in cash for non-recurring things like every day shopping trips, restaurants, and the like.
At the end of the month, the credit card statement is clean and easy to check, and the cash budget takes care of itself. No money in the wallet? No impulse buys.
BTW - not EVERYONE accepts cash - try buying a beer on an airplane.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
No thanks, id rather the government not know everything i have bought and sold.
Loss of cash is another loss of personal freedom.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That link doesn't even mention the other currencies - the Euro has more cash circulating than the USD. And, they have 200 and 500 Euro notes in common use, that would be like ~$250 and ~$650 bills.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Trepanning combined with soap and water? Man, that's hardcore...
When you have nothing else to do it gains appeal.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yay! The North Koreans are helping to stimulate the economy!
More money for everyone !
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
No transaction fees, but cash is constantly devalued by inflation. It's like a hidden ~4% annual fee. If you worked out the total amount the average person spends in cash per year, and the total number of transactions, then you could figure out the effective "transaction fee" of inflation.
I'd argue that cash still exists for the basic reason that no government has yet introduced an effective replacement. And without government backing, any new standard is unlikely to become nationally accepted. Transaction fees alone can not be the reason - even if debit card transactions were no fee (which they already appear to be to the purchaser) people would still use cash, because it requires no extra equipment, no cards, is accepted everywhere, and transactions are often faster (bars that trialled ecash cards found that the overall process was slower).
There is one key difference. Counterfeit money does steal from everyone with "money in the bank" (and I guess gives a little to those with debt). Copyright infringement is only stealing something if you would have paid for it (otherwise the IP owner is out nothing).
+5 insightful means that other people understood. Why didn't you?
I have several credit cards with no fees to use when I am traveling. In fact, using these credit cards almost always gives better exchange rate than anywhere else you could change your money (including the bank), so not only is it convenient, you actually save money.
There are many to choose from, I am surprised you know of the 3% fee and yet you did not do a simple search to see if there are fee-free cards - it is not like you have to be loyal to your CC if it is screwing you?
In general, the easiest ones to get are the ones from Capital One. All of their cards come with zero foreign exchange fee, and you will always be approved as long as you apply for the correct tier e.g. if you are a student/no-credit history don't try to apply to their intermediate or upper cards, the low tier still has no annual or exchange fees it just comes with lower limits and higher interest (if you care about the interest it means you don't pay the full balance, hence I suggest you avoid credit cards completely). Then there are better ones, e.g. I usually use a Citibank Thank You Premiere, but that one normally has an annual fee (unless you hit a promotion like I did).
And I think people who travel to Asia can also use Discover cards, which will not be accepted in most other parts of the world.
Be careful though, some countries have switched to the new credit cards with the chip that are not common in the US. So, research before travelling.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
The Freemen of Montana as well as UCC Redemptorists know alot more about the subject and were getting grilled when "normal" people like you and others heard from the Judge or Government that they were doing it, and now you expect to use the same remedies in commerce that you've helped vote against?
House Joint Resolution 192 involves with paying down debt that has no product or damage attached: this is how "nationals" would confront tickets that were out of regulative perview in terms of requiring Corpus Delecti or even a license.
Certified Promissory Notes is how you compete with a bank, only you are the real thing while a bank doesn't circulate anything but monetized STOCK CERTIFICATES and icons that have no force in commanding payment in full other than mere collectible tokens.
A warehouse receipt is what America is suppsed to use: it means for every titular denomination of currency in circulation that there means somewhere there is a warehouse holding a product that came into existance: only problem now is the nature of the birth certificates being used as a lien against you to allow CONGRESS to spend into existance those spurious currencies that were determined by your earning potential; this means that CONGRESS thinks you are able to earn $50 million in your lifetime, so they create that unlawful money and spend it everywhere to assure that you have something to do with your life in trying to collect those shattered peices wherever they fell. You have little valves and faucets called government franchises that tap your birth certificate legal name treating it as a corporation and you as either an employee or a proprietor depending how you file your UCC lien of your true name against that strawman person.
When the government mis-manages anything, this is known as Clearfield Doctrine.
