U.S. Penalizes Ukraine for Abetting 'Piracy'

The Politech mailing list has a note and follow-up on new trade restrictions levied against Ukraine, since they haven't complied with the U.S.'s demand for 'an optical media licensing regime.' John Gilmore's response puts the issue in perspective. Update: 01/03 23:08 GMT by M : The RIAA has a press release about the trade penalties and response to Gilmore.

Re:Looks like the US...

[Gaccm]

actually according to the article, china already has it implemented.

Re:Are color laser printers really tagging?

[Wntrmute]

Yes. [slashdot.org]

Don't like it? Complain!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop posting lameass "boy this sucks" complaints on Slashdot, and, if you don't like this, complain. Write your congressmen. Write your senator. Write the president. Heck, in the accouncement, there are three numbers you can call...

Kira Alvarez, Office of Services, Investment and Intellectual Property, Office of the United States Trade Representative [phone]

David Birdsey, Office of European Affairs, Office of the United States Trade Representative, [phone]

William Busis, Office of the General Counsel, Office of the United States Trade Representative, [phone]

(Me, I'd like to see some unbiased reports on this thing before making a decision, as neither Politech nor the RIAA seem like the best sources of information for something like this. But there's none of that being posted here, just loads of "me too!" posts. If you're certain its wrong, get off your "trying to be geeky cool" ass and do something...)

Re:Looks like the US...

[elfkicker]

I'm far from an expert on the subject, it barely made the news here at all. But if I recall, the WTO ruled the EU's embargo of Central American bananas marketed by he US as against trade agreements and the EU was penalized ~$200 million. Plus, US companies can now do exactly what they wanted to do in the first place. The trade embargo was a miserable failure, and you're post, uninformed and offtopic.

Have a nice day.

Re:Proof?

[michael]

Search for Counterfeit Deterrent Marking System [google.com].

Or see our old story [slashdot.org], but several of the links are dead now.

Re:Are color laser printers really tagging?

[coltrane99]

Check here [google.com] then.

Re:Looks like the US...(you're dumb)

[Anonymous Coward]

That's garbage. First of all, the French didn't do anything. Second of all, any defense the Brits put up would have fallen well short of being effective without the Lend-Lease Act. You should read some history. Third of all, the U.S. entered the war in Europe for a number of reasons - all of which fall under the category of it being our best interest. You probably don't know about the attempt by Nazi Germany to get Mexico to invade the U.S. because you are a moron. You shouldn't try to rewrite history in such a poor manner - it's in bad taste. And American bombs did not kill more people in Antwerp than any other. I'll clue you in to where you go wrong with this statement. HIROSHIMA. NAGASAKI. Think about it junior.

Re:Looks like the US...

[zericm]

News flash: The US is The Empire on this planet. There is no single nation that can stand up to the economic or military might of this nation. As demonstrated over the past decade, the US can impose its will upon any point on this planet. Sadly, the will of this nation is not that of a democracy concerned with human rights, but rather that of a plutocarcy trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the rest of the world.

However, this power is not enough to control every single person on the planet. Individual goverments may give in, but the peoples of those nations don't. As the citizens see their lives destroyed, they become desperate and will take steps that they feel will end the tyrany. They will march, and rally, and riot in the streets. And if they are even willing to give their lives.

eric

More information than you probably really wanted

[Tsar]

Interested readers seeking background information on this subject may enjoy this 30-page excerpt [academicpress.com] from Questioned Documents: A Lawyer's Handbook by Jay Levinson, from Academic Press [academicpress.com].

Yes they are really tagging already!

[coltrane99]

"Federal law prohibits the copying of certain documents. In cooperation with various government agency requests to discourage unauthorized copying, the DocuColor Series incorporates a Counterfeit Deterrent Marking System. This system encodes each copy, so that the source copier can be identified if necessary. This code is not visible under normal viewing conditions."

Extracted from this link. [allcopiers.com]

You can find it in the spec for lots of copiers by searching the web for Counterfeit Deterrent Marking System.

This really pisses me off

[mikethegeek]

It really pisses me off that we will get tough on Ukraine for not genuflecting to the American IP cartel (RIAA/MPAA), yet just days ago, grant PERMANENT most favored nation trade status to China.

