More clueless "piracy experts"

[Murphyrulez]

Originally posted by: 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.

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.

Ummmm.. How can I break this to you gently?? You may want to sit down and pull your foot out of your mouth.

When you create a digital copy of a music file, be it from downloading a song, or copying something from your hard drive to a CD, THE DIGITAL BITS DO NOT CHANGE. A digital copy is PERFECT. When the 8 people made 8 different rips from a CD, it was not a DIGITAL copy, it was ANALOG to digital. THEREFORE, these 8 copies are trackable, and are different. When the 10,000 people downloaded the song, THERE ARE ONLY 8 DIFFERENT DIGITAL COPIES.

You may want to apologize to the man.

 

[joohang]

This thread is getting very confusing once again.

 

[tcsenter]

A digital copy is PERFECT. When the 8 people made 8 different rips from a CD, it was not a DIGITAL copy, it was ANALOG to digital. THEREFORE, these 8 copies are trackable, and are different. When the 10,000 people downloaded the song, THERE ARE ONLY 8 DIFFERENT DIGITAL COPIES.

Yep, of the TRACK itself. However, the TOC will ALWAYS be different since it is created - not copied.

The Gracenote system examines, not the digital bit integrity or length of the track itself, but the TOC. The system doesn't even look at digital bits of the tracks. The significance of there being eight primary variances among the logged CD's TOC means that most of these CD-R's were produced by multiple CD Duplication/Mastering setups suggesting there are eight primary locations or individuals supplying the bootleg market.

You may want to apologize to the man.

Yes, I'm waiting...

 

[morkinva]

The only time my media players attempt to contact CDDB is when I put in a cd, not to play individual mp3's. Isn't this your experience?

 

[tcsenter]

On the level that the Gracenote system can examine the TOC, if two CD's have identical TOCs, there is a high probability those two CD's physically came from the same source. Not a guarantee, but a high probability.

On second thought, the fact that there were eight primary variances detected in the TOC of these logged CD's does not conclusively prove these CD's were not, as you claim, downloaded from the internet and burned. What it does strongly suggest is that your claim is at best highly conjectural and speculative, and in all likelihood is incorrect.

Since you have no evidence which can prove that "99% of the CDs he is referring to were burned from MP3s that were transfered to WAV format", or disprove Hyman's claim that "it's all CD-Rs that people have bought off the streets or burned from friends", you're really just speculating wildly and have nothing of substance to impeach the credibility of Hyman in the way that you have.

IOW, it is 'possible' that either of you are correct. Therefore, we must then examine the 'probability' of one being correct, and you lose that contest.

 

[Gunbuster]

<<Gracenote's figures look only at physical CDs>>

Wow a system limited to tracking ONLY exact copys finds ....... only exact copys

<<It's pretty safe to say that it's all CD-Rs that people have bought off the streets or burned from friends>>

If the system can only detect just that duh!


If you download the songs you would:

1. nerver comit them to CDDA, play them form computer, ipod, whatever
2. burn to CDDA is a custom mix that the tracking system wont be able id

 

[ViRGE]

Those people that are saying that it had to be a major pirating operation are more likely correct than not. As stated above, the TOC is generated at burn time, meaning it's usually different. Also, there's the issue of the MP3-WAV process; different programs do it slightly differently(think of it as outputting the file as a WAV via Winamp's diskout plugin; the WAV file outputted has all the settings of the equalizer and volume controls of Winamp applied to it). There's always a chance you could burn a CD that would be similar, but the odds against that simply because of all the variables. Besides, GraceNote tracks entire CD's, meaning all the songs must be there; I don't know of many people who download the entire soundtrack in MP3 and then burn it out. Usually, they only like a couple of songs, and with so many MP3s, we're again messing with the odds of getting a CD to be exactly like another one.

 

[manly]

tcsenter,

Besides, is there a big difference from having a bootlegged CDR burned by a friend, or downloaded MP3s from Kazaa and burning them to a CDR? Essentially no, it's still music theft either way.

I don't see how that makes the article any less technically accurate, or the pundit clueless.

And like you stated, the high likelihood is that most of these were copies from particular sources, rather than randomly created from MP3 sources. Rather than the other way around as d1abolic stated.