For me, checks cost time. When I get a check it isn't useful to me. I have to go deposit it which takes time. Not a ton of time, but then my time isn't free. Time I spend doing that is time I could spend doing other things. Same with cash above trivial amounts too. If you give me a bit of cash, $20 or less then ok that I can spend directly. I'll keep it in my wallet and use it instead of a card. However if you give me say $500, well I don't want to keep that kind of cash on me. So it has to go get deposited too.
I'd much rather eat a small transaction fee and just have the money safely nestled in my bank account already. Doesn't cost me any time.
In fact this reason is why you see some companies that want to charge for bills paid by check, but not ACH. ACH actually costs them money, not much, but like $0.30 per transaction. However it costs them more in employee time to process a physical check. They'd rather just have it electrically transferred.
I was going to say these weren't really counterfeit anyway.... Just the missing $5 billion in PALLETS OF CASH lost in Iraq back in 2002/2003
But copyright infringement works too. Of course if you are passed counterfeit money for a good or service YOU provided, is it any less valuable than the electronic debt the govt used in the Bail outs? If money is all about "faith" then on the small scale counterfeit bills aren't really a problem.
Uh ... no. It means other people shared your opinion, even in the cases where that opinion is wrong.
If I say the sky will be chartreuse tomorrow, and I get modded +5 insightful, will you wake up tomorrow surprised that I was, in fact, not correct?
... it's an IOU slip saying that the US government will continue to guarantee its value for public or private debt...
Guarantee its value? How exactly does that work? If my dollar is worth half as much as it was a few years ago, who do I talk to about getting the guaranteed compensation for the difference?
"Federal Reserve Notes" are just like Monopoly Money, there is absolutely no backing or guarantee of value whatsoever. The only things that give them perceived value are that you need them if you're going to pay taxes, and that no commonly accepted alternative is available.
The dollar is worth just as much as a 100 years ago - for debt. If you owed $100 one hundred years ago, $100 would pay it. If you owed $100 yesterday, $100 would pay it. You acknowledged this.
You have the right to demand payment in silver for all your labor, land, or capital you let other people use. You have the right to try to pay everyone in silver as well. It is your choice. But, like many people, you want something you can do, but you want the government to do it for you.
Canada already has Polymer $100.00 bills with $50.00 bills coming in March and $20.00, $10.00 and $5.00 bills in 2013. Have a look here > http://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/
I realize you're being a smartass, but just the same why not ask the question--if we are dumb enough to expect pieces of paper to not be reproduceable, is what they are doing really wrong?
Just playing devil's advocate.
expandfairuse.org
What I mean by this.
The sovereign government of most nation creates some money for the people to use. This is cash; notes & coins.
They pay someone with the cash and the recipient takes the money to their bank to deposit it. When they do, the bank takes the cash and writes the amount in a book. Credit is created by your high street banks not the government.
When you transfer the credit from one bank to another the second bank expect notes and coins to be sent; they have to trust the first bank to do this, hence clearing. Course nobody actually moves physical money any more and they haven't done for a while but the principle is the same.
When you pay or spend credit, the credit is bank money. The bank's job is to make their credit appear to be dollars. Which is interesting because only ~5% of money is dollars, the other 95% was created by banks so it has a lot of covering to do.
Money doesn't grow on trees? No, it's magic'd out of nothing.
If North Korea have printed 20 million or even 200 million, it's completely insignificant. Private US corporations have quite legally created ~9,000 million.
Deleted
Or, as MC Frontalot would say, First World Problem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3w1_E1V46M
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
You're saying that the Most Powerful Country in the World can't stop one of the most backwater little burgs out there from screwing with our money? Can't even stop a company from selling them the right ink? Why can't we just have some cruise missile veer off course some night and take it out? And if they complain, ask them what was actually destroyed? Or sneak in SEAL Team 6 with a few bricks of C-4. That's just an ongoing insult to us otherwise.
Of course, Iran has been doing it too for awhile now and we don't stop them either.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Well, no. The value of a DVD is not based upon your ability to exchange the DVD for goods and services.
There is really no evidence whatsoever that these super counterfeits are coming from North Korea.
A more likely explanation has been that these bills are being printed by the CIA. (For untraceable bribes.)
VISA et al offer a good service I agree and it's not sucking cash from the economy.
But there are many places that do indeed refuse to accept it. In the UK small businesses get round it by saying the machine is broken.
You need a bit of regular volume to justify the merchant bank fee and then the card equipment but then also on each transaction. Sell a $1 item and i think you're losing cash.
