Greetings from "Downunder"!. Here, in this fair city of Melbourne, Australia, a recent investigation by both federal and local authorities has resulted in the arrest and charging of a local citizen for piracy.
Here is a paragraph from the local Murdoch rag of November 6th 2004. the Herald Sun(http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/com...5E1702,00.html) " The 38-year-old man from St Albans, in the western suburbs, was charged yesterday after an investigation of more than two months by federal and Victorian police and the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft.
Police seized more than 5000 counterfeit DVDs and computer equipment allegedly used to make them after executing two search warrants at houses in St Albans early yesterday."
Notice, Australian Police move a lot quicker, unlike the slack/lax english counterparts, this investigation only took a mere 2 months, not the 18 months or so required by the police investigation team in the old mother country! before action was taken.
Alas, Australia has now become a hotter bed of piracy and intrigue, bringing us in line with Europe, Asia and The America's, this enough to put one off the morning vice of a latte and slice of cake.
Further on a lighter note, we have the boy(s)(or boasting morons) from Macrovison, telling a reporter from "Rollingstone" November 4th,2004 titled "Security Tight for New CDs" on how the spending of a mere USD$10000, protects prerelease audio CD's from p2p and bootlegging, a paragraph from the article "The main problem, say label executives, is that once an album is sent to the manufacturing plant, it's out of their control. Sources say that a leak at a pressing plant may have been to blame for tracks from Jay-Z's 2003 The Black Album and Eminem's 2002 The Eminem Show getting into the hands of bootleggers and onto peer-to-peer sites before the release date. In response, both Jay-Z and Eminem rushed their CDs out early. (Eminem's upcoming CD, Encore, will be released November 12th, four days ahead of schedule, and Snoop Dogg's Rhythm & Gangsta: The Masterpiece will come out November 16th, a week ahead of schedule, due to recent leaks).

"Security at the plants gets tighter every year," says one executive. "It's like going to an airport. They'll frisk you when you leave.""
Me thinks, that executive,know nothing about Wifi networking with either pda's or laptops. the link is http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...ion=mainRegion
Ah, we do live in interesting times, and have interesting choices to make. Look at RIAA, on one hand one section makes awards for use of internet enhanced CD sales(an excellent low cost marketing tool), on the other hand the security section curses the internet because of it's ability to disseminate information at the lightspeed(literally) worldwide and the new microcomputer technology makes existing security very weak indeed so with the release of dummy tracks is counter productive to sales(this site, on more than one occaision has supplied details of studies from various organizations that p2p, internet mp3, apple Itunes etc enhances the sales of existing CD albums, and with non RIAA artists and labels outside the mainstream fully embracing and/or /endorsing this marketing medium of the internetl

Yeah, I've noticed you can buy a lot of DVDs at the markets here in Melb. Ones already not out in movies even. My mum just gets them off eBay from other countries. Perfect quality and legal.