Like I said yesterday, the article is written for the mainstream audience but it's not wrong in any substantive ways to the geeks either. The main point of the article wasn't the exact distribution of bootlegs, but the fact that the distribution was already fairly widespread before the album's release.

 

[Sniper82]

I heard from a friend that a guy he was working with got a letter from his cable ISP about some MP3's he downloaded from Kazaa. He said the letter stated the time,date,user name and the name of the songs he got. According to my friend he was d/ling korns newest album that wasnt released yet. I think its their newest album. What I would like to know is how did his ISP know this and can they do this even if your behind a firewall. They told him if he does it again they will disconnect him.

But couldnt a person just kill their internet connection when listing to a CD? Wouldnt that prevent the CDDB info from going out?

 

[manly]

Sniper, you retard (no offense), any unencrypted traffic you send/receive through the Internet goes through your ISP. As an extension, the FBI/NSA have arrangements with most large ISPs to have full access to all email traffic.

If an ISP has sophiscated enough monitoring software, they can collect/store/interpret everything (unencrypted) you do over the Internet if they really wanted to. That's why it's somewhat important that more people understand the privacy issues/violations involved so that ISPs don't automatically violate basic privacy without a second thought. If enough people complain loudly, we get to keep *a little* privacy.

To answer your question, killing the Internet connection is the wrong solution. The right solution is to use a CD player that doesn't make a CDDB query. With such a player, YOU can still type in the album information manually if you wanted it to be displayed. IMO, there are a lot more important things to be secretive of, i.e. personal email for one. Also, there are probably less commercial CDDB databases than the one Gracenote runs.

See http://www.gnupg.org

 

[bsobel]

To answer your question, killing the Internet connection is the wrong solution. The right solution is to use a CD player that doesn't make a CDDB query

Manly, re-read Sniper's post. From it the ISP wasn't monitoring CDDB queries (how could they know if they were a purchased cd or a rip anyhow), but rather monitoring is Kazaa usage. If this story is true (and certainly it could be technically), it's very scary...

Bill

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Originally posted by: 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.

"Xbox games are big, and Microsoft isn't the kindest company around," said "XanTium," an editor of British Xbox fan site Xbox Scene. "I don't think you will find ISOs on public http sites."

Err.... right.

 

[manly]

Originally posted by: bsobel

To answer your question, killing the Internet connection is the wrong solution. The right solution is to use a CD player that doesn't make a CDDB query

Manly, re-read Sniper's post. From it the ISP wasn't monitoring CDDB queries (how could they know if they were a purchased cd or a rip anyhow), but rather monitoring is Kazaa usage. If this story is true (and certainly it could be technically), it's very scary...

Bill

Those are two separate issues. I addressed them both separately.

CDDB queries, Web browsing, P2P file sharing, email, WHATEVER. If the IP traffic isn't encrypted, your ISP can analyze it if they chose to do so. I sometimes wonder why ISPs don't do more active monitoring of usages that blatantly violate not just their stated terms but also their business model. Of course the standard reason is they are lazy and don't really want to police the use of their service.

 

[Sniper82]

bsobel the letter was true. Someone posted on here a while back that verison had emailed him and had told him that if he didnt stop the shareing and stuff they would cut him off. He said they listed what he had been getting and what he was shareing. Luckly most the time they send a warning out. As far as email goes it doesnt worrie me as I never use it much unless I am selling/trading hardware with someone. Also as for the music I could care less about it as I ain't into it but I do like a few songs.

Oh yeah and I meant the part about the letter is different from killing the connection. This dude was sent a letter showing what he had download,when it was done and who it was from(user). I was just curious how their ISP knew this and if a firewall would prevent it? The dude said he was getting it off of Kazaa.

 

[Mrburns2007]

get a firewall

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Mrburns2007
get a firewall

A firewall in no way helps (or hurts) in this situation (the ISP monitoring traffic and P2P downloads)

Bill

 

[Lucky]

. 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

and how in the hell would you know this?

 

[MadRat]

Unless your ISP has your explicit permission to monitor your traffic then it is invasion of electronic privacy laws.