Plus there's the need for connectivity of course. How hot's your router running?
I wonder if gold could ever be workable when it needs an xray or very accurate specific gravity test to test it properly.
A blog I run for the wealth
Almost.
Money's value depends upon its relationship to something real, whether it's fiat currency or not. Fiat currency is backed, essentially, by debt. It's self-referential, basically. But, in order to work, it HAS to be worth something. I don't want money if it has no extrinsic, trade value.
Media has intrinsic value that is in many ways increased when it is distributed widely. This is because it interacts with culture and communication. The ideas within the work become more valuable to society as they are more widely spread. Works of art are what memes are made of.
The problem is that authors need to be compensated for their _work_ (that is, the hours of time they spent on creating something for the rest of us), but that does not imply they need to be compensated for their _works_ (that is, the individual end product which is trivially easy to copy).
So, if I copy a 100-dollar bill, I have stolen a hundred dollars, collectively, from everyone who legitimately owns any money at all. That's bad. If I copy an mp3, I have theoretically reduced the value of each other mp3 of the same song my a collective amount of 1. However, I have increased the value of the shared experience of that mp3 by a collective amount of 1, and perhaps contributed to the proliferation of the ideas in that music by 1 (compounded by the amount of people I shared it with), etc. The economy of ideas does not work like a money economy. Confusing the two is the root of a lot of the current problems with IP laws.
The problem with illegally copying commercial media is that it devalues that commercial media.
Justin Bieber is doing that faster than any file sharers.
A lot of the comments say that we shouldn't get rid of cash; Where's George? (http://www.wheresgeorge.com) is a game based on US paper currency (with some equivalents for some other currencies). Playing the game is an incentive for me to use cash when possible
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
No, the only person hurt when you duplicate a DVD is the person legally allowed to sell the DVD
No, the legal buyer is hurt too. Not as badly, but he is hurt. Let's take it to the extreme. Say that there were only 2 official copies of the DVD. I buy one of them for $20. Consider two scenarios.
1) There is no piracy. I feel pretty good about owning the DVD. I feel I got my $20 worth. My friends come round because they want to watch my DVD. I (try to) impress girls with my DVD collection. (Hey we were all young once and tried it.) I can feel superior to my work colleagues because I know what happens in the big movie, and they don't. And when I no longer want the DVD, the first sale doctrine means that I can sell it to someone else. And because few people have it, I can sell if for a decent price. Say $15. So the good experience of ownership has cost me $5.
2) There is rampant piracy. That person that bought the other official DVD has copied it for his friends, and they've copied it for theirs, until everyone has a copy. 2 people legally, everyone else illegally. I feel less good about owning the DVD - everyone else has it too. I don't feel I got my $20 worth because everyone else got it for free. My friends don't bother coming round to watch it because they have their own copies. There's no point trying to impress girls with a DVD that everyone else has too. I can't show off my superior experience of movies to my work colleagues because they've all seen the movie too. And I can't sell if on, because everyone else already has it. SO my bad experience of ownership has cost me $20.
See, as a legal owner of a copy of the DVD, I have been harmed by people making illegal copies. Yes, it's a gross exaggeration, but what's true of the exaggeration is also true of the reality, just to a proportionally lesser extent.
It's the same process as inflation through increasing the money supply. Scarcity increases value, ubiquity decreases value.
However, if someone started printing out millions of fake DVDs, it would not destroy people's faith in the DVDs and bring the economy to a screeching halt.
No, but it would bring the movie industry to a complete halt. Meaning movies would no longer be made. Same problem, just on a different scale.
I don't see how it devalues the media. If everyone on Earth has free use of a particular song, that song is likely worth more given that it's so well known.
If everyone has free use of it they don't need to buy it. You don't get any more extreme devaluing than that.
It would be useful in movies as a background song in the same way that Turn Turn Turn is used because everyone knows it and knows what they're supposed to feel when it is played. It can be played by bar bands. It can be used in mix tapes. The original singers could perform the song and sell more concert tickets.
These are all possible alternative revenue streams. But the first 3 also require that people respect copyright. Are you perhaps saying it's OK for you to break copyright law by copying the song. But filmmakers, bar bands, and mix tape makers have to obey that same law?
