More clueless "piracy experts"

[d1abolic]

Give this article a read, it's very amusing! Apparently, this well-paid expert has no idea how to do what he's getting paid to do. How can someone who obviously considers himself a professional be so clueless?! And i quote:

Generally, this high-tech "Top 40" holds few surprises. But last week, Eminem's "The Eminem Show," which was yet to be released, cracked the chart at No. 2. Although pirated versions of the album were widely acknowledged to be online in MP3 format, Gracenote's figures look only at physical CDs, not downloads played on a computer.

"It's pretty safe to say that it's all CD-Rs that people have bought off the streets or burned from friends," said Gracenote CEO David Hyman. "This is the first time anything unreleased has shown up at No. 2."

And for the clueless ones among us - 99% of the CDs he is referring to were burned from MP3s that were transfered to WAV format.

 

[Nefrodite]

hehe cuz u know, decompressing an mp3 = cd quality

 

[joohang]

Originally posted by: Nefrodite
hehe cuz u know, decompressing an mp3 = cd quality

Really! :Q But it plays on my CD player! :Q:Q:Q

 

[amnesiac]

hahahah that article is a riot. They really don't have a clue, do they?

 

[joohang]

Another amusing read: Linkie

I love the part where the Texan high-school senior X-Box "hacker" talks about running "homebrew" software on X-Box.

 

[joohang]

Originally posted by: amnesiac 2.0
hahahah that article is a riot. They really don't have a clue, do they?

I don't expect any better from CNet or ZDNet.

 

[d1abolic]

Wow, that David Becker guy is really clueless! He thinks the biggest source of pirated Xbox games are ICQ chatrooms?

 

[tcsenter]

And for the clueless ones among us - 99% of the CDs he is referring to were burned from MP3s that were transfered to WAV format.

Ok, I'll bite, as I am apparently one of the clueless ones...

What exactly does your statement above do to contradict, refute, or clarify the portion of the article you have quoted?

 

[joohang]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

And for the clueless ones among us - 99% of the CDs he is referring to were burned from MP3s that were transfered to WAV format.

Ok, I'll bite, as I am apparently one of the clueless ones...

What exactly does your statement above do to contradict, refute, or clarify the portion of the article you have quoted?

I have to agree with you there. I haven't read the article until you posted and looks like you got a point.

 

[tcsenter]

I have to agree with you there. I haven't read the article until you posted and looks like you got a point

Yeah, help, I am not getting it.

 

[joohang]

Generally, this high-tech "Top 40" holds few surprises. But last week, Eminem's "The Eminem Show," which was yet to be released, cracked the chart at No. 2. Although pirated versions of the album were widely acknowledged to be online in MP3 format, Gracenote's figures look only at physical CDs, not downloads played on a computer.

"It's pretty safe to say that it's all CD-Rs that people have bought off the streets or burned from friends," said Gracenote CEO David Hyman. "This is the first time anything unreleased has shown up at No. 2."

And for the clueless ones among us - 99% of the CDs he is referring to were burned from MP3s that were transfered to WAV format.

The part in bold is disputable. The author could have been either completely clueless on what he was talking about, or he was merely providing an evaluation of the data.

Maybe d1abolic's point was that it was unlikely that people actually BOUGHT these CDs. They probably just burned them themselves or got them off friends. I am not too sure about that, though. Either way, Eminem's popularity must be skyrocketing right now. :Q

 

[manly]

joohang,

The part in bold is not disputable. (I believe) Gracenote runs the canonial CDDB server that most commercial players query. So amongst all the CDDB queries that they've processed, an unreleased album is already #2. As the article somewhat described, CDs are identified merely by their track lengths. In the case of these bootlegs, there are 8 distinct varieties out there.

I have no idea what exactly d1abolic is suggesting, or why he's knocking the article. While it's not a technical heavyweight, it seems both fairly accurate and also interesting to me (that a bootlegged release is already #2).

And guess what? For 90% of listeners out there, MP3s burned to audio CDs are just as good as the original. It's (mostly) only geeks and audiophiles who care about quality. Personally, I feel that while there is some evidence that MP3s boost CD sales, I can't imagine how widespread distribution of MP3s, ubiquitous CD burners, and readily available bootlegged copies could be helping industry sales. Let's face it, most people are cheap and if they can't tell the difference in quality anyway (besides the CD liner) they don't mind the knockoff.

 

[tcsenter]

Although pirated versions of the album were widely acknowledged to be online in MP3 format, Gracenote's figures look only at physical CDs, not downloads played on a computer.

I took this statement to be a clarification that Gracenote's system only logs and tracks audio CDs played on a computer using the CDDB call feature found in Winamp, RealOne, and a number of other media players, it does not log or track an MP3 file played on a computer.

And I'm still not getting the objection.

 

[Lucky]

I have no idea what exactly d1abolic is suggesting, or why he's knocking the article. While it's not a technical heavyweight, it seems both fairly accurate and also interesting to me (that a bootlegged release is already #2).

When he said:

And for the clueless ones among us - 99% of the CDs he is referring to were burned from MP3s that were transfered to WAV format.

He was implying that 99% of the CD's they "tracked" or whatever were coming from individuals downloading the MP3's and burning them. However, he has no way of knowing that as the copies could have come from a promo disc and copied, then mass-burned for the street vendors (or whoever).

