Fast CD-R Drives Make For Twice the Piracy 524
Bowie J. Poag notes this Register story about an RIAA copyright infringement bust in New York. The RIAA claims the operation had the equivalent of 421 CD-burners, which, translated from RIAA-speak, means "156 CD-burners but some of them were fast". How they expect anyone to take their statistics seriously is beyond me.
Re:My CDR is really slow... (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny math. Next thing you'll see is that your PC is a few thousand times faster than the average computer! (ENIAC as basline? Maybe a 8mhz 286?)
counterfeit money (Score:5, Interesting)
As you should now be able to see, none of this applies to any of the CDs which were being burned at higher than average speed.
How did they get 421? (Score:3, Interesting)
The only reason the RIAA published this number is to make the media grab it more. This is the same thing they did with "Everyone using Napster is pirating music", which wasn't exactly true (many were, but not all). The media ate up the RIAA's headline, and ignored the real truth behind it.
Re:Does this mean... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, if the product is a copyright violation, is the script itself a violation as well? What does the I-ANAL crowd think?
This is what the RIAA should be doing (Score:5, Interesting)
When the HRAA (home recording rights act) was passed, it set a dangerous precedent of being presumed guilty. No matter how one wished to use home stereo equipment which can copy audio digitally, one was treated like a media pirate.
For example, when I was burning a CD of my own music (which I own the copyright on) two years ago, I was not allowed to make a digital copy of one of my songs to the new CD. What happened was that a flag saying the song was a copy was set; my CD recorder does not allow me to make digital copies of copies. It assumes that all such activity is piracy, even though I use this equipment to make copies of my own songs.
In addition, the CD player forces me to pay extra for CD blanks because it assumes that my activities are copyright infringment activities. In other words, I have to pay the media companies royalties for the privledge of copying my own music. Fortunatly , there is a bug in the firmware which allows me to work around this issue and use far more inexpensive "computer" CDR blanks.
The RIAA and MPAA are trying to cripple computers in a similar manner, which such abominations as the SSSCA. They should stop treating honest computer users like criminials and start persecuting people who willfully engage in piracy.
People who do not think piracy is a problem are mainly in the US, where it is not the kind of problem it is in other countries. In México, for example, one can hardly walk down a street in a shopping district without noticing stands where people sell burned copies of music CDs, complete with inkjet printouts of the cover art for the CD. These kinds of sales do hurt the profits of the RIAA. Obviously not to the extent that every person who buys a burned copy is someone who would have bought a legitimate copy otherwise, but certaintly to a lesser extent.
The people who willfully pirate music and movies need to be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law; I will go so far as to say that the law needs to be set up to make persecuting these people easier. But only the guilty should be punsished; methods for duplicating and distributing music and movies, which are very helpful for promoting independent artists, should not be crippled by the media companies.
- Sam
From the other side (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You see... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My CDR is really slow... (Score:5, Interesting)
Various Quotes (Score:2, Interesting)
---
"There were only 156 actual burners, but some run at very high speeds: some as high as 40x. This is well above the average speed," was the official line yesterday.
The Secret Service, we naively presumed, was employed to protect high-ranking elected officials.
"Perhaps the truth is less interesting than the facts?" asked Amy Weiss, the RIAA's Senior VP of Communications.
The "More is Better" School of Statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
Piracy for Profit... (Score:3, Interesting)
preachin to the choir (Score:2, Interesting)
EXAMPLE:
Surgio from system of a down was on k-rock(92.3 NYC), about 2 weeks ago. One of the DJs asked him what he though about their new album being leaked to the internet early. Surgio promply responded, "Well, there is nothing wrong with downloading mp3s from the internet..." This and comming on the heals of many other artists ralying to save napster last year( or was it two years, cannot remeber). This shows just how much the artists are hurting by this. Remeber for every album you buy at $18, the artist makes an average of 7 cents($0.07).
(PLEASE HOLD ALL COMMENTS ABOUT SOAD, THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE)
Re:Old wine in new bottles (Score:3, Interesting)
Big guys wanna take out the small guys, but big guys need to spin doctor it enough so that small guys look bad, so no one really notices the big guys' work in the noise. Big guys get to keep high prices and big guys make big government very happy. Small guys not very good as they undercut prices of the 'goods'. Big government keeps 'save the children' people happy because they are getting rid of the small guys. Also big goverment labelled small guys as 'Terrorists or Funding Terrorists', so that big guys are even more happy.
All in all more drug trade profit == more money and "donations".
'nuff said.
Re:Another "Equivalence" (Score:2, Interesting)
aa=ba
aa-bb=ba-bb
(a+b)(a-b)=b(a-b)
a=b therefore a-b = 0
(a+b)*0=b*0
0=0
a=b for all reals.
Mines better (and requires more effort to spot the flaw =p)
Re:It's obvious how they did it! (Score:2, Interesting)
421 is prime.
Re:RIAA Math: Add more examples here... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, if someone has a pirated copy then all their descendents, and their descendents' descendents and so on have access to that pirated material as well, thus robbing the RIAA of income for an infinite succession of generations.
What's more, it's uncountably infinite.