You'r very argument admits that the value of the song comes from the ability of the copyright holder to restrict rights for other people to reproduce it.
Um, you might want to look into that. The Federal Reserve is a privately owned bank with a government enforced monopoly.
Oooh.. Nice explanation.
The result of doing this for 80 years or so? Massive over consumption and over valuation of goods causing rippling global economic crisis... like the one we see now.
It would be more helpful to point out that our debt-based currency allows wealth to be concentrated in our financiers' bank accounts (the Federal Reserve is mostly owned by "Wall Street"), instead of more broadly among people who work for a living.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
It really doesn't matter how many counterfeit $50s & $100s that the DPRK can print or dump onto the international marketplace. Not one bit, even if the DPRK counterfeited $1 Billion USD instead of only $200 Million USD. Compare that to the $2+ Trillion USD that the USA Federal Reserve has created out of thin air, and without even bothering to print them up. This was the amount of "digital dollars" that have been passed along to international corporations, foreign banks, and foreign central banks since September 2008. And this doesn't even count the new Fed Reserve QE3 initiative begun recently.
I'm waiting for the Federal Reserve to come out with a couple of new lines of USA PetroDollars, as toilet paper and wall paper. Forecast: Continued deflation / stagflation, with an overnight chance of hyper-inflation. I saw somewhere on YT a $1 Trillion Zimbabwean currency note. We aren't there yet, but that specter is in our future as well. Bitcom looks like a stable method of commerce in comparison.
They did that in response to the many, many trillions of dollars of "digital dollars" that disappeared in the crash. And even after "printing" all that money, the USD was practically deflationary for about 6 months. Don't you remember how the price of EVERYTHING dropped in 2009? That's deflation, and you can't get that when unneeded dollars are being printed.
No, it means 5 people agreed.
Understanding is the usual precursor to agreeing.
While I am against copyright infringement your analogy to currency counterfeiting is naive. It's not even close. If you understood the origin of paper currency, you wouldn't be making the analogy. A $100 bill is nothing more than IOU from the government. To allow traders to exchange money a central bank issued a note that could be used instead of carting around gold. Everyone trusted the bank so if I gave you a note from said bank that they would pay you $100, you would accept it. Duplicating currency is faking a promise from the central bank.
You are putting the central bank on the hook for money it never agreed to pay. It's more like credit card fraud, than music piracy.
Nuke them and then rent the area as parking lot space to S.Korea!
This statement would only be true if piracy always equaled a lost sale but it does not.
Fuck the govt, i mean seriously, and their hot daughters that are over 18 so that you can pollute their gene pool.
The govt should not forget that the GFC'08 was helped by all the illegal billions of $$$$ the drug cartels deposited into the banks.
Hey Mr Govt, legalize drugs, you already legalized murder for govt employees like FBI+CIA.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
similar printing technologies as the U.S. and buy ink from the same Swedish firm.
Get the cooperation of the company that supplies the US... a very low-tech attach
The fix is not digital currency, it's a move towards exclusive sourcing of materials used to print the bills, and the requirement of multiple different materials. And digital technology can be used to enhance security of currency without losing the benefits of paper money.
By that I mean: whatever firm supplies the ink should not be allowed to deal with anyone else. [for example]
Beyond that, what should happen is the unique serial number printed on every bill should have a secret key associated with it, with a public key that is made public knowledge; part of some database available to the general public.
And a representation of a digital signature using that key should be printed on every bill. Every every batch of X bills is printed, that private key should be destroyed irrevokably.
Then they should make an iPhone App that lets you use your phone's camera to "scan" any bill, and validate that the digital signature printed on it, against the serial number and the public key for that lot of bills.
The app would then submit the serial number (anonymously) to increment some counter, along with a loose GPS fix; allowing for blacklisting a certain serial number as 'suspect' to occur.
Actually one can acknowledge that the government has the responsibility to do both and simultaneously criticize the way the government exercises that responsibility. People who intentionally confuse themselves and then act as though this is a problem with the logic of others will still practice their perverse habit though.
North Korea wanted to make real money, they should simply set up a small 'economic zone'. A tax haven location, where extradition never applies and gold can buy you anything, absolutely anything, nothing to sick or depraved. They'll have the rich and greedy flocking in and readily generate billions every year ( the same rich and greedy will also seek to protect it).