China, after all, is a country that murdered enough people in the 20th Century to make Hitler look like an amateur. It's a country that forces women to have abortions, that jails religious leaders and condems them to death, that wants to hide it's citizens from the Internet...

Not only that, but just last year, China forced down a US plane over international waters, KIDNAPPED airmen, and tried to ransom them.

China is FAR more deserving of 100% tariffs than is Ukraine. But then, Ukraine isn't home to American megacorp sweatshops, and doesn't willingly supply slave labor to man them.

When will it end? How do we fight a war against the corporate IP cartel? How far will our government let it go?

The way I see it, all the way to the world of "Demolition Man" or "Rollerball", so long as our sheepizens keep voting for the same old parties.

Bending over for corporations is a bi-partisan effort. Both parties do it almost equally.

And the RIAA responds

[dcgaber]

On Declan's website [politechbot.com], here [politechbot.com] is the RIAA response to Gilmore--Don't cheer piracy! (RIAA words, not mine).

Visited Kiev recently

[igrek]

Originally I'm from Ukraine and have somehow mixed feelings about the piracy issue. Just some comments:

1) Yes, the piracy level is really insane there in Ukirane. The price of "a software" is $2 per CD. No matter what it is - Windows, Oracle, any games, etc. Just $2, and you can buy it in kiosks at any shopping mall, near almost every bus stop, etc. The situation with music and video is similar. Most of the music now is in MP3 format, so 1-2 disc set covers all the albums of an artist. The discs also contain an MP3 player (Winamp usually) plus album lyrics, pictures, etc. The same $2 per disc.

2) I talked to some people selling the pirated stuff. From what they told me, almost all the software CDs are made in China. The video and audio discs usually come from Russia, China and Bulgaria. Not Ukraine.

3) Average monthly salary there is about $50-100; individuals could not buy the licensed software anyway. It's not an excuse, of course; JFYI.

4) Ukrainian companies is different story. They do buy licensed software. I'd say, the piracy level in corporations there is on about the same level as here in the US.

Serial numbers on copy machine ouput not true

[JustAnotherReader]

Reader, in case you didn't know, every color Xerox machine and color laser printer prints the serial number of the machine on every page they produce, covertly hidden in the output, under a long-standing private "arrangement" with the US Treasury Department. I have been unable to confirm whether this is also true of black-and-white xerox machines.

I once spent 6 years of my life fixing photocopiers (Thank god I write code now). I can say that the comment above is absolutly not true. The technology used in all black and white photocopiers, and in all color copiers that use toner rather than a photographic process, does not have a high enough resolution to accuratly embed a serial number into the "pixels" of a copy.

It's hard enough just to get the black areas dark enough and the white areas bright enough much less having to worry about modifying individual pixels.

Moreover, most photocopiers work by shining a bright light on the original and using the reflected light off the page to effect the static charge on a selenium covered drum. The original is not scanned, modified, and re-broadcast onto the drum.

The new digital copiers do scan the original one time and then use a laser to "print" the page on the drum from memory, but then you have to ask yourself:

1. Is the serial number embedded in the pixels? If so then how do you know which pixels if the source document is always different?
2. Is there an actual serial number printed in microscopic type on the border of every page? If you believe that then photocopy a dollar bill and look at the resolution in the resulting copy. Do you still believe that your copier can print microscopic serial numbers on every page?
3. The serial number of a copier is based on the frame, not the motherboard, drum, lens, or any other part of the machine. Photocopiers are parts hogs. We were constantly replacing circuit boards. There is no way a single serial number could stay mapped to a single photocopier's electronics.

It's unfortunate that Gilmore makes these outrageous claims in an otherwise well thought out article. It seems to push him from the "well-informed protector of our rights" to "crackpot". I wish he would write about what he understands instead of resulting to conspiracy theories. There is enough evil in the RIAA without having to make up conspiracies.

Re:Looks like the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

great british trash..

it was a joint effort..

Dutch guy made business encoding machine
Germans took it and improved vastly
Polish got access to original lame dutch machine, and were cracking German messages
WW2 started
Polish gave all their info to british who then had brilliant Alan Turing who continued work of cracking the cypher

On a note, polish cracked germans improved version of original. Americans during WW2 never fully cracked Japanese version of Enigma.

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[LarsG]

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