 

[MadRat]

The tracking is invasion of your privacy by Media Player softwares. Its your own PC or MP3 device self-reporting unsolicited and stealth information to a thinktank. Anything that autoreports information, especially pirated music, is self increminating the owner. Not only is it increminating you with a trackable fingerprint (TCP traffic), the information collected is not limited to simple music titles but also system information. Somehow everyone misses that.

 

[tcsenter]

He was implying that 99% of the CD's they "tracked" or whatever were coming from individuals downloading the MP3's and burning them. However, he has no way of knowing that as the copies could have come from a promo disc and copied, then mass-burned for the street vendors (or whoever).

So, what you're really trying to say is that d1abolic is the one who has no clue?

 

[tcsenter]

The tracking is invasion of your privacy by Media Player softwares.

Not at all, its YOUR computer that is sending the information to another server at YOUR request. That cannot possibly be an 'invasion' of your privacy when you're voluntarily sending the data to someone. DUH.

To stop them from being able to identify the CD you're playing, just disable the CDDB query - simple.

 

[joohang]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

The tracking is invasion of your privacy by Media Player softwares.

Not at all, its YOUR computer that is sending the information to another server at YOUR request. That cannot possibly be an 'invasion' of your privacy when you're voluntarily sending the data to someone. DUH.

To stop them from being able to identify the CD you're playing, just disable the CDDB query - simple.

Yup. And probably in some EULA somewhere this was covered.

 

[d1abolic]

Unbelievable. Alright, let me explain myself. The CEO of that company is saying that ALL of the new Eminem CDs that CDDB has tracked were copies of the original that were bought on the streets or copied from friends. What i'm saying is that nearly all of those CDs were actually downloaded. They were downloaded as MP3s, then converted into WAVs and burned - making them look just like originals to CCDB. In case that wasn't enough, here is the disputable part:

Generally, this high-tech "Top 40" holds few surprises. But last week, Eminem's "The Eminem Show," which was yet to be released, cracked the chart at No. 2. Although pirated versions of the album were widely acknowledged to be online in MP3 format, Gracenote's figures look only at physical CDs, not downloads played on a computer.

"It's pretty safe to say that it's all CD-Rs that people have bought off the streets or burned from friends," said Gracenote CEO David Hyman. "This is the first time anything unreleased has shown up at No. 2."

 

[bsobel]

I was actually suprised by the article because the CDDB system uses (I thought) track count, track length, intertrack space to calculate the CD signature. I'm suprised that mp3's downloaded and converted back to wave wind up matching well enough to track.

Bill

 

[spanky]

wouldn't it be funny if eminem's album actually dropped in ranking after it's official release?

 

[Dually]

I long for the good ole days of piracy on the high seas, not the cds.

 

[Cerebus451]

Originally posted by: MadRat
The tracking is invasion of your privacy by Media Player softwares. Its your own PC or MP3 device self-reporting unsolicited and stealth information to a thinktank. Anything that autoreports information, especially pirated music, is self increminating the owner. Not only is it increminating you with a trackable fingerprint (TCP traffic), the information collected is not limited to simple music titles but also system information. Somehow everyone misses that.

The CDDB system (which is what they are quoting in the article) is used by media player software to download and fill in the album name and track titles for a CD when you play it on your PC (this information is NOT on the CD itself). They are not talking about reporting the playing of individual MP3 files, but rather people putting a music CD into their system and having the player software downloading the track list so instead of Track 1, Track 2, ..., they see the actual song names.

Though I do agree that reporting every MP3/avi/mpg file you play behind your back is wrong, but I do my part to pollute Microsoft's database with every porn avi/mpg file I can get my hands on.

 

[tcsenter]

Unbelievable. Alright, let me explain myself. The CEO of that company is saying that ALL of the new Eminem CDs that CDDB has tracked were copies of the original that were bought on the streets or copied from friends. What i'm saying is that nearly all of those CDs were actually downloaded. They were downloaded as MP3s, then converted into WAVs and burned - making them look just like originals to CCDB. In case that wasn't enough, here is the disputable part:

lol! I was right, you really don't have any clue. As you say, "Unbelievable."

Here's your clue genius: If each of these CDs, or 99% of them as you have asserted, were individuals downloading INDIVIDUAL mp3 tracks off the internet then burning an audio CD from them, the Gracenote system would have identified THOUSANDS of variances among the CDs. It did not, it only identified eight primary variances, which PRECLUDES the possibility that these CD's were the result of massive file-swapping. Duh, the article EXPLAINS this in such a way that a 5 year-old could understand it.

Bootleggers, who declined to be identified by name, said the Eminem CDs came from the Internet, although they didn't give details about how they downloaded, burned or bought the copies.

The Internet "is the only place where we can touch it," said one street vendor, who didn't want to be identified.

Gracenote's data shows a few patterns that may lie behind these bootleggers' business, however.

The company's database examines CDs' tables of contents down to slices just one-seventy-fifth of a second long. Copies that look identical at that scale almost always come from the same master copy, the company says.

In the case of the Eminem CD, eight slightly different versions accounted for most of the traffic. That means there's likely "eight major guys doing most of the pressing of this," Hyman said.

Starting to understand now...or do we need one of these 'piracy experts who don't have a clue' to call and explain it to you? Genius!

When you're ready to admit that it is YOU who doesn't have a clue and the piracy experts you have attacked are correct, let us know.

 

[joohang]

That makes sense.

tcsenter, you clarified a lot of issues for me. Funny how I attempted to clarify things for you last night.