North Korea ain't communist or socialist, it's an insane asylum with the insane in charge.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Are we supposed to believe that the Norks are printing enough bogus dollars to amount to even a thousandth of a percent of what the Fed conjures out of thin air every day?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You're just bitter because your portfolio consists of Sex in the City 2.
Just like copying movies and music: NK haven't stolen anything. The US still has all the dollars it ever has. It isn't like stealing a car where that deprives the original owner of the car. It's more like *duplicating* the car while the original owner still has it.
So it's OK, according to Slashdot.
Hmm, this is funny, but there is truth in the joke. International law may ban counterfeiting of another country's currency, but if you don't allow yourself to be bound by international law, you can not be guilty of breaking it. National sovereignty in its essence means one country need not be held to legal standards established elsewhere, at the risk of being ostricized and effectively banished from the international community, of course.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Modded insightful? Seriously?
Cash's value comes directly from its scarcity; It has no intrinsic value. A DVD's value is primarily intrinsic. It doesn't matter to someone who has purchased a DVD whether there are 50 million copies or 500 million of them.
The USA and North Korea don't trade for a variety of very good reasons stretching back decades, so that debt is not to the USA.
I rather preferred Tim O'Reilly's take on this, on NPR this week.
He prefers it when O'Reilly publications are copy-leifted. It's free marketing and distribution. The majority of customers he has, became customers by acquiring such copies.
Equally I once enjoyed Kai Lee's statement on a copy of Bryce 3D in '95 or so: look, if you're pirating my program and not making any money off of it, fine-- learn it. If you find yourself using my product to make money, and it makes you money, then please, pay us for some of our products so we can continue to help you make money. (Paraphrased).
Counterfiet currency is entirely a different thing, of course.
Because it's not true.
A DVDs value isn't really related to the number of pirate copies out there - mainly because it's not recognised as a currency. I can't go to a restaurant and pay for my meal with DVDs, I can't buy a car with a case full of DVDs.
Currency's a bit different. Yeah, sure, so in theory a bunch of fake banknotes doesn't make much difference. In practise, however, it's not that simple because any fiat currency (practically ever major currency in the world today) only has value as long as people believe it has value. Hence why we hear talk of "consumer confidence".
If there's a small amount of poor-quality fake money on the market, no big deal. I buy a UV light and a forgery detecting pen (both of which are cheap enough), train my staff how to tell the difference between a real and a fake note and hope for the best. If there's an enormous amount of extremely high quality fake money on the market that may not be detected by my staff but will be detected when I take it to the bank, I have a problem. How do I solve it?
Well, the easiest answer is for me to adopt a "no cash for anything over a relatively low value, no high-denomination currency" policy. This doesn't work for all businesses, of course, but it works for enough and if we all make the same decision, sooner or later the general public is going to think "Hang on a minute. I've got all this paper money in my pocket and half the businesses here won't take it! What the hell is going on? I'm not sure I trust this currency....".
Absolutely right. There's nothing wrong with printing copies of money. The government has no copyright on the design.
Now, as soon as you SELL THEM, or otherwise FRAUDULENTLY try to pass them off as legitimate, you have broken other laws unrelated to the copying of the bills.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"You can't have logical consistency and say that the government have the power of one and not the other."
Yes you can, the world is not black and white in the way you are claiming. I'm perfectly capable of accepting the government's authority over currency, but reject their authority over copyright. There's nothing wrong with this, all things must be assessed on their merits and virtues.
And I actually thought that this is an act of war... if it was for real, of course. But yes, a country counterfeiting another's currency is an act of war.
The Manhattan project cost ~$28 billion USD in today's market. How much money do you think it would take to build a nuclear program using the finest French trained nuclear scientists North Korea could produce, combined with fifty years of advances in material and technology science? Does $10 billion sound about right to you? Because that's about the same number of years (10) that we've been really giving NK a hard time about their nuclear program. They say money doesn't grow on trees, but North Korea's been pretty good about growing their own free nuclear program using that money (French universities don't take NK dollars).
moox. for a new generation.
Making 25 million dollars per year selling superdollars in the black market? Even if it were true, it would cost more to print such super dollars. People just stop thinking whenever N. Korea related news is out and 100% believe it without doubt.
A DVDs value isn't really related to the number of pirate copies out there - mainly because it's not recognised as a currency.
