[LINK] $60 million music piracy operation

[Robin Whittle]

Last night I received a briefing from one of my network of
secondary-school-based intelligence operatives.  He/she reported on a
lucrative sounding piracy operation involving a $5 payment for an audio
CD, burnt onto a CD-R.  For an extra payment the pirates would print a
CD cover for you as well.

But the clanger was that these were not direct copies of CDs.  The
enterprising little future Captains of Industry (actually, "little"
doesn't apply since this generation grows like beanstalks . . .
something to do with the growth hormones in chickens I guess . . . )
generally never even possessed the the copied CD.  My informant tells me
that the tracks are reconstituted from miserable MP3 files downloaded
from the Net - I guess via some peer-to-peer file sharing network.


My original theory was that MP3s via the Net were a minimal cause of
lost CD sales compared to straight-out copying via a CD-R burner.  But
the new intelligence shows the the situation is more complex than that.


   - Robin