Tell that to a second hand music and DVD store. The value definitely reflects rarity or ubiquity.
There's about 800 billion dollars in circulation (according to some quick googling). Some of that's is extra money we had to print because the the dollar is the world's prime cash currency. That's a free load that will get called if we go digital.
I thought the eventual plan to to put rfid tags in the money to verify and trace it.
Supposedly only .01% of the money in circulation is counterfeit.
So we outlaw 50 and 100 dollar bills to 'fight counterfeiters' and they just print 20 dollar bills. It's not going to get rid of the problem. We just need to ban North Korea from purchasing anything, anywhere in the world. Honestly, I am more worried about North Koreans being re-patriated from China and sent to forced labor camps until death. That has a much higher priority in my life.
Privately owned by who?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Sounds like NK found an innovative way to circumvent
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Nixon_Shock
Casteism
Yes, it's a gross exaggeration, but what's true of the exaggeration is also true of the reality, just to a proportionally lesser extent.
True it may be, but it would be hard to describe the loss to the buyer as "hurt" unless you also think that:
- Jumping up and down flattens the surface of the earth and pushes it out of its orbit
- Breathing heavily depletes the world's supply of oxygen
- Solar power calculators cool the earth
You could also argue that piracy combats ridiculously high DVD prices and may have saved the buyer from spending an extra $10 that would have been charged in the zero-piracy world. Competition, even competition with free, is good for the buyer.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Are you sure? Merely producing copies of money is illegal in the UK, unless you clearly mark it as fake by writing something like "SPECIMEN" on it. I'd be amazed if it wasn't also the case in the US.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Same problem, just on a different scale.
LOL, well yeah. The end of big-budget Hollywood movies vs. the crash of the world's economy. It's like the difference between a schoolyard fight between two 8-year-olds and a thermonuclear world war :)
One of my favorite movies cost under $40,000 to make, so while I'm sure Hollywood suffers some from piracy, it's good to know that someone would be making movies even if it didn't really pay very well. Hollywood, all combined, makes less revenue in an entire year than the profit Apple earned last quarter. Economically, they just aren't that big of a deal.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Once electronics are always up AND the gatekeepers of the electronic money arn't taking a cut.
I didn't say it was legal, I said it wasn't "wrong" until you use it to defraud someone.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I use the quotes because it's not federal, has nothing to do with reserve, and is not a bank.
Do a little research; you'll learn more and be more likely to believe it than if one of us tells you.
"...advocates a move to all-digital payment/transfers by pointing out both forms are only representations of value and noting it would cripple criminal operations such as drug cartels, human traffickers,"
Why would anyone believe that data representation of value is safe from counterfeiting?
Only the use of a tangible good with a readily checked value and content can't be counterfeited (yet.)
Making people report $10,000+ transactions was supposed to cripple the drug cartels...if it did, it must of been as much trouble as a stubbed toe.
Fiat money (money who's value exists only because a government says it has value, (which includes all currency today,) is itself, a form of counterfeiting, since there is no physical good backing the currency, the government has no limit to how much they can print, and each bill printed which has no physical backing dilutes the value. Most such devaluation today involves money created electronically by the banking system-80% of US citizens primarily use electronic money.
This devaluation is perfectly legal, and involves bit twiddling rather than hi-tech printing.
At the moment, the Australian Mint is capable of printing the physical bills most resistant to counterfeiting and physical abuse.
The Colombian cartels have been printing high quality US bills for many years, importing the very best printers & engravers from around the world.
But the crudest of fakes get accepted in the US daily, because people don't look at their money.
By the way, last time I looked, it is not illegal to print or possess counterfeit currency--it's only illegal to try and spend it as if it were real.
Money has been counterfeited since we began trading in barter--grain shipments loaded with sand for instance. One of the surest signs that a civilization is about to collapse is the creation of fiat money to replace all value-backed currency. No government seems capable of refraining from inflating their currency
Are you talking about the member banks, because I'm not. They don't print money.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
this is confused!
Copyright is a technical monopoly given for a short time to encourage creative production...once tiem expires the copyright does so also..it is absurd to suggest that a song becomes valueless as soon as the copyright expires! Or to suggest that linux is valueless because you can copy tit for free..wake up someone!!
The end of big-budget Hollywood movies vs. the crash of the world's economy.
No, only the USA's economy. But the difference in scale doesn't make a difference to the principle.
One of my favorite movies cost under $40,000 to make
What was it?
Yes you can, the world is not black and white in the way you are claiming. I'm perfectly capable of accepting the government's authority over currency, but reject their authority over copyright. There's nothing wrong with this, all things must be assessed on their merits and virtues.
And if I come to the opposite conclusion? My action to counterfeit US currency is no worse than your action to pirate MP3s?
We have a plastic hundred dollar bill that has braile, has transparency, has holigraphics, and is certainly more difficult if not impossible to reproduce illegally. The paper currency in Canada will be fully replaced by the new technology. The new plastic currency can be washed, is very durable, outlasting the paper currency by 2 to 3 times. Soon the 20's, 10's and 5's will be in circulation. I found them great.
have not tried them out in the 20 to 30 below zero temperatures, but I am sure this bill will remain flexible at that cold cold environment.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Simple: because some people don't accept what the government says _because_ it's what the government says. Some people actually put ethics above legal code. Crazy, I know...
Maybe you should realize different people have different moral systems perhaps?
Government enforcement of "money" is, like IP laws, a trade-off/necessary evil. They're monopolistic and artificial scarcity systems (and, therefore, "un-capitalistic"). As long as someone believes the trade-off has a net beneficial effect on society (in the case of "government money", stability, easy and, in some sense, insured transactions and store of value; in the case of copyright, increased incentives for production of IP and, therefore, more art, science and technology), they will probably agree with it. If, on the other hand, they believe current implementations/enforcements have a net detrimental effect on society, they may disagree with it. People don't all think alike... wow! That's surprising!
It's not difficult to find copyleft enthusiasts (i.e. people who believe current IP laws have a detrimental effect on society) who aren't hardcore Bitcoin enthusiasts (i.e. people who believe control of money by government is detrimental to society), and that doesn't necessarily mean they're being hypocrites. They just understand reality is not black/white, but has all these really nice and interesting shades of gray. You don't have to be full-on libertarian or full-on pro-statism to be "ethical" and "consistent", unlike what you claim.
Also, note that what I said mostly applies to people with post-conventional moral systems. You're likely to find that people with conventional or pre-conventional moral systems usually think in different ways, YMMV, etc.
Remember, reality is not math, and people are not algorithms or computers: they are people.
No, only the USA's economy. But the difference in scale doesn't make a difference to the principle.
I don't think the couple of billion that Hollywood brings in would have an impact anywhere except in southern california. They really don't have that much revenue.
What was it?
Not that it's relevant, but it was "in the company of men".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Sorry to change the subject from bitcoins and high school economics, but here is the deal.
When you leave the USA you quickly discove rthat, not only is English the lingua franca of the world, but also that the dollar is the common currency of the world. It is accepted almost everywhere in the world (maybe not in Europe, when doing above the table business, but I know that many people prefer cash dollars for black market work even in places like Holland). The exceptions I know of were places like the Laotian border in the Golden triangle where they required you to purchase Laotian money, just because they could then use your currency to buy Thai baht, if it wasn't baht to start with. Flooding the market with perfect copies, counterfeit copies, is devastatinhg to the global (small circle) economy.
What I mean by small circle is situations like the vegetable trade in southwestern china, they trade with Burma and Thailand by sending goods down the Mekong River. They don't want Burmese and Thai cash, and the others can't keep Chinese yuan in store since the closest source for Chinese money is Chiang Mai, Vientiane or Rangon. Plus, the exchange rates for foreign currency is very variable, depending on the upcoming car payments, weather, health of the family water buffaloes, etc. Thus, much of this kind of small circle exchange is done in dollars, they are considered solid and reliable.
Thus, this move by the DPRK is damaging to people, not so much to the banks or economies of anyone who cares, but rather to the little people who can be devastated if their goods are tradfed for something that is discovered to be counterfeit. So, while you are discussing bit coins and similar crap, real people who rely on the dollar for their livelihood are screwed.
Not that it's relevant, but it was "in the company of men".
Thanks, I'm always looking for tips for things to torrent. ;-)
LOL, saw that one in the theater! How quaint!
It launched Neil LaBute and Aaron Eckhart's career. You have to be a special kind of person to enjoy such a sadistic movie :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.